The Apple II holds a unique position in the history of computing. It was the first truly general purpose personal computer, and the first widely successful one. The Apple II took the personal computer revolution from the garages of hard core hobbyists and brought it into business and into millions of homes around the country.
It was developed largely by one man, Steve Wozniak. He designed the system board, employing a number of tricks which made it easier to build but harder to program. He created a floppy drive interface, a hugely important feature at that time, during a marathon two week session in December 1977. He programmed the Apple ROM's and even wrote the first BASIC interpreter for the Apple.
From the start, the Apple II was a major success, fueling the PC revolution and launching Apple Computer Corporation as a major force in the computer industry. By 1980, Apple Computer's yearly revenues already exceeded 100 million dollars. In December of that year, the company went public, making co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs each multi-millionaires.
Although the Apple II had originally been designed for hobbyists and home users, about 90% of them were being sold to small businesses. Apple therefore decided that the successor to the Apple II, the Apple III, should be a serious business computer. When it was released in 1980, it featured more memory, an advanced new operating system, and support for 80-column text and lowercase characters.
When we came out with the Apple III, the engineering staff canceled every Apple II engineering program that was ongoing, in expectation of the Apple III's success. Every single one was canceled. We really perceived that the Apple II would not last six months.
-- Steve Wozniak
However, the Apple III was late and suffered from poor backwards compatibility and a nearly 100% hardware failure rate. Although Apple eventually addressed these issues, they were not able overcome the Apple III's bad reputation. Apple III sales remained poor, while sales of the older Apple II continued to climb.
In 1983, Apple finally returned its attention to the Apple II series, introducing the Apple IIe. The IIe borrowed some features from the failed Apple III, including 80-column text and lowercase support. However, it was at its heart an Apple II, and retained very strong compatibility with the existing base of Apple II software. The Apple IIe was extremely successful, soon selling at twice the volume of its predecessor.
In 1984, Apple released their first portable computer, the Apple IIc. The IIc was very similar to the IIe, but came in a compact case that included the most popular peripherals, such as a disk drive and serial card, built in. It also included an enhanced CPU (the 65c02) and mouse support. However, the public did not embrace the Apple IIc, partly because it was not expandable like the IIe and partly because people incorrectly equated the small size with a lack of power.
Because the Apple IIe continued to be Apple's best seller, Apple returned focus to it in 1985, releasing the Enhanced IIe. This computer featured the same enhanced CPU as the IIc, and also included improved support for 80-column text and lowercase characters. Then, in 1987, they spruced it up with a new keyboard and some other minor hardware changes. This final IIe, called the Extended Keyboard IIe or the Platinum IIe, is the computer that AppleWin emulates.
In 1986, Apple released one more Apple II, the IIgs. Although this computer maintained backwards compatibility with most II and IIe programs, it had a radically new architecture and feature set. It was a 16-bit computer, unlike the previous Apple II's which were all 8-bit. It featured new graphics modes which could display thousands of different colors on the screen at once. And it had an advanced new sound chip that could play fifteen different sounds at once. However, partly because it was poorly marketed and partly because the world had turned its attention to the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh, the IIgs never really took off.