its.
1978: Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) builds the Alto, the first computer to
use icons and a mouse instead of text and arrow keys for navigation.
1979, April: VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet software, is
shown at the West Coast Computer Faire.
VisiCalc was developed by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston.
Visicalc is marketed by Personal Software corporation, a vendor of game
Dan maintains a
VisiCalc transforms the Apple
computer into a machine relevant for business users.
1979, June: Apple II+ introduced. Price at Introduction: $1,195.00
Standard Memory: 48k. One of the first computers to incorporate input
(keyboard), output (video text and color graphics), and offline
storage (cassette tape) in a single unit. Also an
optional 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive (112kb or 140kb each depending
on firmware revision).
1979: Steve Jobs visits Xerox Parc and views their Alto Computer.
1980: Total computers in use in the U.S. exceed one million units.
1980, September: Apple III introduced. Price at Introduction:
$3,495.00 Standard Memory: 128k. The first 'corporately designed'
system from Apple, and the first major flop! The Apple III was plagued
with compatibility and reliability problems from the start. Poor
quality IC sockets, and equally poor airflow in the case caused many
problems, some of which generated some very odd solutions. Perhaps the
most famous (infamous?) was the service bulletin advising that some
intermittent problems could be corrected by lifting the front of the
unit 3-4 inches, and dropping it! Even more curious was that this
usually worked! But this exercise did little for the units reputation.
1981: Commodore brings out the VIC-20 at $300, to drive a TV display.
1982: Former Apple Exec Trip Hawkins starts a software game company:
1983: Total computers in use in the U.S. exceed ten million units.
1983, January ?. Apple IIe introduced. Price at Introduction: $1,395.00
The first model in the Apple II line with an integral option for
1983, January: Apple Lisa introduced. Price at Introduction:
$9,995.00, Standard Memory: 1Mbyte. The predecessor to the Macintosh
on which most of the major developments were based. (This machine had
its genesis in a visit the Steve Jobs made to the Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center (P.A.R.C.) where he saw a demonstration of the Xerox
'Alto'. The Alto was the first machine to have a fully implemented,
mouse driven, graphical user interface -- a GUI). The LISA may have
actually been a better machine than the early Macintosh, but it was
very expensive to manufacture and did not sell in the needed
volumes. Not too long before the final demise of this design, it
received some ROM and display hardware changes to allow it to run
Macintosh software and was redesignated the "Macintosh XL". Following
this change, the unit began to sell in volumes that surprised Apple
executives, but sales were still not enough to save the line.
The LISA/Mac XL line was finally discontinued in mid-1984.
1983: Visicorp, the successor to Personal Software, develops the
Visi-On windowing system. It is based on an intermediate engine so that
it can run on a wide variety of computers, but this generality affects
its performance. Many concepts and people came from
Xerox Parc. The two initial applications are a spread sheet and a
1983: John Sculley leaves as PepsiCo president and joins Apple at the
invitation of Steve Jobs, who reportedly asked him, "Do you want to
spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a
chance to change the world?"
1983: Microsoft announces that it will develop a Windows-oriented
operating system for Intel-based microprocessor systems, challenging
Apple's innovation, but Windows 1.0 is not shipped until 1985.
The announcement puts broad committment to alternatives in abeyance.
1983, December: Apple III+ introduced. Price at Introduction:
$2,995.00 Standard Memory: 256k. The Apple III+ (lower price, more
memory, many internal fixes/updates) was the final effort to address
the problems and save the line. It failed. In April 1984, only 4
months after the introd