Apple and the Apple II became a legend in their own time, landmarks in the age of computing
they helped create. The Apple lore includes many firsts and fascinating facts. This how it
happened.
The Apple III was Apple’s first attempt to move away from the tried-and-true Apple II
architecture. It would prove to be the company’s first bona fide failure. Even though
engineers repeatedly warned of problems with the Apple III, it seemed that no one in top
management doubted the machine’s eventual success.
Apple introduced the Apple IIgs in September 1986. It was intended to be a replacement for
the venerable Apple II that was the mainstay of Apple’s revenues for most of the early part of
the 1980s. The Macintosh was changing the world and would soon replace the Apple II as the
company’s cash cow, but many Apple II faithful still longed for an advanced version of their
beloved computer.
This article examines a portion of one of Apple’s Apple IIe owner’s manuals. Apple produced
several different editions of the Apple IIe owner’s manual over the life of the computer. This
one was not the first nor was it the last. This particular Apple IIe manual first shipped with
the Apple IIe in 1984, the same year that Apple released the world-changing Macintosh.
Reading through the manual is like taking a time machine back to 1984, when home
computers where still relatively new and the Apple IIe drove the majority of Apple Computer’s
sales revenue.
In 2005, Kelvin Sherlock released PNG Floyd, a CDA that captures Apple IIgs screenshots and saves them in the standard Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format. PNG is an open, extensible image format viewable by just about every modern graphics application.
The Apple I, sold as a kit computer, was designed by a genius named Steven (Woz) Wozniak. It was designed over a period of years from parts Woz had free access to at his job as a Hewlett Packard engineer. HP encouraged its engineers to use company stock and lab facilities to experiment with new and interesting technology. Woz took full advantage of this privilege and when he got his hands on a MOStek 6502 had all the parts he needed to build the Apple I.
The following information pertains to the Apple II, II Plus, IIe, IIc, and IIgs computers. This is a must read for anyone frustrated by the lack of software commercially available for the venerable Apple II. Three primary file types are discussed: ShrinkIt files, binscii encoded files, and disk images.
Before Steve Jobs introduced the talking Macintosh in 1984, there was Software Automated Mouth and the Apple II computer. This program allows you to give speech to text on an Apple IIe computer.
Here is a cool program I came by not so long ago. It is called ][ GIF, version 1.0, by Jason Harper. The program makes it possible to view a GIF on an Apple IIe. The Apple IIe doesn’t have much graphical capabilities compared to modern computers but in its time, it was a quantum leap above its competitors.
Listed below is the code for a simple paint program I put together using Applesoft BASIC and the low-resolution graphics built into the Apple IIe. The paint program allows you to draw low-resolution pictures on the screen in 14 different colors.
The program listed below is a screen saver that generates random vertical and horizontal lines in low-resolution mode. The lines don’t just appear on the screen. They drag slowly across the screen from one side to the other. The program could also be described as a pattern generator. Pressing the spacebar will clear the screen and quit the screen saver. The program makes use of a pseudo random number generator built into Applesoft BASIC. RND is a function that seems to pick numbers at random.
Applesoft BASIC is a versatile language. It is possible to design simple games using low-resolution graphics. You won’t be winning any awards for graphics but it is an interesting way to spend an afternoon. Listed below is a Pong program I designed. It uses the up arrow and down arrow to control the paddle (vertical orange line). It is a Pong-type game very similar to swash.
