My name is Steven Weyhrich, and I am a family practice physician from Omaha, Nebraska. My Apple II History has been available since the early 1990s, first appearing on the online service GEnie, then in user group newsletters.
My experience with the Apple II started in the early 1980s, and includes most models from Apple II Plus, through the Apple IIe and IIc and finally the Apple IIGS. After the mid 1990s, I gained experience with the Apple Newton, the Macintosh, the Palm and Treo, eventually moving into the iPhone family for mobile computing and phone needs, and a MacBook for most everything else.
The core of information presented here was originally a series of articles printed in the early 1990’s in the Metro Apple Computer Hobbyists (MACH) User Group Newsletter in Omaha, Nebraska. It was gathered from personal experience, from various Apple II periodicals and books, and from networking with other Apple II enthusiasts on the GEnie online service.
As it was being printed in the monthly MACH Newsletter, I also uploaded these files to GEnie’s Apple II library, and made it available for others to download. I stated that it could be used in other user group newsletters; my only stipulation was that I be mailed a copy of any newsletter in which it was printed. Shared via local BBS (bulletin board systems) and the fledgling World Wide Web on the Internet, it soon went around the United States and even around the world. I know that there were probably many instances in which the groups printing it did not send a copy to me, but I immensely appreciated (then and now) those who did take the time and postage to do so. At one time I was receiving a monthly mailing from the AUSOM user group in Australia, and from another large group in Great Britain. Furthermore, the history has been translated into French for at least one user group there, and another individual is in the process at this time of making a translation of the history for his French web site (see links).
In 1994, I was asked via e-mail by Erik Kloeppel if the History could be converted to HTML to make available as a web site on the Hypermall, a new web-hosting service in Colorado. Since I did not know how to create web pages at that time, I gave my approval, and the Apple II History became one of the early web sites on the Hypermall. Now called “foreThought.net“, they continued to host this site for a number of years. I eventually took over the management of the web site, and later moved it to a different hosting service. The latest conversion, done in the summer of 2010, was to change it from a Web 1.x style to Web 2.0, utilizing WordPress as a basis for a content management system.
Admittedly, the Apple II History is not a perfect document. Since it was originally started as a series of articles for a small local user group newsletter, the research was limited to second and third-hand sources (via magazine articles, books, etc.) In certain circumstances where a piece of information was simply not available anywhere else, I did try to track down some of the original players involved in the Apple II’s formative years, but did not try to monopolize more of their time than was necessary to answer my specific question. Because of the lack of primary sources for some of the information contained in the History, there are likely innacuracies published in the past that I have simply repeated. Over the years I have tried to correct major errors that have been pointed out to me, and I am still willing to do this if any others are identified.
In 2013 I began to work on converting the History into a format suitable for publishing as a print book, and in December of that year the book became available on Amazon, through Variant Press. Additionally, it is available through Juiced.GS if you want to get a personalized autographed copy!
If you have comments about the History or the additional side-attractions that I have added over the years, please feel free to send email.