The Apple III, considered to be Apple Computer's first commercial failure.
If youâre like me, youâve come to accept the popular wisdom that the Apple III was a deeply flawed machine, crippled from the beginning and doomed to failure before it left the design stage. Weâve all heard the rumors of the fanless case causing excessive heat build-up and leading to warped PCBs that dislodged chips from their sockets. Itâs a popular tale in Apple lore that one of the manuals shipped with the Apple III actually suggested lifting the main unit six inches off the table and dropping it to reseat loosened chips; and perhaps itâs true â” Iâve never seen it myself. Excessive price and a late start into a business market already cornered by IBM and its legion of clones further limited sales; by the time the III was quietly pulled from Appleâs product list in 1985, it had sold only 65,000 units. Apple’s attempts to address the flaws (real or perceived) were too little, too late and the updated Apple III Plus sold even worse than the original.
But was the final product really as bad as everyone said?
While searching for Apple III technical documents and information to help the restoration of my Apple III, I happened across this article at AppleLogic, in which an electrical engineer with experience designing hardware for the Apple II takes a second look at the so-called design flaws in the Apple III. If youâre like me,the conclusions he draws from his analysis might surprise you.
