US$666.66
RAM 4kb
Last unit sold 1977
Apple's first computer, the Apple I, was basically a home built circuit board, that used a
However Steve Wozniak had designed for use the first mass-produced home computer writing characters from a video buffer to a regular TV screen that could be purchased from any general appliance store. Click here for an interview with Steve about that time. Click here for more background on that NTSC signal — 262½ scan lines (having 341¼ dots per line) using 60hz (i.e. 60 scans per second).
In those days operating systems for microcomputers were called resident monitors and its "Woz Monitor", co-ordinating activity between keyboard, screen, cassette and memory, resided in just 256 bytes of ROM (read-only memory). It also came with his version of Apple Basic on cassette. Called Integer Basic, it had no provision for floating point calculations.
Still, 200 boards were produced, and all but 25 sold during their 10 months on the market. Click here to see the Apple I's advertisement in October 1976.
Re the price:- Steve Jobs had suggested $777.77 but Steve Woz thought that was too high, so he "took the lucky number 7 and subtracted 1" — regardless of that biblical "mark of the beast" reference 
US$1298
RAM 4kb
US$2698
48kb
Until 1983 no monitor nor cassette
Last unit sold 1993
The Apple II added more RAM, sound capabilities, additional expansion slots, an RCA jack for video, and was notably contained in a styled plastic case with an integrated keyboard and "cool" power supply – i.e. not requiring a fan.
It offered the user programmable colour commands inside BASIC that would run on a colour TV monitor, also pretty much a first for a home computer.
Later that year Apple added floating point calculations through a deal with Bill Gates, providing the user with a licensed copy of Microsoft Basic, calling it Applesoft Basic. Bill Gates had originally written that version for the Commodore, and had been pressured financially, as the Commodore PET was much delayed in getting to market.
Note too, these were the days when you bought, loaded and saved data and programs on cassette tapes. It was to be 12 months before either Apple (or Tandy) released a floppy disk drive. (And even later for the Commodore.)
US$495
With strong encouragement from Mike Markkula (formerly from Intel), and to a huge reception in July 1978, Steve Wozniak designed a hardware controller and released the Apple floppy disk drive, the Disk II. The software for it was called Apple DOS consisting of a File Manager, a BASIC interface, and some simple utilities — written by Paul Laughton in just seven weeks April - June. Click here to read his story, also a copy of the Apple II DOS source code. So after July, you could save and read files almost immediately instead of having to sequentially search a cassette tape.
Now came VisiCalc, launched on June 4 1979. The Apple II was more than just a hobby machine, it was a serious business tool. Though from a wordprocessing viewpoint there was upper-case but no lower-case till Jan 1983.
Microsoft Consumer Products (an end-user/dealer branch for Microsoft) release the
Click here for the Z80 announcement in 1980.
And in that year, Corvus Systems "hack" the Apple DOS software and release a file server for this Apple II supporting 5mb and 10mb (and in 1982 20mb) hard drives. It became very popular in primary and secondary education — via this single drive and backup a full classroom of Apple II computers could be networked together.
Click here for an interview with the Corvus Systems manager.
In Mt Gravatt Qld, the Zardax word processor supporting 40-column uppercase, in 1983 lowercase display, was written and released by Computer Solutions, easy to use, and very popular.
US$4340
128kb
Last unit sold April 1984
Development of the Apple III had started in late 1978 to address weaknesses that the "business" market saw in the Apple II. It came finally with a monitor and was released in May 1980, supporting an 80-column display with upper and lower case characters and also a built in floppy disk drive. It was expensive though equivalent to about US$12,600 in 2016 dollars, and there were serious stability issues in the logic boards.
Following a design overhaul, it was formally reintroduced in September 1981 along with a 5mb Apple Profile hard drive (costing US$3500). It was still an 8 bit CPU, and was now following IBM's 16 bit Personal Computer (launched in August that year). And it had no "Prt Scn" key, a most useful introduction on the IBM.
So, following a high introductory price, design issues, a limited software library, then a pretty expensive hard drive, it was, commercially, a "hard to sell" failure.
