Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The end-product was efficient, clean and - for the time - reasonably intuitive. Choosing
to focus on hardware, Apple declined to market
VisiCalc
, which Software Arts priced at
about $200. Despite the lack of Apple's direct support,
VisiCalc
took off immediately. Sud-
denly, business users - especially those from small businesses, which heretofore had not
been able to afford robust financial processing software - became very interested in person-
al computers in general, and the Apple II in particular, simply because the machine was the
only one on which they could run
VisiCalc
(or, for that matter,
any
spreadhsheet applica-
tion).
This led to a significant sales spike for Apple II to serious business users (as opposed
to hobbyists, gamers and fledgling programmers, who could be served just as well by the
cheaper machines from Commodore, Atari and Radio Shack). By mid-1981,
VisiCalc
had
an installed base of more than 100,000. Soon, the release of robust word-processing ap-
plications helped goose sales of the Apple II platform ever further within the same mar-
ket sphere. (Note: While individual hobbyists, gamers, etc. were of course price-sensitive,
business purchasers were less so - especially when comparing the price of the Apple II
to the cheapest business minis. Thus Apple's higher hardware prices as compared to other
small computers, and the relatively expensive cost of software packages such as
VisiCalc
,
did not deter expansion within the small business environment.)
Importantly, the Apple II's generous, 8-slot bus architecture allowed for easy expansion
of the machine's capabilities. As has been mentioned already, one of the most popular cards
offered in 1980 was the SoftCard, from Microsoft, which allowed an Apple II to run CP/M,
and thus CP/M compatible software such as the
WordStar
word processor and the
dBase
database management system.
The most popular version of the machine's operating system software was Apple DOS
3.3. In this environment, some commercial Apple II software booted directly from the sys-
tem and thus did not use standard DOS formats - a sign of other "closed architectures" to
come from Apple in the future. This approach discouraged the copying or modifying of
software and streamlined the loading process. After Apple DOS came ProDOS, which im-
plemented a hierarchical file-system and thus accommodated larger storage devices. At the
height of its evolution, towards the late 1980s, the Apple IIGS would even offer an ele-
mentary graphical user interface. And with 16-bit capability at the very end of the Apple
II's lifespan (1992's IIe), there would even come a mouse.
*
Apple's strongest competition emerged in August of 1981 with the dawn of the IBM
PC. On the heels of IBM's announcement, Apple ran a full-page ad in the
Wall Street
Journal
headlined "Welcome IBM. Seriously."
