Apple II Forever - Apple IIc Apple II-GS 1988

Today they're called Macs but way back in the 1980's, Apple users were in love with the Apple II. Despite the introduction of the Mac in 1984, the Apple II continued to have its devoted fans. This program looks at the Apple II culture during the early Mac era. Included are the Apple IIc+, the Apple II-GS, and a rare Apple I. Guests include John Sculley and Gary Kildall. Software demonstrations are of Math Blaster, Paintworks Gold, and Microsoft Bookshelf. Also a look at the newest Macintosh at the time, the Mac IIx. Originally broadcast in 1988.

[@DudeMeToo]

I miss the old vintage computer era.....I'm glad technology moved beyond that, but I still miss the era and it's culture.

[@RobertKaydoo]

You mean when computer magazines contained program code instead of being filled with press releases and advertisements? I miss those days as well.

[@DudeMeToo]

I'm in my mid 40's currently. The era of these PCs were a big deal at the time, and it's culture felt as if we understood something so far beyond which most people understood. It really felt like they could\would change the world - which they have, but more in a Star Trek Generations kind of way.... which I am still waiting to happen :)

[@RobertKaydoo]

ezra4no1 You are so right about that. Reading an obituary column about Radio Shack a few months ago, the writer spoke about that very culture. Teenagers who were new to computers and older guys who were mainframe veterans would get together to share knowledge. The age difference meant nothing, just a love of this new technology. DOS could be maddening at times but for a tinkerer DOS was also a lot of fun.

[@davidca96]

ezra4no1 I miss it too, it was a great time.

[@RobertKaydoo]

davidca96 I will say I do not miss loading programs via cassette tape. My TRS-80 pocket computer never seemed to be able to get that right.

[@falcon81701]

My classroom had a IIgs and I was blown away by it.

[@Machammerballs]

LOVED MY APPLE IIc. I got it for Christmas with an adapter to use with color TV and King's Quest.

[@mjp29]

R.I.P. Gary & R.I.P. Apple 2. It was the first computer I layed eyes on. Back in 4th grade, a new Apple 2 sat in our lunch room at my elementary school. Two students at a time were allowed to leave class and use the single Apple 2 in the lunch room. I was hooked on computers ever since! And R.I.P. Computer Chronicles - I loved that show back in the day!!!

[@Bazuna]

Thumbs up for everything in the 80s having grids on it.

[@Joeyboots80]

I used to watch this show when I was a wee nerd. I miss Computer Chronicles man. Long live the Apple II, C64, and Atari ST.

[@StevenSmyth]

Stewart: What's the ideal machine you'd like to see comin' out from Apple? Bill: ...I'd like to see a machine that has the ability to run all of the high end Macintosh stuff and all of the Apple // stuff. Probably unrealistic. Stewart: You want the "Apple master machine." (Strained chuckling all around) Stewart: Ooohhkaay, Bill. Little would they know that it actually happened in 1991. Apple came out with the Macintosh LC (LC for low cost). It had an expansion port called the processor direct slot (PDS). Apple and peripheral vendors made cards for it like network cards, modems, etc. Apple also made an Apple //e card that could be installed with some software that would allow you to boot into either the Mac or the Apple // environment. The card came with a Y cable that would let you hook up peripherals like drives and printers. It was pretty slick and helped make the transition from the Apple // to the Mac easier.

[@jamessebby3504]

I remember the product, but then I remember C/PM and the Timex Sinclair.

[@falkon215]

I can watch this everyday!Fantastic

[@jbmaru]

An uncle of mine had the Mac IIx. I was blown away!

[@MicahBBurke]

Oh man, I used to watch this show!

[@infinitecanadian]

My dad built an Apple ][ as a kit into a heavy printer casing. I loved playing on that with the monochrome green monitor and hearing the rattle of the disk drive on startup.

[@barrybear2011]

Concerning the switch to the 3.5" floppy drive in the Apple IIc Plus: If you had an external 5.25" Apple floppy drive, you could have just hooked it up to the IIc Plus and back up your old 5.25" floppies onto the 3.5" floppies.

[@texmex3343]

Apple IIc the best ;)

[@Lachlant1984]

I want to see an Apple IIE or IIGS Classic with built in games.

[@rem145]

I tried to get a sports bar to show this show when I was 13

[@gregorymalchuk272]

How did that go?

