1977 – 1993retired
Apple II
“It put color graphics and VisiCalc in a plastic case, and never stopped being useful.”
“Enhanced in name, eternal in our hearts — lowercase letters never looked so good.”
Released in January 1983 as the successor to the Apple II Plus, the Apple IIe was the third model in the Apple II series — the e standing, fittingly, for enhanced. It brought lowercase text support, 80-column text support, and 64 KB of RAM as standard, and used roughly 75% fewer chips than earlier models. It was the dependable workhorse of the Apple II family, beloved for doing the fundamentals well.
The IIe stayed in production until November 1993, its design changing remarkably little across a decade of service. Apple tweaked the motherboard, issued a major firmware update, and released two cosmetically revised versions, but the heart stayed the same. Nearly 11 years on the market made it the longest-lived computer in Apple's history as of 2026 — a quiet record for a quiet champion.
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“It put color graphics and VisiCalc in a plastic case, and never stopped being useful.”
“News in the blanking interval: America typed its answer to Ceefax, then the sets stopped listening.”
“1250 lines of European ambition, politely ahead of its time and sadly early to the party”