The Apple III, an early business machine predating the IBM PC

The Apple III with an Apple Monitor //.

The Apple III, or Apple /// as it was sometimes styled, was the first completely new computer designed by Apple. Its predecessor, the better-known Apple II, was designed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak prior to the company's incorporation in 1976. Design work on the Apple III started in late 1978 under the guidance of Dr. Wendell Sander. It had the internal code name of "Sara", named after Sander's daughter. The Apple III was introduced in May 1980. Apple III Computer Description: Apple III Computer Source: picture taken by myself, 15. ... Apple III Computer Description: Apple III Computer Source: picture taken by myself, 15. ... Apple III personal computer system, circa 1980 Other Images File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Apple III personal computer system, circa 1980 Other Images File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... An Apple Monitor //. The Apple Monitor // was a CRT-based green monochrome 12-inch monitor manufactured by Apple Computer for the Apple II personal computer family. ... Apple Inc. ... The Apple II was one of the most popular personal computers of the 1980s. ... Stephan Gary Woz Wozniak (born August 11, 1950 in San Jose, California) is an American computer engineer turned philanthropist. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ...

The Apple III was designed to be a business computer. It featured an advanced operating system called SOS (the Sophisticated Operating System) and a new BASIC interpreter, "Apple /// Business BASIC" (an implementation of UCSD Pascal was also offered for more structured programming). Other features included an 80-column display with upper and lowercase characters, a numeric keypad, support for a real-time clock, 6-bit (DAC) audio, 16-color graphics, a hierarchical file system, and the ability to emulate a 48KB Apple II+. There was a built-in 140K 5.25" floppy disk drive, with up to three additional external "Disk ///" floppy disk drives and a ProFile 5 or 10 megabyte hard disk drive available as options. Microsoft developed an add-in "Softcard" that allowed the Apple III to run CP/M, which was actually sold as an Apple product. An operating system (OS) is a computer program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... SOS, which stands for the Sophisticated Operating System, was the computer operating system released in 1980 that was used by the ill-fated Apple III computer. ... BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages. ... An interpreter is a computer program that executes other programs. ... Screenshot of Atari BASIC, an early BASIC language for small computers. ... UCSD Pascal was a specific implementation of the programming language Pascal which used the p-Code machine architecture. ... A kilobyte (derived from the SI prefix kilo-, meaning 1000) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to either 1000 or 1024 bytes. ... A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible (floppy) magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. ... Apple Lisa with a ProFile hard drive. ... A megabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to exactly one million bytes. ... Typical hard drives of the mid-1990s. ... CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. ...

The Apple III was powered by a 2 MHz SynerTek 6502A 8-bit CPU and, like some of the more advanced machines in the Apple II family, used bank switching techniques to address up to 256K of memory (512K with a third-party upgrade). MegaHertz (MHz) is the name given to one million (106) Hertz, a measure of frequency. ... 8-bit refers to the number of bits used in the data bus of a computer. ... Die of an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor (actual size: 12×6. ... Bank switching (also known as paging, but only loosely related to the ordinary meaning of paging in computing) was a technique common in 8-bit microcomputer systems, to increase the amount of addressable RAM and ROM without extending the address bus. ...

The Apple III was the first Apple product that allowed the user to choose both a screen font and a keyboard layout:either QWERTY or Dvorak. These choices could not be changed while programs were running, unlike the Apple IIc, with a Keyboard switch directly above the keyboard, allowing switching on the fly, and most recent versions of MacOS, which have a Keyboard menu on the menu bar, allowing on-the-fly switching.

The Apple III had a System Utilities program, which allowed system reconfiguration and file manipulation. Another program, Selector III, was designed to integrate with the System Utilities program and launch various applications. In some ways, it was a precursor to the Macintosh Finder. However, Apple decided not to finish this project, and the engineers and writers working on the project bought the right to market Selector II to Apple III owners for a nominal fee. However, another company, Quark Software, developed a competing product, Catalyst, with a program-switching capability, a cruder interface, and support for copy-protection, which enabled companies to license users to run programs from a hard disk without worrying that their precious software might be backed up or stolen. When Apple decided to bundle Catalyst with its new ProFile hard disk, Quark celebrated--it eventually grew into a major software vendor with Quark Xpress); and the Selector III's developers quietly dissolved their company.

For a variety of reasons, the Apple III was a commercial failure. With a starting price of about $3,500 US, it was more expensive than many of the CP/M-based business computers that were available at the time. The Apple III's software library was very limited, and whilst sold as an Apple II compatible, the emulation that made this possible was intentionally hobbled, thus it could not make use of the advanced III features (specifically 64K RAM or higher, required by a large number of Apple II software titles based on PASCAL) which limited its usefulness. CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. ...

