Apple II History
The story of "the MOST personal computer"!
Back in business!
Sorry to have had the site down for the past three days; I’ve had to migrate to a new hosting service, due to problems caused by my old hosting service.
YouTube overload
I’ve combed YouTube looking for videos about the Apple II series, and have found additional movies to add to the Museum. There are now two categories for videos: A general category, for videos like the dealer video I mentioned in my last post, and one for commercials about the Apple II series.
Other videos in the general section are:
- History of Apple II by Apple, 1984
- Wozniak and the Apple History Museum, 1984
- Apple Time Capsule, 1984
- Apple Promotional Video, Fall 1984
- John Sculley discusses the Apple II, 1988
The commercials I’ve found are:
With spokesman Dick Cavett:
Extolling the virtues of the new Apple IIc:
- Apple IIc Commercial, 1984
- Apple IIc: Control a building, 1984
- Apple IIc: Compared to IBM PCjr, 1984
Apple IIs included in Apple’s “The Power To Be Your Best” ad campaign:
- Apple II: Get him one of his own, 1986
- Apple II: Don’t put off what you can do today, 1986
- Apple II: Influences, 1986
- Apple II: Nightmare, 1986
- Apple II: Teach Your Children Well, 1986
Commercials about the Apple IIGS:
Apple promotional video, fall 1984
Thanks to the abilities of WordPress to easily post links to videos, I have a new Museum section specifically for Apple II-related videos. This page shows links to three segments of a promotional video for use by Apple dealers in preparation for the 1984 Christmas shopping season.
DOS 3.2 and 3.3 Video
I’ve recorded and uploaded to YouTube several movies of classic Apple II programs from the old DOS 3.2 and 3.3 disks. You can view of movie of THE INFINITE NO. OF MONKEYS, APPLE-VISION, and COLOR DEMO in Chapter 14 (about DOS), and a movie of BRIAN’S THEME in Chapter 6 (about the Apple II Plus). Here is the movie of APPLE-VISION:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiWE-aO-cyU
Updates! We has updates!
Going through the emails that I have accumulated in the past ten years, I’ve mined some gold that has been languishing in my archive:
- Update to Chapter 17, by adding a little more information about the Logo language on the Apple II and IIGS. Thanks to Todd Nathan!
- Update to Chapter 4, adding information from Gordon French about one of the early of the Apple II case.
An addition to the Clones exhibit in the Museum, specifically the ITT 2020 from the UK. Also added an ad for the ITT 2020 and for the Pear-II to the Ads: Hardware exhibit. Thanks to Yves de Ryckel for the photos.- Fixed two very old typos in Chapter 19. Thanks to Ryan Schmidt!
- Jerry Fellows had donated not only a photo of the II Infinitum button, but also a copy of the letter that was used in the campaign to convince Apple to give the Apple II more attention. That letter is now in the Miscellaneous gallery in the Museum.
- In Chapter 12, made a correction in the section about accelerator cards regarding equivalent chip speeds. Thanks to Tonio for the information!
- Added image of first issue of inCider magazine to the Magazines gallery in the Museum. Thanks to Dan Nugent!
- Put a better image of the Apple II Europlus logo in Chapter 12. Thanks to Gerard Putter!
- Information about the three versions of DOS 3.3 released by Apple was included in Chapter 15. Thanks to Brucifer!
- Added brief info listing in Chapter 14 mentioning the versions of Apple Pascal that were released. Thanks to David Wilson!
- Pictures of the Microdigital TK-3000, an Apple IIe clone sold in Brazil from 1985 to 1988 is now in the Computers: Clones gallery in the Museum. Thanks to Mario Sergio for the photos!
- Picture of an Apple System tag, from John Woodall of VintageMicros, in the Miscellaneous section of the Museum.
- Pictures of the Bell & Howell Apple II, from the collection of David Hodge, in a new category in the Museum, Computers: Bell & Howell
- Pictures of an early Apple II order form (in the Miscellaneous gallery) and of the first Disk II manual (in the Books: Manuals gallery). Thanks to Ed Rose!
I don’t expect it will back up like this again!
Micro, The 6502 Journal
Bill Martens and his friends at the Apple Archive page have uploaded another great collection. The full run of Micro, from 1977 to 1984 is now available to download and view. You can read a short synopsis of it from my history here, but take time to read some of the issues.
Got Blue?
Thanks to the dedicated efforts of Gerry Doire, I’ve had a beautiful copy of the classic Apple II “Red Book” manual available for download for quite a while. He actually re-tooled most of the pages in that book to make it look classic, but actually be more legible than it ever was.
I have not take the extra, careful time that Gerry did, but I have scanned in my prized copy of the Apple II “Blue Book”, the first Applesoft manual released by Apple Computer, Inc., and thanks to the help of Bill Martens and his Apple Archives project for A.P.P.L.E., the scanned pages were assembled into a beautiful PDF copy of this rare manual.
Both are available for download in the Downloads section (see the top links to get there).
Hardware ad gallery opens, too!
Also completed the start of ads for classic Apple II hardware from the early 1980s! See the page here.
Software ad gallery opens
Another group of pictures are ready for viewing. If you were reading Softalk back in the early 1980s, you saw some of these ads repeated constantly. Enjoy the nostalgia, and view the page here.
Softalk gallery opens
Trying to follow through on my promise of offering some new content, I have now begun a project of scanning interesting information from Softalk magazine. My collection starts in September 1981 and (with only a couple of missing issues) runs through the very end in August 1984. I plan to offer all of the covers here, as well as information about their best columns. You can view it in the Museum here.