Apples & Macs of the past -- where are they now

[Gregg Sartiano]

Those Apples must have ended up somewhere...
____________________

1973: Stephen Wozniak joins HP.
1976: Wozniak proposes that HP create a personal computer. He is rejected.
1976: March - Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs finish work on a computer circuit board, that they call the Apple I computer.
1976: April - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak form the Apple Computer Company, on April Fool's Day.
1976: July - The Apple I computer board is sold in kit form, and delivered to stores by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Price: US$666.66.
1976: August - Steve Wozniak begins work on the Apple II.
1976: October - Wozniak remains at HP, but is soon convinced that he should leave and join Apple Computer.
1976: December - Steve Wozniak and Randy Wigginton demonstrate the first prototype Apple II at a Homebrew Computer Club meeting.
1977: March - Apple Computer moves from Jobs' garage to an office in Cupertino.
1977: April - Apple Computer delivers its first Apple II system, for $1295.
1977: May - 10 months after its introduction, 175 Apple I kits have sold.
1978: Apple Computer begins work on an enhanced Apple II with custom chips, code-named Annie.
1978: Apple Computer begins work on a supercomputer with a bit-sliced architecture, code-named Lisa.
1979: June - Apple Computer introduces the Apple II Plus, with 48KB memory, for US$1195.
1979: September - Apple Computer sells 35,000 Apple II computers for the fiscal year.
1979: October - 2.5 years after the introduction of the Apple II, 50,000 units have been sold.
1979: Apple Computer begins work on "Sara", the code name for what will be the Apple III.
1980: May - Apple Computer introduces the Apple III. Price ranges from US$4500 to US$8000.
1980: September - Apple Computer sells over 78,000 Apple II computers during the fiscal year.
1980: Apple Computer ships the first Apple III units in limited quantity.
1980: Apple Computer begins project "Diana", which would become the Apple IIe.
1981: September - Apple Computer introduces its first hard drive, the 5MB ProFile, for US$3499.
1981: Apple Computer officially reintroduces the Apple III, with improved software and a hard disk.
1982: Sales of Apple II Plus to date: 45,000.
1982: Sales of all Apple II systems to date: 750,000.
1982: Apple Computer becomes the first personal computer company to reach US$1 billion in annual sales.
1982: Franklin Computer Corp. unveils the Franklin Ace 1000, the first legal (at the time) Apple II clone.
1983: January - Apple Computer officially unveils the Lisa computer. Its initial price is US$10,000. During its lifetime, 100,000 units are produced.
1983: January - Apple Computer introduces the Apple IIe for US$1400.
1983: June - The one millionth Apple II is made.
1983: June - Apple Computer begins shipping the Lisa.
1983: June - Video Technology introduces the Laser 3000, an Apple II workalike microcomputer.
1983: June - Unitronics shows the Sonic, an Apple II workalike microcomputer.
1983: July - Apple Computer officially begins marketing the Lisa computer.
1983: December - Apple Computer introduces the redesigned Apple III as the Apple III+, for US$3000.
1983: December - Apple unveils the new Macintosh to the press.
1983: Franklin shows an operating Franklin Ace 1200 Apple II compatible for US$2200.
1984: January - Apple releases a new version of the Lisa computer, the Lisa 2. It uses all new software, as well as the Macintosh operating system.
1984: January - Apple Computer's Steve Jobs introduces the Apple Macintosh.
1984: April - Apple Computer unveils the Apple IIc, priced at US$1300.
1984: April - Apple Computer retires the Apple III and Apple III+, with only 65,000 units sold in total (90,000 made).
1984: May - Apple Computer announces that 70,000 Macintosh computers have been shipped in the first 100 days since its announcement.
1984: September - Apple Computer introduces the Macintosh 512K for US$3200.
1984: November - The 2 millionth Apple II computer is sold.
1984: Apple sells the 250,000th Macintosh system.
1985: January - Apple Computer officially renames the Lisa the Macintosh XL.
1985: March - Apple Computer introduces the Apple Enhanced IIe.
1985: April - The Macintosh XL (formerly called Lisa) is dropped from Apple Computer's product line.
1986: January - Apple Computer introduces the Macintosh Plus. Price is US$2600.
1986: April - Apple Computer discontinues the original Macintosh and the Macintosh 512K.
1986: April - Apple Computer introduces the Macintosh 512K Enhanced, for US$2000.
1986: July - Apple Computer discontinues the Macintosh XL.
1986: September - Apple Computer introduces the Apple IIGS, with the Apple 3.5 drive, for US$1000.
1987: January - Apple Computer introduces the Apple Platinum IIe.
1987: March - Apple Computer introduces the open architecture Macintosh II, US$3900.
1987: March - Apple Computer makes its 1 millionth Macintosh personal computer.
1987: March - Apple Computer introduces the expandable Macintosh SE for US$2900.
1987: March - Apple Computer discontinues the Macintosh 512K Enhanced.
1987: Apple Computer begins shipping the Macintosh II.
1988: September - Apple Computer introduces the Apple IIc Plus for US$1100.
1988: September - Apple Computer introduces the Macintosh IIx computer, base price is US$7770.
1989: January - Apple Computer introduces the Macintosh SE/30, US$6500.
1989: September - Apple Computer announces the Macintosh Portable, for US$6500.
1989: September - Apple Computer announces the Macintosh IIci, for about US$8700.

