Happy 30th Birthday, Apple II
The first Apple Computer I ever used wasn't a Mac, rather it was the grandfather of the Macintosh: the Apple II (it was actually an Apple IIe, but you get the idea). This is the machine that started it all: Apple, the personal computer revolution, and the idea of putting Apple stickers in the box with the machine. The Apple II went on sale June 5th, 1977 and it changed the world forever.I spent many an hour of my youth staring into that black screen with green text, bending it to my will. Please help me wish the Apple II a very happy birthday, in a manner befitting it:
10 PRINT "Happy Birthday, Apple II!"
20 GOTO 10
If you want to run that little program you should check out Chipmunk, a great little BASIC emulator for OS X.
[via Retro Thing which is one of my favorite blogs.]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tom Stringer said 7:22AM on 6-05-2007
Yep Happy Birthday , also that graph? not Apple Dell and Microsoft is it ? i will let you pick which one's which.
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italian guy said 11:53AM on 6-06-2007
Happy Birthday to All of us that started around there!!
Mine was an Apple IIe with a video card to plug Home TV (no money for a monitor..).
Beyond the black screen with green phosphor there was Basic almost evreything had to be programmed by ourselves. But then I bought a software was called Magician.. for video animation with sprites or type..
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simon said 8:47AM on 6-05-2007
Happy Birthday!
Today is also my birthday!
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JeffDM said 8:01AM on 6-05-2007
Maybe Jobs was misremembering the ad that he mentioned at the D5 interview? Or are there other ads with a similar situation? He said that Apple ran an ad that the "wife" was entering recipes in the kitchen with the "husband" looking on approvingly.
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south said 8:51AM on 6-05-2007
happy birthday to you too, simon.
i loved my family's old apple II+... except it wasn't really an apple, it was an apple II+ clone made by a company called Redstone, with exactly the same form factor as the real deal. imagine someone doing that now.
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dbTodd said 9:47AM on 6-05-2007
I too started on a IIe. My parents purchased it on the recommendation of one of my middle school teachers. They weren't sure why they should get one, but they took a leap of faith. Now they have tech support for life from me!
They also thought this teacher was crazy when she told them they would one day pay for groceries without using a check, but rather a debit card. HA!!!!
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Billy K said 11:54AM on 6-05-2007
Happy Birthday Apple II!
My first computer was also an Apple IIe, and it was an awesome machine. Good times...good times...
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Johnny said 10:28AM on 6-05-2007
My first computer was actually a TRS-80, but the second was an Apple IIe.
Not too long ago, I had access to a working Apple IIe. I couldn't for the life of me remember what to do with it. I just kinda sat there looking at the prompt for a while before I remembered a few simple basic commands. I asked myself, 'What the hell was the purpose of these things?" Of course, it did enough to fill my every waking moment in those days.
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franko said 10:48AM on 6-05-2007
i too first used a TRS-80 (and would LOVE to find one in a junk shop today), but the apple II made me really love computers. i still have an apple II, actually, and it works. a few years ago woz was speaking in my town, and i brought the lid of the apple II for him to sign. he was very gracious, even if he was rather surprised to see me haul it out of my bag for him. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, APPLE II!
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andrew said 10:57AM on 6-05-2007
Of course, if you're truly obsessive, it would be spelled: "apple ][" :)
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David Scott said 2:33PM on 6-05-2007
You forgot to add RUN after line 20 of the program. It reminds me of going to the electronics stores in my teenage years and running a message on the display computers.
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Courtney said 11:36AM on 6-05-2007
I was a TI-99 4A user for my original work in BASIC but then needed some power and got to use the school's Apple ][e.
It is interesting though that the Apple ][e add has the man making a chart. I thought that was a "PC thing". ;-)
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Raz4life said 11:58AM on 6-05-2007
Ah, the Apple IIe. My first experience with a computer when I was 4 was with one... The school my mom was teaching at still had them in the classrooms in 1995, and every time I went to her room, I used that computer!! The kindergarten teacher saw how much I loved computers at an early age that she gave me her family's old Macintosh SE (which, sadly, died after about a year) I've been obsessed ever since! ^_^
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EricLA said 12:28PM on 6-05-2007
Happy birthday Apple II! It was my first computer in school, junior high. I remember playing "Sink the Bismark" on it.
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Jay Riether said 2:07PM on 6-05-2007
HB Apple ][!
My first computer was an Apple ][+ with 2 floppy disk drives hooked up to a 9 inch color TV. I spent thousands of hours programming and playing on that thing. Remember Beagle Bros?
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Fritz Laurel said 3:24PM on 6-05-2007
My first comp was a ][+ w/ 48k, an Apple green screen and one 5 1/4" Apple floppy drive. I think my father bought it for around $2500 back in 1979. The dealership gave us, like, 10 free disks of all sorts of cool programs. It still works with no problems to this day.
Happy Birthday Apple ][!!
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beken said 4:09PM on 6-05-2007
Happy Birthday, Apple. I had an Apple ][+ with 64K.
I also had the Pascal language system, 2 Floppy drives, and a Z80 CPU card also. Imagine, the idea of dual CPUs. I also added a dial-up modem so I could connect to my University's mainframe to do my assignments. I donated it to a Boy's and Girl's club after Visicalc could no longer fit my spreadsheets.
I'm all nostalgic now.
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