Early Apple Personal Computers

Early Apple Personal Computers covers the founding hardware line that established Apple as a personal computer maker, from its first hand built machine through the system that introduced its graphical interface to a mass market. Apple was founded to market Steve Wozniak's Apple I computer, a bare circuit board sold without a case, keyboard or power supply that hobbyists had to assemble themselves in 1976. Its successor, the Apple II, launched in 1977 as a fully assembled consumer product with color graphics and an open expansion architecture, and became one of the first successful mass produced personal microcomputers, helping to establish the home and small business computer market alongside rivals such as the Commodore PET and TRS-80. Apple introduced the Macintosh in 1984, popularizing a graphical user interface navigated by a mouse rather than typed commands, a departure from the Apple II's text based BASIC environment that reset expectations for how ordinary users would interact with a personal computer. Together the Apple I, Apple II and Macintosh mark the company's progression from a hobbyist kit maker to the firm most associated with bringing graphical, mouse driven computing to a general audience.