16 Facts About Apple II

Apple II is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products.

The earliest Apple II computers were assembled in Silicon Valley and later in Texas; printed circuit boards were manufactured in Ireland and Singapore.

Apple II used peculiar engineering shortcuts to save hardware and reduce costs, such as:.

Apple II added vent holes to the case within three months of production; customers with the original case could have them replaced at no charge.

Apple II's printed circuit board underwent several revisions, as Steve Wozniak made modifications to it.

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The early Apple II+ models retained this feature, but after a drop in DRAM prices, Apple redesigned the circuit boards without the jumpers, so that only 16kx1 chips were supported.

Unlike most machines, all integrated circuits on the Apple II PCB were socketed; although this cost more to manufacture and created the possibility of loose chips causing a system malfunction, it was considered preferable to make servicing and replacement of bad chips easier.

Color on the Apple II series uses a quirk of the NTSC television signal standard, which made color display relatively easy and inexpensive to implement.

Rather than a dedicated sound-synthesis chip, the Apple II has a toggle circuit that can only emit a click through a built-in speaker or a line-out jack; all other sounds are generated entirely by software that clicked the speaker at just the right times.

An Apple II manual signed by Steve Jobs in 1980 with the inscription "Julian, your generation is the first to grow up with computers.

Original Apple II provided an operating system in ROM along with a BASIC variant called Integer BASIC.

Apple II DOS was superseded by ProDOS, which supported a hierarchical filesystem and larger storage devices.

Some commercial Apple II software booted directly and did not use standard DOS disk formats.

Jesse Adams Stein wrote, "As the first company to release a 'consumer appliance' micro-computer, Apple II Computer offers us a clear view of this shift from a machine to an appliance.

The magazine published a favorable review of the computer in March 1978, concluding: "For the user that wants color graphics, the Apple II is the only practical choice available in the 'appliance' computer class.

The author concluded that "the Apple II is a very promising machine" which "would be even more of a temptation were its price slightly lower.