Late in 1978 the Apple
Computer Company was selling Apple IIs as fast as they could
make them. The Apple II was rapidly becoming the best selling
home computer in the world eventually surpassing the Radio Shack
TRS-80 in 1980. But Apple's senior management began to worry
that the Apple II may run out of steam before the next generation
of Apples projected for the mid 80's would be ready. The decision was made to develop a new
computer for the interim to replace the Apple II. The project,
code named 'Sara', would be headed by an engineer named Wendell
Sander. The computer would be strictly a business machine leaving
the Apple II to handle the home market.
The new computer would be built to
meet the requirements dictated by the business market such as an 80
column machine with upper and lower case characters. The computer would
have improved graphics, sound and would sport and internal clock. It
would have a new faster microprocessor and memory would be increased up
to 256k. All of these improvements were certainly attainable with the
technology of the day.
But the Apple senior management
added 2 requirements that would eventually doom the Sara project.
The first was to make the new computer able to run Apple II
software. The problem was, in order for the Apple III to run Apple
II software on its new architecture an 'emulator' program would have
to be used. With an emulation program each and every line of code of the
Apple II program would have to be intercepted, interpreted, and
converted to run on the new system. This as you can imagine is time
consuming, but is extremely inefficient when the microprocessors are
different.
Eventually Sander complained to
the senior management that the emulation situation would not work with
the different processors. Apple management solved the problem for
him by ordering him to use the 6502 microprocessor. The same
processor used in the older Apple II. Sander knew this was
a mistake, the 6502 was an underpowered processor when it was
chosen for the original Apple I computer by Steve
Wozniak (he
chose it solely based on its cheap price, rather than its technical
superiority). Hardly an adequate choice to run a new powerful business
computer, besides the new computer was expected to have at least 256k of
RAM and the architecture of the 6502 was limited to
directly accessing only 64k of RAM.
The second requirement was that Wendell
was to have the Apple III ready in one year. The requirement was
made so the Apple III could be announced in time to prove that Apple
was not a one-hit wonder and prop up it's stock before the IPO
deadline in late 1980.
The Apple III was
introduced in May of 1980 at the National Computer Conference in
Anaheim, California. The first shipments were in late 1980 and almost
from the start they failed. There were a myriad of problems such as
overheating due to the close proximity of the option board compartment
caused in part by Steve
Jobs insisting on cosmetic changes to the
exterior case design.
Other problems included
chips popping out of their sockets and circuit traces on boards shorting
on screws that were exceeding minimum tolerances by cramming them into
cramp spaces. The failure rate of the first shipments was almost 100%.
At first Apple ignored the initial feedback that there were
problems with the Apple III, They were caught up in the IPO
whirlwind. But as the IPO fervor of the died down, reality set in
and the Apple III problem had to be addressed.
Finally early in 1981 Apple
decided to pull the Apple III from the market and redesign it. At
the end of 1981 the reborn Apple III was introduced with the
problems fixed and more RAM
added (up to 512k). The business community loved it and started buying
them again for their offices.
Unfortunately Apple's
senior management, Regis
McKenna in particular, was not happy
with the Apple III. He saw the Apple III as a blemish on Apple's
reputation, a reminder to the world that Apple could screw up. He
wanted the Apple III dumped to make room for the soon to be
released new line of Apples. So he refused to promote it.
Without any promotion and
development the Apple III quickly died and Apple pulled the
plug on it in the fall of 1985 orphaning thousands of loyal Apple III
owners.
Today the Apple III
computers are a very sought after collectable due to the limited run of
only about 120,000 units.
This Apple III was added to my museum on October 18, 2000. I
purchased it on Ebay and would like to thank Bret for
selling it to me. He let it go at a very low price and his sacrifice is
very much appreciated.