[chrisp2u]

Originally Posted by Gregg Sartiano

1989: September - Apple Computer announces the Macintosh IIci, for about US$8700.

I still have my IIci up in the attic. Maxed out with an enormous 16mb of RAM, a whopping 80mb drive, and an upgraded video card kicking 24-bit video at 640 x 480. I was recently thinking of using it as a clock.

Definitely didn't pay $8700. Think I picked it up in '92 when I got out of school for $3800 with a 15" NEC monitor and Aldus Pagemaker 4 (went to school for graphic design).

It's crazy how far technology has come in such a short time.
---
c

[foldback]

I have a half dozen original Macs (some 512 and some Plus), three of them still work good as new and one has the 20MB original serial HD. I also have a Quadra 900, several 9500, a couple of 840av, lots of Syquest drives, some Iomega drives, a pile of SCSI hard drives, a Radius 110 PowerPC clone, a few 8500, lots of PowerPC processor cards, networking cards and even some SCSI Yamaha CD burners. Holy crap, there's my Targa video board, that was $3300. Over there is a four drive array filled with Seagate 4GB drives, wow, 16GB and it was capable of a screaming 5MB per second write speed, that was good enough to digitize 640x480 video.

I guess I'm waiting for it all to come back into vogue and shoot up into collectors status value, then I'll sell it all on ebay and be rich.

or maybe I'm just a gearslut and can't bare to thro all this cool old Mac stuff away.

Old Macintosh computers are the best sounding, y'all can keep those new Intel machines, the converters on the Quadra 840av were to die for, so sweet and smoooootthh.

So who's a gear slut? I'm being sarcastic about all this but I do have all this crap sitting on shelves in my warehouse.

[theblue1]

Not quite on topic... I have an original TRS-80 in the garage. I couldn't throw it out... the upgrade from 4 K of RAM to 16 K of ram cost something over $500 (IIRC... it may actually have been double that)...

I always assumed I'd end up with a Mac -- but my business life put one of those other machines on my desk. I never thought I'd do music on it... at the time I was still moonlighting in studios. Funny how things work out.

[zootdaze]

When I started my current job back in 2000 we found an Apple Lisa in the back of our office's storage area. Later we found a box with the original manuals, & software etc. When we started up the computer not only did it still work, it still had the original Lisa operating system on it (most people upgraded these to the Mac OS) and sitting in the "wastebasket" was a spreadsheet detailing the 1983 technology budget (made with Mac Write, of course).

It's now in our "office museum."

[Protools Guy]

Is there a market for "vintage Macs"? Mine's not THAT vintage, but I'd love to sell it. It's a Centris 650. 33mghz!!! Whew!!!

[nikki-k]

"1989: January - Apple Computer introduces the Macintosh SE/30, US$6500."

I had my SE/30 up until 5 years ago. Had TurboSynth on it even! 8M ram, 40M hard drive...expanded (nearly) as far as it could go. I did not buy it new, but that little guy was like my R2D2 for a long time. I would talk to it...it would talk to me...<sigh> And one day, perched high upon it's shelf, about 5-6ft off the ground, he took a tumble. Right to a concrete floor. A little bruised- his poor case cracked a bit, and the screw mounts holding front ot back snapped on the top half- but! He still worked fine!!!

