Apple III
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| Apple III | |
|---|---|
| Made in: | 1980 |
| Discontinued: | 1985 |
| OS: | SOS |
| RAM: | 128 KB to 256 KB |
The Apple III was one of Apple's first business computers. It was designed as a heatsink with no cooling vents. It could run the Sophisticated Operating System (SOS), the precursor to ProDOS. It had an internal floppy drive, and it could also support Apple's Profile hard drive in its 5 MB configuration and external floppy disk drives.
[edit] Problems
The Apple III had many problems. First, the case design (which had no cooling fan or vents, suggested by Steve Jobs) caused the chips on some boards to melt off their boards. Apple's recommended solution was to pick the computer up a few inches and drop it. Also, Some users reported that the disks in its internal disk drive were "melted". Another problem was the internal clock (an Apple first at the time) would fail after extended use.
Eventually, most of these problems were remedied by 1981 with a revised Apple III. Also, Apple had to replace the motherboards of the first 14,000 Apple IIIs free of charge.
It was also very expensive out of any business computers selling at that time ($4,340 to $7,800 US).
[edit] Apple III Plus
The Apple III Plus was a revised Apple III that was released in 1983. It was sold cheaper than the original Apple III ($2,995 US), doubled the RAM to 256 KB, fixed the internal clock, introduced video interlacing, and had a keyboard and monitor in the style of the Apple IIe (light gray). However, not even the new "allow me to reintroduce myself" campaign could salvage the III's reputation. The final nail in the Apple III's coffin was the IBM PC, which was released a year after the original Apple III, and soon became available as several clones. It became so successful that the Apple III line was discontinued in September 1985, with about 65,000 systems sold.
