December 1, 1981: After the disastrous rollout of the “next-gen” Apple III the earlier yr, Apple corrects the pc’s most obvious {hardware} faults and relaunches it.
Sadly, the injury has already been carried out. Apple experiences its first “flop” product with the Apple II’s doomed successor.
Apple III: Every little thing to everybody
The Apple III ought to have been good. In contrast to the Apple-1 and Apple II, which have been primarily homebrew initiatives, the Apple III had the total weight of Apple the company behind it.
Though gross sales of the Apple II confirmed no indicators of slowing down, Apple inevitably wanted an up to date pc to interchange it. The early phases of the Macintosh undertaking have been already underway, nevertheless it was clear the Mac was nowhere close to able to go. All eyes have been due to this fact on the Apple III to grow to be the pc that Cupertino wanted.
Firstly of the undertaking, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — keen to participate in any effort with the potential to grow to be the subsequent large factor — printed up a collection of shiny posters for workers, studying: “The decisions you’re making now helped ship 50,000 Apple IIIs in 1980.”
Apple positioned the machine as a enterprise pc. The corporate knew IBM would entice enterprise customers with its private pc. Apple due to this fact threw the whole lot on the wall to create a pc that might attraction to critical enterprise customers and residential shoppers alike.
Sadly, this resulted in a pc constructed by committee, with everybody concerned selling their very own concepts about obligatory options. This characteristic creep meant {that a} undertaking Apple needed completed in 10 months stretched to 2 years.
“Everybody had certain ideas about what the Apple III should do and unfortunately all of them were included,” quipped an Apple engineer on the time.
Specs: It’s what’s inside that counts
The Apple III in all its glory.Photograph: Apple
When it comes to specs, the unique Apple III boasted a 2-MHz SynerTek 6502A processor, a whopping 2KB of ROM, 128KB on-board RAM (256KB within the revised mannequin that launched on today in 1981), and 4 slots for peripherals. It ran twice as quick because the Apple II. It was additionally Apple’s first pc to return with a built-in 5.25-inch floppy drive.
Given the Apple III’s much-publicized issues, it’s ironic that it ran an working system known as Apple SOS. Based on Apple, this stood for Subtle Working System. It wound up influencing the design of ProDOS, later used on Apple II computer systems.
Sadly, the Apple III didn’t grow to be successful when it launched within the fall of 1980. It supported a restricted vary of software program as a result of it wasn’t backward-compatible with DOS 3.2 and three.3, which Apple II software program tended to make use of. Extra severely, its motherboard overheated, inflicting its chips to loosen.
Mixed with different faults, this earned the Apple III poor consumer evaluations. It floundered within the market.
The brand new, barely improved Apple III
The Apple III revised version, which right now’s “Today in Apple history” commemorates, launched in December 1981. It included upgraded specs and new software program. Apple additionally launched a ProFile 5MB exterior exhausting drive, though the relaunch didn’t obtain a lot publicity from Apple’s PR agency.
Present Apple III clients in all probability felt “happiest” concerning the revised version. Some 2,000 of them bought a brand new machine as a free improve due to issues encountered with the sooner mannequin.
In the end, the pc bought another improve (the later Apple III Plus) earlier than Cupertino ditched the lineup altogether. The Apple III and the Apple Lisa stand out as the corporate’s two concerted makes an attempt to compete within the enterprise market — and the 2 largest failures Apple suffered throughout this period.
Would the Apple III have succeeded had the IBM PC not arrived across the identical time, and at a cheaper price level? Maybe, however the Apple III suffered from many issues that made success a problem both method.
Do you bear in mind the Apple III? Go away your feedback beneath.