I also remember using a TRS-80 at one high school, and moving to a new one and they had an Apple (later an Apple II). What fun it was learning and using BASIC....especially after spending time in classes learning FORTRAN, using a HUGE IBM (took up an entire, oversized classroom to house it) via punchcards....and also trying to get my head around editor/assembler (ugh...and "AHH!"...all at the same time...).

Memories...in the corner of my mind...

[theblue1]

Ah!

Another guy who started with punch cards!


My first class (I never had a job where I had to submit jobs on punchcards) was in '73... spurred by my experiments in... er, expanding consciousness... as well as the orignal book on computing by Steward Brand (it's around in the garage, somewhere).

I had some kind of idea that if a guy like me were to get control of a serious computer I'd be unlocking the mysteries of consciousness soon enough...

Suffice it to say I have considerably more modest goals in using my overgrown adding machine these days... :D


With re the high price of the Mac SE/30 in '89 (and those were those BIG '89 dollars, too )... I actually bought a '386 w/ 4 MB of RAM and a massive 105 MB (that's mega-!) for $4400 with tax, delivered. But the company (out of business long ago but then the "PC Magazine Editor's Choice") was really a screw-job... once I popped the hood I found that key parts like the powersupply -- which had been spec'd at 300 watts had "185 watts stamped on it" and then a handwritten sticky label that said "215 w"... I called them up and they wanted ME to pay for shipping it back and a restocking fee because they refused to stand behind their own specs. That was the LAST vendor-box I bought until I bought a Dell laptop in 2004. Earlier this year I picked up one of their towers refurbished (nothing fancy, just a 2.8 gHz P4HT) for $340. It's very quiet and, so far, entirely dependable, knock on wood. Less than TEN percent of what that old '386 cost (even w/o adjusting for inflation). And a worlds better machine. Anyhow, sorry for going farther off the topic reservation here.


It just AMAZES me how much prices have dropped. I was helping a pal with his pretty little MacBook and contrasting it in my mind with the G4 Powerbook he was replacing. The PB was less than four years old (it died mysteriously) and cost about twice as much as the MB -- and it felt like it was about 6 times slower than the new machine, even with an internal 7200 rpm Travelstar drive.

It's a great time to be buying a Mac laptop, seems to me.

[Berolzheimer]

I have a 1984 vintage mac 512k (the "Fat Mac") sitting in my basement, along with a mac 2x with a 68030 processor upgrade and a 9600/300 that I still used up til about 1 1/2 years ago.

Oh yeah, and a commodore 64SX- the self contained "portable" version.

[T_R_S]

My first machine was a Mac 512K, I paid $2000.00 for it in 1986/87 ish. I bought Digidesign Q Sheet Software and a Passport Midi interface.
I still use Apple and Digidesign today ...

[Gregg Sartiano]

Originally Posted by theblue1

With re the high price of the Mac SE/30 in '89 (and those were those BIG '89 dollars, too )... I actually bought a '386 w/ 4 MB of RAM and a massive 105 MB (that's mega-!) for $4400 with tax, delivered.

$6858 in 2005 dollars

They (computer manufacturers) really dropped the price point. Nobody would think of paying that now after a generation of price wars, but if it was the only way to get a DAW working, people would be saying how comparably cheap $7k was.

I plugged in (to an inflation calculator) the 50's brand new price of a U-47, and it ended up being about what you'd pay for a high-end boutique mic today...I think $3k. That's a price point that hasn't moved in 50 years.

I'm curious how it works with instruments.

[Sugarnutz]

I have a MAC 9600 I bought on Ebay for $150 last year. Some chick had it for video editing. I came with a 300mhz G3 upgrade, 768meg of PC100 ram, 2 ATI video cards, 3 IBM 9gig UW SCSI drives (All the original MAC drives were wrapped up in the box), Adaptec SCSI controller, Digidesign Audiomedia III card, about 5 or 6 one gallon zip-loc bags full of Mac cables like SCSI, printer, serial and everything came with the original boxes/docs/software, aboslutely insane deal. It came loaded with OS 9.2.2, but I'm looking (not very hard though) for a SCSI DVD drive so I can try to put OSX on it. I'm a PC guy pretty much, but I occasionally use this for the MAX software that can run my DA7 console.