On this day - June 10th 1977 - One of the first home computers, Apple II, was released
Apple II was one of the first successful mass produced micro computers for home use. It was introduced on West Coast Computer fair and was Apples first consumer product. The computer was primarily designed by Steve Wozniak while Steve Jobs oversaw the development of the computer. The Apple II computer included 4 kB of RAM and an audio caset interface for loading programs and the retailer price was 1,298 USD. The computer went on sale on June 10th in 1977 and the production of Apple II products continued until November 1993.
On this day - January 22nd 1984 - The release of the Macintosh
Building on some of the lessons learned from the Apple Lisa was the first Macintosh released on this day un 1984. The Macintosh popularised the use of computer mouse and the graphical user interface. The project was introduced by a commercial, produced by Ridley Scott, called "1984". The "1984" commercial is considered a huge success some even calling the commercial more successful than the Macintosh itself. The Macintosh 128 was a success it sold 70,000 units by May and almost 250,000 units by the end of the year. Until this day computers released by Apple are branded Macintosh computers or more popular just Macs.
The initial price was 1995$ but was raised to 2495$ after a commercial campaign where buyers had the options to return the computer within 24 hours. The retailers disliked this campaign because many of the returned units was so badly used they were virtually unsellable. The first Macintosh became popular, but its price compared to other systems such as the Commodore 64 made it so it did not dominate the marked. The success of the Macintosh made Apple the second largest computer manufacturer for the next decade.
The Macintosh Plus from the Design Museum in Gothenburg Sweden
On this day - January 19th 1983 - The Apple Lisa was released
The Apple Lisa was one of the first computers with an graphical user interface aimed at individual business owners. Steve Jobs was part of the development process that started 1978, however in 1982 he was forced out of the project. The operating system taxed the processor (5 MHz) so heavily that it felt sluggish especially scrolling trough documents. NASA was the biggest customer and used it for project management. When Apple finally discontinued the Lisa in 1986, it caused NASA a lot of problems since they were using a no longer supported platform. In 1989 Apple disposed of 2,700 unsold units in a landfill to receive a tax write-off. The Lisa project was a commercial failure that ended up selling 100,000 units. The biggest disadvantage was the price point 9995$ (23,700$ 2016$). The competing computers from IBM dominated the sales numbers due to the lower price.
A working Apple Lisa at the 1983 Apple Boston Convention Alan Light Flickr
