How influential is Apple ? Its products prevail the conversation , even when talk turn to every PC publish in the last quarter century .
To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the IBM ’s first PC — IBM Personal Computer , Model 5150 — our colleagues atPC Worldrankedthe 25 greatest computers of all fourth dimension . Their standard admit four factors — founding , impact , industrial purpose , and intangibles . And not surprisingly , Apple offering made an impressive display , with product out of Cupertino grabbing five of the top 25 slots — includingPC World ’s choice for the No . 1 greatest computer of all sentence , the Apple II .
( Interestingly enough , when we compiled our tilt of the 30 most significant Apple ware to celebrate the caller ’s 30th day of remembrance , the Apple II finished fourthly . And three of the five product hailed byPC Worlddidn’t even land on our final tilt . )
We ’re excerptingPC domain ’s Apple selections below . you could find the complete list of choices atPC World ’s Web land site ; you could also attend at the system that nearly made the slue from1983 and earlier,1984 to 1989 , andthe last dozen years . Not to give anything away , but more than a few Apple - build up computers made those lists , too .
No. 1: Apple II (1977)
The Apple II was n’t the first personal computer , or the most advanced one , or even the best - selling model of its age . But in many way of life it was The Machine That Changed Everything . On all four of our criteria , it was such a immense achiever that it cease up as our great microcomputer of All Time .
The 8 - number system came with 4 KB of memory , expandable to 48 KB . It used a cassette rather than a disk for storehouse . It be $ 1,200 , about twice the base price of its two self-aggrandizing competitors , the Tandy TRS-80 Model I and the Commodore PET 2001 . It could n’t even display lowercase letter ( in the first several year of its existence , anyway ) . Yet it load down more pure innovation than any other early computer , and was the first personal computer that deserved to be called a consumer electronics twist .
bear out of the Home Brew Computer Club by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs ’s tiny Apple Computer in 1977 , the Apple II was the society ’s 2d microcomputer , but it boasted more than its parcel of first : It was the first semblance PC ( you could even apply it with a television ) , the first to be well expandable by users , and the first to execute the VisiCalc spreadsheet — proving that these Modern boxes had a place in concern .
Perhaps its large origination was its design . problem wanted the machine to look at home on people ’s desktops , so he insisted that the Apple II have a sleek look , as opposed to the sheet - metal - and - exposed - wire appearance of most other early microcomputer . The machine ’s coldness component — an Apple trademark to this day — was as important to its foresighted - term success as Wozniak ’s imaginative engineering science was .
And we do think long - condition : From the original Apple II model that debut at the first West Coast Computer Faire in April 1977 to the discontinuance of the final loop of the IIe in December 1993 ( outlasting the 16 - piece IIGS model that was introduced year after it ) , more than 2 million Apple II - family PCs had been give rise . The Apple II line , well documented atSteven Weyhrich ’s Apple II chronicle site , kept the company decease through the Apple Lisa thrashing and other turbulent events of the 1980s . By the middle of that decade , though , Apple had change by reversal its attention to that other reality - beater , the Macintosh Plus . But it was the Apple II that put the personal in the nascent personal computer industriousness . The relief is story .
No. 4: Apple Macintosh Plus (1986)
In 1984 Apple released the original Macintosh , which , while heavily determine by the Xerox Star , was a breakthrough personal computer . But its 128 KB of retentivity was so lean that the simple machine was virtually unusable . The company really tally the ball out of the commons in 1986 with the Macintosh Plus ( see the specs of this Apple manikin and others atApple-History.com ) .
The $ 2,599 Mac Plus had the same Motorola 68000 central processing unit as the original Mac , but it came with a spacious 1 MB of RAM and was upgradeable to 4 megabyte of random access memory . It supported the brand - new 800 KB double - sided floppy - disk formatting , and was the first Mac with a SCSI port for fast data transfer to and from an outside hard drive . Like earlier Macs , its precious ecru all - in - one case house a monochromatic 512 - by-342 - picture element display and the 3.5 - inch floppy driveway . It also came with matching beige comment devices : a uncompromising keyboard with a numerical computer keyboard link up by a handbuild electric cord , and a boxy , orthogonal mouse .
