History

Shortly after the release of the Apple I (in limited quantities), plans were already being made to make a new Apple computer. In 1976, Steve Jobs (one of the founders of Apple) managed to convince Jerry Manock (a previously employee with Hewlett-Packard designing calculators) to design the Apple II's casing ("shell"). Besides Manock, several other notable Apple employees, including Rod Holt and Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak, worked on the project. Holt designed the unique power supply of the Apple II and Wozniak was the so-called "lead designer".

The first Apple II computers officially went on sale on June 10, 1977. The original release of the Apple II came with 4 KiB RAM, an audiocassette interface for the storage and loading of data, the Integer BASIC operating system built into the ROMs and two "paddle" game controllers. These controllers were bundled with the Apple II until 1980, when the American government institution, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), concluded that these controllers did not follow their regulations. The violated regulation (47 CFR 15) is part of the U.S. federal code and sets the rules about unlicensed transmissions or emissions. These emissions are very common in most electronic products sold in the United States and is something that every electronic product must be reviewed for.

Usage

The Apple II was most populair for personal use, but was also used by businesses.

Variants

There are multiple variants of the original Apple II, these are distinguished by the amount of RAM in the system. There were Apple II computers available with memory of between 4 and 64 KiB. The 4 KiB version was sold for $1298 (more than $6,500 as of 2023). The versions would become more expensive with an increase in memory, such as the 48 KiB version which would cost $2638 (more than $13,000 as of 2023).