Apple III: Бизнес-компьютер от Apple

Business oriented personal computer made by Apple Computer

The Apple III (styled as apple ///) is a business oriented personal computer produced by Apple Computer and released in 1980. Running the Apple SOS operating system, it was intended as the successor to the Apple II series, but was largely considered a failure in the market. It was designed to provide key features business users wanted in a personal computer: a true typewriter style upper/lowercase keyboard (the Apple II only supported uppercase) and an 80 column display. Work on the Apple III started in late 1978 under the guidance of Dr. Wendell Sander. It had the internal code name of "Sara", named after Sander's daughter. The system was announced on May 19, 1980 and released in late November that year. Serious stability issues required a design overhaul and a recall of the first 14,000 machines produced. The Apple III was formally reintroduced on November 9, 1981. Damage to the computer's reputation had already been done, however, and it failed to do well commercially. Development stopped, and the Apple III was discontinued on April 24, 1984. Its last successor, the III Plus, was dropped from the Apple product line in September 1985. An estimated 65,000–75,000 Apple III computers were sold. The Apple III's failure led Apple to reevaluate its plan to phase out the Apple II, prompting the eventual continuation of development of the older machine. As a result, later Apple II models incorporated some hardware and software technologies of the Apple III.

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs expected hobbyists to purchase the Apple II, but because of VisiCalc and Disk II, small businesses purchased 90% of the computers. The Apple III was designed to be a business computer and successor. Though the Apple II contributed to the inspirations of several important business products, such as VisiCalc, Multiplan, and Apple Writer, the computer's hardware architecture, operating system, and developer environment are limited. Apple management intended to clearly establish market segmentation by designing the Apple III to appeal to the 90% business market, leaving the Apple II to home and education users. Management believed that "once the Apple III was out, the Apple II would stop selling in six months", Wozniak said. The Apple III is powered by a 1.8 megahertz Synertek 6502A or 6502B 8 bit CPU and, like some of the later machines in the Apple II family, uses bank switching techniques to address memory beyond the 6502's traditional 64 KB limit, up to 256 KB in the III's case. Third party vendors produced memory upgrade kits that allow the Apple III to reach up to 512 KB of random access memory (RAM). Other Apple III built in features include an 80 column, 24 line display with upper and lowercase characters, a numeric keypad, dual speed (pressure sensitive) cursor control keys, 6 bit (DAC) audio, and a built in 140 kilobyte 5.25 inch floppy disk drive. Graphics modes include 560x192 in black and white, and 280x192 with 16 colors or shades of gray. Unlike the Apple II, the Disk III controller is part of the logic board. The Apple III is the first Apple product to allow the user to choose both a screen font and a keyboard layout: either QWERTY or Dvorak. These choices cannot be changed while programs were running, unlike the Apple IIc, which has a keyboard switch directly above the keyboard, allowing the user to switch on the fly.

function to replace Applesoft's command. statement to input an entire line of text, regardless of punctuation, into a single string variable. and statements to automatically direct output to paper. and statements to left or right justify a string expression within a given string variable's character length. function for output, and "&" or "&O" formatted expressions, for manipulating octal notation. function for generating blank spaces outside of a statement, and function to do likewise with any character. statements, for loop structures built on general Boolean conditions without an index variable. Bitwise Boolean (16 bit) operations (, , ), with additional operators , , Line number specification in the command. options of (to skip to the statement after that which caused the error) or a specified line number (which replaces the idea of exiting error handling by line, thus avoiding Applesoft II's stack error problem). Multiple parameters in user defined functions. A return to the old Applesoft One concept of having multiple functions at different addresses, by establishing ten different functions, numbered to , with separate statements to define the address of each. The argument passed to a function can be of any specific type, including string. The returned value can also be of any type, by default the same type as the argument passed. There is no support for graphics provided within the language, nor for reading analog controls or buttons; nor is there a means of defining the active window of the text screen.

Despite devoting the majority of its R&D to the Apple III and so ignoring the II that for a while dealers had difficulty in obtaining the latter, the III's technical problems made marketing the computer difficult. Ed Smith, who after designing the APF Imagination Machine worked as a distributor's representative, described the III as "a complete disaster". He recalled that he "was responsible for going to every dealership, setting up the Apple III in their showroom, and then explaining to them the functions of the Apple III, which in many cases didn't really work".

Pohlman reported that Apple was only selling 500 units a month by late 1981, mostly as replacements. The company was able to eventually raise monthly sales to 5,000, but the IBM PC's successful launch had encouraged software companies to develop for it instead, prompting Apple to shift focus to the Lisa and Macintosh. By early 1984, sales were primarily to existing III owners, Apple itself—its 4,500 employees were equipped with some 3,000 4,500 units—and some small businesses. Wozniak estimated that Apple had spent $100 million on the III, instead of improving the II and better competing against IBM. Pohlman claimed that there was a "stigma" at Apple associated with having contributed to the computer. Most employees who worked on the III reportedly left Apple.