1977 – 1993retired
Apple II
“It put color graphics and VisiCalc in a plastic case, and never stopped being useful.”
“Better than dot matrix, cheaper than laser — the sensible middle child, gone in the cleanup.”
StyleWriter was Apple's line of consumer inkjet printers, beloved for printing better than the dot matrix ImageWriters while costing less than the LaserWriters. It was the sweet spot: quiet, clean output without the laser price tag. Most models ran on Canon print engines, with the last few wearing re-badged HP Deskjet insides.
Though listed as discontinued in 1993, the line's real end came when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and shut down most of the company's accessory product lines, StyleWriter and LaserWriter included. It left behind no scandal, only tidy pages and the memory of a printer that did its job well.
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“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.”
“News in the blanking interval: America typed its answer to Ceefax, then the sets stopped listening.”