January 1, 1983: Apple launches the Apple IIe, the third mannequin within the Apple II sequence — and the final earlier than the Macintosh will arrive a yr later.

It proves an enormous vendor, and proof constructive of the Apple II model’s sustained worth.

Apple IIe: The unplanned replace

The Apple IIe took over from the Apple II Plus. Initially, Apple deliberate to desert the Apple II with that mannequin and substitute the product line with the Apple III. Nonetheless, the continued reputation of the Apple II, and the market failure of the Apple III — largely due to its excessive worth and a few obtrusive engineering faults — pushed Apple to improve its confirmed hit product for one more go-around. (Ultimately, Apple continued producing some model of the Apple II till the early Nineties.)

The Apple IIe added as commonplace a few of the performance that Apple II fanatics already loved, due to the brand new mannequin’s spectacular variety of enlargement slots. Options included 80-column text-mode assist, 64KB of RAM (expandable as much as 128KB) and, for the primary time, lowercase letters!

It additionally dropped the chip rely on the motherboard from greater than 100 to simply 31. That permit Apple squeeze out extra revenue from every machine bought. In reality, the Apple IIe bought for about 3 times greater than the pc value to fabricate.

A vital and industrial success

The Apple IIe obtained an amazing reception upon its launch. Byte journal described it as “like having an Apple II with all of the extras in-built … with quite a lot of thrilling new options and capabilities” for little further value.

The pc produced sturdy gross sales numbers, transferring 60,000 to 70,000 items per thirty days by Could 1983. (This was about twice the typical of its predecessor, the Apple II Plus.) And the brand new pc had legs: The Apple IIe continued because the best-selling Apple II mannequin even after Cupertino launched its successor, the Apple IIc, in 1984.

At a time when Apple’s different computer systems, the Lisa (launched the identical month) and the Apple III, didn’t catch on, and the Macintosh wasn’t but an enormous vendor, the Apple IIe stacked up as an undisputed winner.

Do you keep in mind the Apple IIe? Did you personal one? Tell us within the feedback under.