December 1, 1981: After the disastrous rollout of the “next-gen” Apple III the earlier 12 months, Apple corrects the pc’s most obvious {hardware} faults and relaunches it.
Sadly, the harm has already been executed. Apple experiences its first “flop” product with the Apple II’s doomed successor.
Apple III: Every thing to everybody
The Apple III ought to have been good. In contrast to the Apple-1 and Apple II, which have been basically 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 exchange it. The early phases of the Macintosh challenge have been already underway, but it surely 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.
At first of the challenge, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — keen to participate in any effort with the potential to grow to be the subsequent massive factor — printed up a sequence of shiny posters for workers, studying: “The choices 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 appeal to enterprise customers with its private pc. Apple due to this fact threw all the pieces 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 essential options. This function creep meant {that a} challenge Apple wished completed in 10 months stretched to 2 years.
“All people had sure concepts about what the Apple III ought to do and sadly all of them have been included,” quipped an Apple engineer on the time.
Specs: It’s what’s inside that counts
Picture: Apple
By way of 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 referred to as Apple SOS. In response to 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 critically, its motherboard overheated, inflicting its chips to loosen.
Mixed with different faults, this earned the Apple III poor person evaluations. It floundered within the market.
The brand new, barely improved Apple III
The Apple III revised version, which in the present day’s “Immediately in Apple historical past” 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.
Current Apple III prospects most likely felt “happiest” in regards to the revised version. Some 2,000 of them received a brand new machine as a free improve due to issues encountered with the sooner mannequin.
In the end, the pc received yet 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 greatest failures Apple suffered throughout this period.
Would the Apple III have succeeded had the IBM PC not arrived across the similar time, and at a lower cost level? Maybe, however the Apple III suffered from many issues that made success a problem both manner.
Do you keep in mind the Apple III? Go away your feedback under.
