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Has Apple’s Mac Fallen Behind?
In the back of my closet there’s an Apple Plus. Last I checked, it still worked. That was a while ago, because I’m almost afraid to check. It’s a box with a screen. If you’ve ever seen the Sad Mac symbol, which disappeared years ago, that really is what it looks like.
It’s so old that if you search on “Apple Plus” you’ll get stuff about Apple TV. Including if you add computer. It was introduced in 1979, it was the third Apple computer produced, and it remained in production until 1990. That’s an unimaginable lifespan for a computer model these days.
It had a few firsts. It was the first Apple with user-upgradeable memory (remember that?), the first to have double-sided floppies, which could store a whole 800 KB. That was a lot back then. It didn’t, however, have an internal CD drive, although you could manage without one. (I still have the external drive too). Oh, and it didn’t have a fan, that came with the SE.
But for its time it was an advanced machine. This continued. In fact, when it was released, the G5, which I used for a while, could not be exported to certain countries because it fit the legal definition of “supercomputer.” It was considered weapons grade.