Apple sold the Mac Plus until 1990 , seduce it the longest - selling Mac model ever . By then it had receive cult notoriety via a cameo in the movieStar Trek IV : The Voyage Home . Today , working Mac Plus model deal on eBay for about $ 25 . Nonworking poser have establish an entirely unlike afterlife : They ’ve been renew asfish tank .
No. 10 Apple PowerBook 100 (1991)
If your first portable figurer does n’t succeed , try , try out again . That ’s the lesson of the PowerBook 100 , Apple ’s first-class successor to the famously awful Mac Portable , a machine we named to our lean of the25 sorry technical school products of all fourth dimension .
Along with the high - end PowerBook 140 and 170 , the $ 2,500 100 sported two feature that the rest period of the manufacture quickly cribbed . First , the ship’s company pushed the keyboard back toward the projection screen hinge , free up space for a wrist - rest area that made type more comfortable . And in the shopping mall of that wrist rest sit a nice , with child trackball , the best mobile pointing twist of its era . ( At the time , folks who range Windows on portable computers were still futzing with unwieldy clip - on trackballs . ) Those were just two of the more striking innovations in a slick laptop computer design that , agree to Jim Carlton ’s bookApple , take the company from last place to first in laptop computer sales agreement .
The PowerBook 100 — which was , by the way , invent by Sony — was discontinued in 1992 . But the PowerBook line went on and on , coming to an end just this year , when the final 12 - inch PowerBook was substitute by the MacBook .
No. 19: Apple iMac, Second Generation (2002)
The first - coevals iMac of 1997 may have been the car that told the world that Apple , and its lately come back cofounder Steve Jobs , were back . But its second - generation successor was a immensely unlike , far more inventive computer . And even though it did n’t turn out to be an influential one , it remains a high point in PC design account .
With its noggin - shape alkali and its flavorless - panel screen that “ floated ” on a swivel arm , this iMacwas , quite literally , like no electronic computer that came before it . It had a friendly , anthropomorphous spirit , in part because it bear a spectral resemblance toLuxo Jr. , the plucky desk - lamp hero of the Oscar - win short film from Pixar , Steve Jobs ’s other troupe .
The design attend coolheaded , write place , and cater near - infinite adjustability for the presentation . But it did n’t last long : In 2004 the second - gen iMac was replace by yet another all - unexampled framework , which squeezed the entire computer into the back of the level - panel monitor . That elegant design is believably more practical than its lamp - like predecessor , but it lacks the former machine ’s whimsical exuberance .
No. 23: Apple eMate 300 (1997)
Over the past three decades , Apple has released a crowd of great microcomputer that had a huge wallop on the market place . Here ’s one that had almost no impact during its short life — by from its cameo in the filmBatman & Robinas Batgirl ’s PC — but we jazz it anyway .
The $ 799 eMate was idiosyncratic in virtually every means a computer can be idiosyncratic , starting with its fair game audience : schoolkids . It ran an operating arrangement design for PDAs ( Apple ’s Newton OS ) . It did n’t have a hard drive , but it did have pen input . It looked vaguely like a notebook computer , but its industrial design — with a green , well-endowed eccentric that looked like it had take shape from the mind ofscience - fiction illustrator H.R. Giger — was utterly unique .
The eMate attracted a religious cult audience among clientele users . But Steve Jobs , who returned to Apple soon after its launch , was n’t a truster : Less than a year after the eMate send , he killed it , along with the rest of the Newton line of products . The cult continues , though — you’re able to even ascertain hack to overclock the eMate atStephanie ’s Newton Web Site .
Almost a decennium subsequently , the eMate feels like an early pass at the kind of innovative , affordable educational microcomputer that the world isstill trying to make . Too bad it turn out to be a dead end .
