Apple III

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The Apple III, or Apple /// as it was sometimes styled, was the first completely new computer designed by Apple Computer, Inc. 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". The Apple III was introduced in May 1980.

Related Topics:
Apple Computer - Apple II - Steve Wozniak - 1976 - 1978 - 1980

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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, a real-time clock, a hierarchical file system, and the ability to emulate a 48KB Apple II+. There was a built-in 5¼" floppy disk drive, with up to three additional external "Disk ///" floppy disk drives and a ProFile 5 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.

Related Topics:
Operating system - SOS - BASIC - Interpreter - Pascal - KB - Floppy disk - ProFile - Megabyte - Hard disk - CP/M

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The Apple III was powered by a 2 MHz 6502 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). Unlike most business computers of its time, the Apple III did not include a fan.

Related Topics:
MHz - 6502 - 8-bit - CPU - Bank switching

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For a variety of reasons, the Apple III was a commercial failure. With a starting price of about US$3,500, 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 the Apple II Plus emulation was intentionally hobbled so 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) which limited its usefulness as an Apple II software compatible machine. Additionally, the machine was plagued by numerous other hardware and software bugs. One popular anecdote about the Apple III is probably better remembered than the machine itself: in a technical bulletin, customers were instructed to lift the machine three inches (75 mm) and drop it – this was supposed to reseat internal DIP chips that had a tendency to come loose.

Related Topics:
Bug - DIP

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An improved version, the Apple III Plus, was introduced in December 1983. The III Plus fixed the hardware problems of the original III, included 256K of memory, and featured a keyboard in the style of the Apple IIe. However, by this time the Apple III had developed a reputation and the business market was rapidly moving towards the IBM PC and its compatibles. The Apple III line was discontinued four months later.

Related Topics:
1983 - IBM PC

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