[@Donyourmom]

@@gregorymalchuk272I’m not OC, but I can almost assure you that didn’t end well.

[@bencheshire]

What a wonderful program. I hope theres more where this came from.

[@catgirl_eva]

My first computer was an Apple IIGS. Trash picked in September 1999. Sadly, it was damaged in a move from Kansas to Virginia in 2000 and no longer functioned.

[@laurakane6426]

Desktop publishing was the big thing and laser writer printers. They were an excellent combination. Some of the best games came out back in the old days. People's imaginations were high from that area.

[@marcfield1234]

As of 2020 that Apple I is a major museum piece. Don't even breath on it. Especially if it works. There are only about 200 of them know to exist. Of those there only about 10 are known to work.

[@vanhetgoor]

Oh, 1980 is already twelve years ago, how times fly!

[@bravestbullfighter]

Apple IIgs was the last best Apple computer. ARM SBCs like the Odroid C2 now satisfy my Apple II craving.

[@bjmgraphics617]

Great video! Wow has things changed. The little news about Toshiba's goal to make diskettes obsolete never happen until after the 90's when the last 3 1/2 drive fully faded away in every new computer made. I like to see a come back of video game cartridges using today's thumb drive storage capacity. Well DVD-rom or Blu-ray disks game load times are fairly good but it's not instant and the consoles today has an OS which slows things down a bit. My favorite mac was the power pc kind of the 90's.

[@spinalbiffidius75]

I'm relating to these old computers the same way they would relate to ours today. I was lucky enough to be born later than these early computer days. They look atrociously tedious, slow, and boring,and it looks like they were all work and no fun, but I'm sure at the time they were top of the line and all the rage. I'm sure in 30 years our computers of today will look ancient then.

[@TheCRTman]

I like the computers made mostly in the mid 1990s and very early 2000s. New computers just don't feel like they have too much more to offer anyway. Also, I personally love the beige color for computers and its accessories.

[@TheCircuitman1]

Lost a genius today....thank you Steve....may you rest in peace

[@kimkimpa5150]

1:18 that helmet-like comb-over tho....

[@tamarar984]

I remember having this PC and also having Macintosh 183k

[@antonybui]

I love computer chronic

[@polkadotpie]

Nice comb over!

[@honyasenyou]

I like the boxy Macintosh designs of the '80s.

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

didn't know that here was a cd-drive for the 2gs

[@daveheel]

if we went back in time and showed them an iPad, their minds would be blown.

[@thecat4493]

yeah

[@loosingmymemory7]

"Obviously we are not going to buy a new computer to have this little guy run faster" - 9:48 , oh how wrong you were..LoL!

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

I miss 'em!

[@w.kelleyobrien459]

Another KZbin time warp. Feel like I'm reading the hype in a PC World magazine from 1988. Can you imagine being able to have a coprocessor!? (I'm watching this on a phone with 8 processors). 4 megahertz mode! That little math sprite runs 3 times as fast! Those beige boxes, that paisley scarf wrap, that single button mouse. I'm reeling with nostalgia. I want to shout to them: "it gets so much better!"

[@one_step_sideways]

You have 8 cores instead of 8 processors, you only have one processor. In 4MHz mode, the math sprite runs 4 times as fast, not 3.

[@danhoang4291]

Thumbs up for Apple II

[@giuseppediguardo4787]

Nine years wow, this is my first video in look after

[@BryonLape]

If memory serves, the Laser 128EX allowed for the switching the megahertz speed of the CPU without requiring a reboot.

[@interlace84]

I agree; It scares me to think that streaming technologies like netflix for movies, spotify for music and onLive for gaming will eventually make media-based operation and piracy obsolete. Thought it seems to be inevitable... And USB Mass Storage Devices (ie pendrives, usb-powered 2,5" ssd's/harddisks etc) already offer more capacity and faster speeds than dual-layer blu-ray disks so I have to totally agree with you.

[@marcel911]

Very interesting programme. The MOST interesting part was Stewart's comb-over.

[@sundown798]

Love these days of slowwness

[@TaylorNicholas93]

The IIgs? The Apple IIgs WAS slow in GS/OS and it was built to be slow on purpose so it didn't compete with the faster Macintosh since Apple was redirecting consumer focus from the II to the Mac. That's why accelerators were released by third-party companies. Typically a computer operating the way it was made to isn't slow unless it was intentionally done or mechanically failing.

