Apple III

The Apple III (proper spelling Apple / / / ) was the first Apple computer, without the Steve Wozniak ( he designed the Apple II in 1976 ) was developed. The work on the Apple III started in 1978, he was introduced in May 1980.

The Apple III was an expensive flop for several reasons. These included the high price and the incomplete in practice compatibility with the popular Apple II and its already quite large software library - for Apple II programs only a maximum of 48 KB of RAM were supported, while most programs then already 64 KB required. Perhaps even more important were technical problems, such as frequent crashes due to overheating and the tendency of the chips to slip out of their ( cheap ) sockets.

The technical problems were indeed solved with the Apple III Plus introduced in 1983, but the resulting poor reputation of the device could be characterized not change. The resulting gap in the market above the Apple II completed 1981, the IBM PC.

Since the Apple II, unlike the III, continued to sell well, Apple called his next 8 -bit machine in 1982 not Apple IV, but Apple IIe and stayed this time on full compatibility with the Apple II

Technical specification