Far more importantly, the machine was plagued by numerous hardware and software bugs. The real time clock, the first in an Apple computer, would fail after prolonged use. This chip, which was made by National Semiconductor, was an example of a recurrent problem. Semiconductor purchase contracts allowed a vendor 30 days to replace defective parts. It was assumed that a vendor would test parts before shipping them, but this was not required. National had a reputation for knowingly shipping bad parts, confident that they could do another production run before they had to send replacements. This was not a problem for customers who put chips in sockets and had extensive repair facilities. However, Apple was soldering chips directly to boards and could not easily test a board to find a single bad chip. Eventually, Apple solved this problem by deleting the real-time clock from the specification, rather than putting in a working clock chip. Curiously, Apple's first CEO, Michael Scott, was a former National executive, as well as later Apple CEO Gilbert Amelio. Arguably, both should have understood National Seniconductor's business practices better than anyone else. A computer bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from working as intended, or produces an incorrect result. ... Categories: Electronics companies of the United States | Companies based in California | Corporation stubs ... Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is the job of having the ultimate executive responsibility or authority within an organization or corporation. ... Michael Scott is the name of: Michael Scott (Apple Computer), president of Apple Computer, Inc. ... Gilbert F. Amelio (born March 1, 1943 in New York City) is an American technology executive. ...

At Steve Jobs' insistence, the machine did not include a cooling fan—the metal case was supposed to act as a heat sink, despite not being designed for this purpose. Furthermore, the case itself was too small to properly accommodate the III's internals, and Apple skimped on gold-plating the electrical contacts. The result was an unmitigated disaster. The system would overheat so severely that the motherboard would warp in its tight confines, and thermal expansion would actually push the DIP chips out of their sockets. One popular anecdote about the Apple III is probably better remembered than the machine itself: in a technical bulletin, customers were actually instructed to lift the machine three inches (76 mm) and drop it in order to reseat the chips. Another problem was that the circuit board used a "fineline" technology that was not fully mature, with narrow, closely spaced traces. When chips were "stuffed" into the board and wave-soldered, solder bridges would form between traces that were not supposed to be connected. This caused numerous short circuits, which required hours of costly diagnosis and hand rework to fix. Apple designed a new circuit board, with more layers and normal-width traces. It was designed by one designer on a huge drafting board, rather than a costly CAD-CAM system used for the previous board, and it worked. In the end, Apple "ate" the first 14,000 Apple III machines: Those brave customers who had bought them were given brand new machines, with new circuit boards. These did not constitute a new model: it was deemed warranty service. Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is the co-founder and CEO of Apple and was the CEO of Pixar until its acquisition by Disney. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... ICs in DIP14-Package Several PDIPs and CERDIPS. The large CERDIP in the foreground is an 8080 processor. ... Wave Soldering is a large-scale soldering process by which electronic components are soldered to a printed circuit board (PCB) to form an electronic assembly. ...

An improved version, the Apple III Plus, was introduced in December 1983. The III Plus fixed the hardware problems of the original III, included 256KB RAM, built-in clock, video interlacing, and featured a keyboard in the style of the Apple IIe. However, not even the new "allow me to reintroduce myself" campaign could salvage the III's reputation. Possibly more relevant in the long run was the fact that the III was essentially an enhanced Apple II—newest heir to a line of 8-bit machines dating back to 1976. The year after the III was originally released, IBM unveiled its PC—a completely new 16-bit design soon available in a wide range of inexpensive clones. The business market moved rapidly towards the IBM machines and, in September 1985, the Apple III line was discontinued, having sold only about 65,000 systems. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak stated that the primary reason for the Apple III's failure was that the system was designed by Apple's marketing department, unlike Apple's previous engineering-driven projects.^[1] 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Apple IIe was the third model in the Apple II line of personal computers, produced by Apple Computer. ... 8-bit refers to the number of bits used in the data bus of a computer. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... International Business Machines Corporation (known as IBM or Big Blue; NYSE: IBM) is a multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. ... IBM PC (IBM 5150) with keyboard and green screen monochrome monitor (IBM 5151), running MS-DOS 5. ... In computer science, 16-bit is an adjective used to describe integers that are at most two bytes wide, or to describe CPU architectures based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. ...

Some of the features and codebase of the Sophisticated Operating System made their way into the Apple II's ProDOS and GS/OS operating systems, as well as those of the Lisa and Macintosh. For Australian-based Objectivist Prodos Marinakis and the prodos institute, see here. ... In computing, GS/OS is the second operating system developed by Apple Computer for its Apple IIGS computer system. ... The Apple Lisa was a revolutionary personal computer designed at Apple Computer during the early 1980s. ... The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ...

Although the Apple III shares much of the same technology and traits found throughout the Apple II series, it is not part of the that series. Not being a direct Apple II compatible, a special boot disk was required to put it into II emulation mode, much like the Apple Lisa in how it emulated the Macintosh. For this and other reasons, the Apple III can be considered a cousin of the Apple II rather than a member of its series. The Apple Lisa was a revolutionary personal computer designed at Apple Computer during the early 1980s. ...

See also

• List of products discontinued by Apple Inc.

The following is a list of Apple Inc. ...

References

• Apple III chaos (Cortland), Joshua Coventry, Low End Mac (2006)

Low End Mac is a popular Mac news, editorials and information website updated many times weekly. ...

Notes

Stephan Gary Woz Wozniak (born August 11, 1950 in San Jose, California) is an American computer engineer turned philanthropist. ... W. W. Norton & Company is an American book publishing company that has remained independent since its founding. ...

External links

• Washington Apple Pi Apple III Resources
• Applefritter has an Apple II and III forum
• Sara - An Apple /// Emulator
• Collection of old analog and digital computers at www.oldcomputermuseum.com