[@yetnyed]

Yes I am watching this on my ipad

[@nic3Chris]

What is the laptop style computer on the right at 13:54 ?

[@tls5870]

..... they never said where I can order it from.. I can't find it on Amazon.... anyone know?

[@ariplaysmc]

Watching this on my macbook pro

[@mjp29]

BTW, Steve Wozniak had envisioned the Apple 2 going on forever. Wozniak's vision was that he, and his Apple 2 team, could go on developing and including more and more technology into the Apple 2 "forever." However, Steve Jobs seen the Macintosh as his baby and was dead set on phasing out and replacing the Apple 2 with the Macintosh...

[@tetsujin_144]

I think that idea was pretty unrealistic. It's a mindset that was great for the late 1970s, when hobbyists could barely afford a computer: You could buy a minimalist system to start out, and then upgrade later. But so much of the Apple II platform was built on what the Apple II had been in the past that it was very difficult to make it grow into something new. So on the IIgs for instance, you needed a 3.5" drive for new software and a 5.25" drive for old software... And you needed the old software because the new system's software library never even got close to the vast library the old Apple II had accumulated over the 8 years prior. Compatibility with old game software in particular required slowing down the CPU to a 1MHz mode, because virtually anything you would want to do that required timing (animation, sound, etc.) was fully dependent upon the CPU speed. The Apple II was still a major force even in the late 1980s, but computer hobbyists had mostly outgrown it. I think Jobs had the right idea, Apple II was an old platform with a lot of legacy baggage, and the best way forward was to leave it behind.

[@ArtMusicLife15]

Wow, that guy has a serious comb-over.

[@gadzometer]

lol.. I first learnt about computers wit these. My first programming language was logo.

[@tetsujin_144]

0:18 - "The Apple II headed for the orphanage? Not so!" Not with the shiny new Apple IIc+ (basically just the IIe again but with a CPU accelerator and 3.5" floppy) and IIgs (Apple II redefined as a contemporary of the Amiga, except totally inadequate to compete with it due to slow CPU and critical resources like graphics RAM bottlenecked by the system's 1MHz, Apple IIe-compatible core...)

[@spazzman90]

I'm not an Apple fanboy, but they had everything in place to be the dominating computer brand. I think they screwed up not having a clear upgrade path to go from Apple II to Macintosh. I mean these guys invented the throw it away after 2 years mentality, but the public was in no way ready for that yet. If they would have come up with a gentler way to transisition (that being the key word, not pick Apple II or Mac but not both), I think they would have been better off.

[@turbolaserguyg]

As you already know, the first Microsoft Excel was for the Mac; so was MS office

[@yam83]

No BS, that theme song freaking rocks.

[@DrgnTech]

There is no way that Apple would do that. The "Pro" models are used for so much just to throw those lines away. Animation and video production in particular.

[@pslavi]

6 years later after this show Gary Kildall died.. Various sources have claimed he fell from a chair, fell down steps, or was assaulted, because he had walked into the Franklin Street Bar & Grill wearing Harley Davidson leathers. RIP

[@fiatbravodriver]

Where did you find this Alan?

[@MoosesValley]

When you said "Apple", I still say "2". Long live the Apple ][ CALL-151 for a good time

[@IMaDEM0N]

actually, the "Apple I" is what started this company, the Steve's (Jobs & Woz) along with a couple of their friends were building Apple I's in Steve Jobs' parent's garage when Mike Markkula showed up & brought his business expertise (& a 1/4 million dollar investment) & from that came Apple's first production facility where the Apple II was developed & THEN, Mr. Jobs wanted the Apple I's BACK & he was trading $5000 Apple II's (w/ monitors & 2 disk drives) for the Apple I's so he got MOST back...

[@kurtispopp]

Next on Look Around You, Pam Bachelor talks to Computer Jones about the latest video games.

[@mouse059]

APPLE II INFINITUM!

[@thatguyontheright1]

Funny, the guy said he wanted a Macintosh that could do Apple II software....well a few years later they released a card for the Macintosh that let you do just that. The Apple IIe card. I wonder if he bought one.

[@Shulamana]

The thing that strikes me most is how Stewart refers to the Apple I as a "museum piece", you can't name any PC from 10 years ago that has that sort of historical significance.

[@gregorybentley5192]

High Sierra file system...... Apple has come full circle.

[@tetsujin_144]

0:02 - "If I say the word 'Apple', you say the word, 'Macintosh'" 'Apple' "MACINTOSH!" 'Apple' "MACINTOSH!" Honestly, though in 1988 I would have still said "Two"

[@xrayban]

After the Apple 2e we chose Amiga 500, 2gs was no match ...

[@TheCRTman]

I know that compact discs where around since 1982, but I didn't know that CD-ROM drives where out this early!

[@TaylorNicholas93]

Yeah, in Japan they were introduced in 1984!

[@EannaButler]

Gary Kildall himself was a pioneer of cd rom tech. Legend!

[@TheCRTman]

@@EannaButler Sweet

[@dynaco]

Paintworks Gold looks advanced for the time

[@TaylorNicholas93]

Nah it WAS the time! Paintworks and Deluxe Paint were great among others. Don't forget, even back then the IIgs could do video overlay and color image captures from analog sources like laserdisc players and VCRs. You could record sound and upload/download images, games and files from BBSs and on-line services. We think we've come a very long way all these years later and everything we do now is all new, but the fundamentals are the same. It's just the way we access information, the speed and the quality of it that's changed the most.

[@twiddler71]

The world of computers today would be totally different if they hadden't crippled the Apple IIgs processor.

[@tetsujin_144]

Nah, the IIgs was inadequate in other ways, too. There was a quote by Woz where he said that a 65816 (the CPU of the IIgs) running at 8MHz could have run circles around a 68000 (the CPU of the early Macintoshes and various other early 16-bit home computers). And, that's a complicated thing to determine 'cause there are a lot of variables at play (dealing with memory segmentation and smaller number of registers, holding less data per register on the 816... versus the 68000 which took more clock cycles per instruction generally) but I think he was probably right. The 816 may very well have been faster than the 68000 at the same clock speed. However, the IIgs was basically Apple's answer to the Amiga and Atari ST, and the thing about those systems is, their CPUs aren't great, but a lot of their capabilities are the product of other chips in the system. These other devices in the chipset allow the system to do things like copy areas of RAM around, create multi-layer scrolling backgrounds and character sprites, etc. all without burdening the CPU. Even if the IIgs had an 8MHz CPU it wouldn't have those capabilities. On the IIgs, every little change to the display would have to be done by the CPU. You want a scrolling background? The CPU needs to read 32kB of data from somewhere in RAM and write that data to the framebuffer, possibly with some manipulation in between, every single frame. Want some character sprites? Add another few hundred bytes for each. That doesn't sound like much, but even for an 8MHz CPU that's actually a pretty significant burden. (About 3 cycles to load 16 bits, and 3 to store them in the framebuffer - but if you're scrolling it by a number of pixels that's not a multiple of 4, you need to spend another 16 cycles or so per word shifting bits and combining with previous words of data - so in the general case somewhere around 22 cycles for every 16 bits worth of scrolling background - meaning an 8MHz 65816 would only be able to update a scrolling background around 20 times per second... If that were the only thing the CPU did!) But then on top of that was another problem: The IIgs is backwards-compatible with the IIe, and the way they did that was to give the system a 1MHz core - 128kB of the system memory is controlled by that core, and locked to that 1MHz speed - that includes all the display RAM and the display controller. So even when a IIgs is running in "fast" mode, writing to display RAM takes as long as it would at 1MHz. (The IIgs does provide a RAM "shadowing" feature that makes this a little less of a problem... But it's still a significant bottleneck.) But then, in the end... At best the IIgs would have probably been another Amiga story. A good platform, one of the best of its time, perhaps, but still kind of a niche product compared to the ever-increasing dominance of the PC on the productivity side, and the game consoles on the gaming side. It probably would have made its mark, had its heyday on the demo scene, and then, like the rest, gotten bowled over in the mid 1990s by the "multimedia PCs" as the platform started to show its age. It's tempting to think, if only this had gone a bit better it would have changed the world, but... If Amiga couldn't do that, I can't imagine the IIgs could.

[@twiddler71]

@@tetsujin_144 I think the IIgs could have given PC's a run for their money. The Apple IIgs cost far less than the MAC, and the IIgs had great sound and a fantastic GUI. It was also expandable like the Apple IIs. If Apple had focused more on an affordable computer that could compete with IBM and the clones, it would have had much more success.

[@AlexiaVon]

What's that thing on his head?

Thank you for this video. 😜 A 16 Mhz processor, It's really a dinosaur. ⌘ Hearing the clicking of the floppy disk, hooff ! it is as if one would be in the early 90s. My first was a  Macintosh LC-III, with a 25 Mhz processor (nevertheless) - it's not very strong (of fast) alongside devices of today. Yes, it's really impossible to get bored of this. Compared to a 4GHz, today, there is a ➤ whole world 😊 Also, I really liked to watching 👀 the 📺 "Computer Chronicles". 👍

[@RayleighCriterion]

You can now watch old Computer Chronicles shows on their channel kzbin.info

[@DupczacyBawol]

BTW, (1:20) my current MSI G41M-P26 + Intel Pentium E5300 + 4GB DDR3 are also 10 years old and still working ;)

[@SmokeySkies]

I have never owned an Apple product before

[@mcdonkeylips]

Holy comb over

[@TheCRTman]

The Apple IIGS was separate from Macintosh altogether.

[@Lachlant1984]

@snake2006 I have a vision impairment and I can't see very well, Mac OS has a built in text enlargement feature called Zoom, and a built in screen reader called VoiceOver, it reads text on the screen using computer generated synthetic speech, these utilities are available for Windows, but they must be purchased separately, they're not included with the operating system, there are other features that I use which read out text on web pages and in documents etc, now do you understand????

[@Hiraghm]

I miss this show. G4 TechTV... for grownups.

[@polkadotpie]

It's kinda trippy watching this, then snapping back to current reality and seeing my new mac os 10.9 mavericks in action. .....how long has it been? 30 years? thats not that long at all!! my screen is HUGE compared to these!!!

[@garyspong]

Focus on the Apple IIc Plus begins at 6:00.

[@zg2111]

My Oldest Graphics card Would be Futureistic to this

[@Tommy-nb1wo]

11:15 Bout to slay in Wii Bowling, amiright?

[@TomMattin]

wow. this was the time Scully was CEO and Jobs was out with NeXT and Pixar

[@backyardsounds]

yep. so true

[@larryr4004]

mac I'm an old boomer too the kids today are just as creative as some of us (not me though)were back then. No worries about the next gen. here

[@ToastmachineIdiot]

It's not directly compatible, since Apple II computers and modern Macintosh computers run on completely different hardware and operating systems. You can run Apple II-GS software on Mac OS X with an emulator, though.

[@pinkyandnick]

1:13 Cheeziest intro ever

[@DerbyMods]

Them: “While we wait for it to reboot” Me: Laughs in PCIE storage

[@vinnyavalanche]

Not funny

[@DerbyMods]

Vinny Avalanche very funny.

[@user-je2lk8qn5h]

APPLEⅡcって5インチフロッピーを使用するドライブが内蔵されているんです。しかも2010年宇宙の旅にも流行りのパソコンって出演しているんですが、2010年当時には既に5インチフロッピーは絶滅しているんだよね。3.5インチフロッピーですら絶滅しかかっていましたから、未来予測は危ういですね。

[@thiagoalmeidafernandes]

I fully agree

[@danhoang4291]

Thumbs up for Tandy TRS-80

[@RealNarod28]

2MHZ is awesome

[@SilasPiacenti]

What is going on with the interviewer's hair??

[@Mojomatrix]

I cut my teeth on APPLESOFT BASIC

[@vinnyavalanche]

That's for computing not teething. I'd see a dentist.

[@SPS148669]

The Gameboy and GameGear CPU?

[@supergreg72]

It might be a comb-over?

[@beanshell081299]

please do elaborate......

[@AndyHoward]

240p We meet again. Although this time I'll forgive you since this is an old show recorded off a VCR tape.

[@TheCRTman]

Yeah some do yellow after a while. I think it has to do with the sun shining on it.

[@MarkTitus420]

completely touch free and will be worn on the body like a pair of glasses with a highly visual and virtual display and operated through voice command - so they say. I can see it happening soon than 2035 though the way computer technology is advancing these days.

[@Designandrew]

why would you steal the the computer chronicles videos???

[@GermanBrother93]

Apple rumors back in 88, lol! 25:00