???? – 1992retired
Apple USB Modem
“It dialed up one last time and nobody picked up”
“Graphics and Sound, grace and speed: the last and loveliest of the Apple II line.”
The Apple IIGS, launched in September 1986, was the fifth and most powerful model of the Apple II family, and its name said it all: Graphics and Sound. With a 16-bit WDC 65C816 processor, 32-channel Ensoniq wavetable synthesis, and resolution and color rivaling the Amiga and Atari ST, it was state-of-the-art for its day. It was also Apple's first computer with a color graphical user interface, beating the Macintosh I
The IIGS blurred the line between the Apple II and the Macintosh, but that blurring proved to be its undoing: after its release, Apple chose to focus on the Mac, and no new IIGS models followed. By 1992 it was discontinued, retired rather than murdered, fading out at the top of its family tree. It remains the fondly remembered final chapter of the Apple II era, the machine that showed what the line could have become.
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“It dialed up one last time and nobody picked up”
“Under $1,000, over-delivered — the little Mac everyone could finally afford.”
“Fastest Mac of its day, last of the Snow White line — it left on its own terms”