Apple was in serious financial trouble, and pivoted to manufacturing premium products instead. Apparently this shift in strategy worked, since the company is still here. It was a very different company back then, so looking at the old stuff really doesn’t tell you much about the current state.
Regarding the early systems that I profiled: First of all, each of these other systems were distinct from the original Apple II primarily because they were targeted at a lower price point than the Apple II. The Apple II with 4K sold for nearly $1300; that is about twice the cost of the two competitors that were released the same year (the TRS-80 and the PET). The same applies to the systems released over the next five years as I outlined above; they sold for a low of $299 (VIC-20) and a high of $999 (Atari 800). This was a disadvantage to those who wanted an Apple, but may have legitimized it as a more serious computer.
Happened in the '80s and '90s, back when Apple was just making Macs for schools. Eventually they left their lane and, well, here we are.
Apple was in serious financial trouble, and pivoted to manufacturing premium products instead. Apparently this shift in strategy worked, since the company is still here. It was a very different company back then, so looking at the old stuff really doesn’t tell you much about the current state.
The Apple II was Apple’s first mainstream computer. It was relatively-capable compared to contemporary computers, but it wasn’t very cheap.
kagis
https://www.apple2history.org/2010/10/25/the-competition-part-2/
$1,300 would be $6,747.56 in 2024 dollars.
The Lisa was considerably more expensive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K
The Mac 128k (the first Mac model) wasn’t too cheap either: