Disk Evolution / The Apple IIc Plus
A page at Apple2History.org detailing advances in Apple II disk storage. From the page:
"After Steve Wozniak's Disk II floppy drive changed the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a serious home and business computer in the late 1970's, progress was slow in improving disk storage for the Apple II series. In 1978, the year the Disk II was released, Mike Scott (Apple's president) and Randy Wigginton were asked at a user group meeting whether they were going to go to the larger capacity eight-inch floppy drives (which had been around before the 5.25 floppy drives were invented). They answered that no, the Apple II was not going in that direction, but felt it might get a hard disk by 1979 or 1980, and possibly earlier than that a double sided, double density 5.25 disk holding 500K per disk"

Disk Evolution / The Apple IIc Plus

The Legacy of the Apple Lisa Personal Computer
The Legacy of the Apple Lisa Personal Computer: An Outsider's View, by David T. Craig.
From the site:
"This paper is an attempt by a long time Lisa user to clarify the significance of the Apple Lisa personal computer for the computing industry. The audience of this paper is anyone who has an interest in innovative computing technology and wants to learn a little about Apple Computer's brief foray into this area via the Lisa computer."

The Legacy of the Apple Lisa

More Like A Porsche
This is an interesting piece of folklore at Folklore.org about the design of the Macintosh case by Andy Hertzfeld.
From the article:
"'It's got to be different, different from everything else.' I recognized Steve Jobs' voice before I saw him as I passed by the door of Bud's office."

More Like A Porsche

The End of Innocence at Apple
A 1989 review by Al Fasoldt of the Frank Rose book "West of Eden - The End of Innocence at Apple Computer"
It opens:
"Steve Jobs, barely into his 20s and as restless as the Monterrey surf, had just come back from an apple festival when he and his hacker friend Steve Wozniak went into business making a strange little device. It was an almost useless product. It had no obvious appeal except to the oddball members of a new club in the San Francisco Bay area who got together every now and then to talk about computers. "

The End of Innocence at Apple

The 1984 Macintosh Ad
An essay by Sarah R. Stein at the University of Iowa on the subject of our favorite commercial! Includes QuickTime versions of the ad.
It begins:
"The half-time of the 1984 Super Bowl featured a 45 second ad that would be declared in 1995 the best ad of the last 50 years. The commercial, directed by Ridley Scott (Alien, 1979, and Blade Runner, 1982) for the Apple Corporation, announced the imminent arrival of the Macintosh computer. The ad cost $1.6 million to produce, and Apple Corporation paid $500,000 for the one-minute time slot in which it ran. It ran only once."

The 1984 Macintosh Ad

Washington Apple Pi
Vintage Apple fans should pay a visit to WAP - it's a great place for Apple III resources!
From the site:
"Washington Apple Pi is one of the nation's oldest and largest Apple and Machintosh Users Groups. The "Pi" not only supports today's machines, but continues to support the older Apple machines that made the company famous."

Washington Apple Pi

A2 News and Notes
The January, 2005 issue of the A2 News and Notes Newsletter has been posted by Howard Katz!
This issue:
* Storage Redux
* Storage Redux, too
* Almost Artificial Intelligence
* Software News
* Emulation News
* SignOff

A2 News and Notes

Macs for the Masses: Three New Macs Priced to Sell
Here is another cool vintage article at atarimagazines.com. This time a 1991 David English article discusses the new Classic, LC, and the IIsi. It originally appeared in Compute!, Issue 128/April, 1991/Page 26.
From the article:
"Computers for the rest of us? That's what Apple hopes it has with its three new Macs: the Classic, the LC, and the IIsi. With earnings down for the third quarter of 1990, Apple had been criticized for concentrating on its high-end models at the expense of its entry-level machines.
The new Macs are designed to shore up Apple's low end with a competitively priced black-and-white Mac, and entry-level color Mac that sells for less than half the price of any previous color Mac, and a new color Mac II that's $1,600 less than the model it replaces. With increased competition from Windows 3.0 and a barrage of cheap MS-DOS computers, Apple had to act and act decisively."

Macs for the Masses

And Another Thing...Friction Between the Mac and Lisa Teams
This bit of folklore at Folklore.org by Andy Hertzfeld details the sometimes adversarial relationship between the Macintosh and Lisa development teams at Apple.

And Another Thing...

512K Mac: Packing the Missing Punch; Apple Introduces the Fat Mac.
We hope you are enjoying these hidden treasures at atarimagazines.com as much as we are. This time we've found an evaluation article of the 512k Mac by John J. Anderson. This originally appeared in Creative Computing Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 2/February, 1985/Page 46.
From the article:
"It has been six months now since my initial review of the Macintosh computer appeared in the pages of the July 1984 issue of Creative Computing. I received more mail concerning that review than any piece I have ever written. I got letters telling me I was wrong: that the Macintosh was a gimmick, a flash in the pan, and I was foolish to call it a "breakthrough." I got letters telling me I was wrong: that the Macintosh was the greatest thing to happen to computing, and I was foolish to poke holes in such a miraculous development."

Apple Introduces the Fat Mac