VisiCalc on Apple IIc
VisiCalc was the first electronic spreadsheet for personal computers. it was introduced in 1979 for around $100. It ran on the Apple II and was the main reason Apple was able to penetrate the business market. This is a 1983 version of VisiCalc running on my Apple IIc. The Apple IIc was introduced on April 24, 1984.
APPLE IIc brief history.....
In the summer of 1981 someone proposed a portable Apple II, a book-sized computer. It wasn’t until Steve Jobs became interested in it as engineering challenge, well after Macintosh was under way, that anything came of the idea:
…one day late in ’82, Paul Dali showed him [Jobs] a photograph of a Toshiba portable and they started fooling around with the idea of an Apple II that would look like the Toshiba but come with a built-in disk drive. They took out a IIe circuit board and a disk drive and a keyboard and played with them until they arrived at a promising configuration-keyboard in front, disk drive in back, circuit board in between. What got Jobs excited about this idea was the engineering difficulty of squeezing it all into a package not much bigger than a notebook. And a machine so small wouldn’t have the expandability that characterized all the other Apple II models. Like Macintosh, it could be taken out of the box, plugged in, and put to work-no extra parts to buy, no cables to figure out. It was the II reinvented as an appliance.
As with all Apple projects, the IIc went by various code names during its development, for the sake of internal communications and to keep outsiders from knowing what was going on. The various names used included VLC (Very Low Cost), Yoda, ET, IIb (for “Book”), and Teddy (which stood for “Testing Every Day”). Also, following a long standing tradition at Apple, some of the code names assigned to the project at various times were names of children of people at Apple: Chels, Jason, Lolly, Sherry, and Zelda. These names persist in the source code for the firmware for the IIc as later printed in the technical reference manual; the serial port driver is called a “Lolly” driver.
During the time the IIc was under development, Apple was working on a change in the look of their products. They planned a more European styling, and a color scheme called “Snow White.” The IIc would be the first product with the new appearance and color.
VisiCalc on Apple IIc
VisiCalc was the first electronic spreadsheet for personal computers. it was introduced in 1979 for around $100. It ran on the Apple II and was the main reason Apple was able to penetrate the business market. This is a 1983 version of VisiCalc running on my Apple IIc. The Apple IIc was introduced on April 24, 1984.
APPLE IIc brief history.....
In the summer of 1981 someone proposed a portable Apple II, a book-sized computer. It wasn’t until Steve Jobs became interested in it as engineering challenge, well after Macintosh was under way, that anything came of the idea:
…one day late in ’82, Paul Dali showed him [Jobs] a photograph of a Toshiba portable and they started fooling around with the idea of an Apple II that would look like the Toshiba but come with a built-in disk drive. They took out a IIe circuit board and a disk drive and a keyboard and played with them until they arrived at a promising configuration-keyboard in front, disk drive in back, circuit board in between. What got Jobs excited about this idea was the engineering difficulty of squeezing it all into a package not much bigger than a notebook. And a machine so small wouldn’t have the expandability that characterized all the other Apple II models. Like Macintosh, it could be taken out of the box, plugged in, and put to work-no extra parts to buy, no cables to figure out. It was the II reinvented as an appliance.
As with all Apple projects, the IIc went by various code names during its development, for the sake of internal communications and to keep outsiders from knowing what was going on. The various names used included VLC (Very Low Cost), Yoda, ET, IIb (for “Book”), and Teddy (which stood for “Testing Every Day”). Also, following a long standing tradition at Apple, some of the code names assigned to the project at various times were names of children of people at Apple: Chels, Jason, Lolly, Sherry, and Zelda. These names persist in the source code for the firmware for the IIc as later printed in the technical reference manual; the serial port driver is called a “Lolly” driver.
During the time the IIc was under development, Apple was working on a change in the look of their products. They planned a more European styling, and a color scheme called “Snow White.” The IIc would be the first product with the new appearance and color.