US$9995
RAM 1mb
Last unit sold August 1986
Work on the Apple Lisa also began in late 1978, and with changes of project leadership, Apple spent more than US$50 million and four years developing its graphical user interface, use of a mouse, and running on Motorola 68000's 32 bit processor with 16 bit data bus. After Steve Jobs was diverted over to the Macintosh project in 1982, it was launched in January 1983 with two built in floppy disk drives and 1mb of RAM. But with an introductory price that was close to US$10,000 (that's about US$24,000 in 2016 dollars), again it was, commercially, a failure. Apparently its biggest customer, NASA, used LisaProject for project management and was faced with significant problems when the Lisa was discontinued.
Click here for more about the Lisa's reception in 1983 and 1984.
US$2495
128kb
And next the Apple Macintosh (Motorola Advanced Computer System on Silicon) with a relatively low introductory price — initially advertised at US$1995 at Steve Jobs's request, but launched with CEO John Sculley's insistence at US$2495. It was awkwardly under-configured in terms of memory — initially 128kb it was reconfigured in October 1984 to 512kb plus another price increase to US$3195, but finally some stability. That high price negatively impacted its sales of course, and only the continued high sales of the Apple II allowed Apple, the company, to survive. The Macintosh 512K price was able to come down to US$2000 in April 1986, and with the release of newer models, it remained in production right up until September 1998.
Initially it came with no hard drive, a single 400kb 3½ inch floppy disc drive, simple networking using a US$50 box (LocalTalk), and like the Lisa a computer mouse that used a ball-tracking control mechanism for pointing at the memory-mapped display. To do this it had just a 9 inch CRT display screen that employed a 22kb frame buffer in main memory i.e. 512 x 342 1-bit pixels or 72 pixels per inch. It was of course a monochrome screen, colour screens were still very expensive.
Click here for the story behind MacPaint that was part of the initial release, its underlying library Quickdraw, and a copy of the source code.
In March 1985 "Print Screen" (Cmd-Shift-4) also "Capture Screen" (Cmd-Shift-3) added.
In March 1987 the Macintosh II, with an optional colour screen, was released with 1mb of main memory and a 20mb hard drive for US$5498.
NeXTSTEP and the WorldWideWeb
In September 1985 Steve Jobs fell out with CEO John Sculley, Steve was hating the high price that had been set for the Macintosh, and after a vote was taken, Steve found he was no longer part of Apple's board. He left Apple and launched the NeXT computer running the UNIX-based NeXTSTEP operating system in 1988 (for US$6500), followed by the NeXTcube (for US$10,000) in 1990. Expensive machines with closed systems, they both sold in low numbers, mostly to universities, financial institutions, and government agencies. But one of the purchasers was the world wide web instigator,
US$1700
RAM 8mb
Last unit sold 2006
Apple Power Macintosh for business users, running on Motorola's PowerPC processor, using high-speed technology designed by AIM an Apple, IBM & Motorola alliance
Steve Jobs returns as CEO
US$1299
RAM 32mb
Apple iMac where the "i" is short for "Internet". It had out-of-the-box connectivity inside an All-in-one case that used Motorola's PowerPC processor, a 4gb hard drive, a CD-ROM drive, two USB ports, a 56 kbit/second Modem, built-in Ethernet, built-in stereo speakers and two headphone ports.
It was the first Macintosh computer to have a USB port and no floppy disk drive. The USB, being cross-platform, allowed Macintosh users to select from a large selection of devices including keyboard and mouse.
In 1999, Apple's operating system OS X server edition was launched, based on NeXTSTEP. The desktop version followed in 2001.
As Motorola steadily downsized, selling off its microprocessor division in 2005, the iMac switched to Intel in 2006, then since 2020, Apple Silicon M1, M2, M3, M4
US$399
Last unit sold May 2022
Back to 2001. Apple iPod portable media player running on a Samsung processor using technology designed by ARM in Cambridge, England
US$1099
128mb
Last unit sold 2006
Apple eMac. Marketed towards educational institutions as a low-cost alternative to the iMac
US$599
256mb
Apple Mac Mini. A very small computer. No keyboard, screen, or mouse. Ran initially on the PowerPC processor, on Intel 2006-2020, now Apple M2
US$2499
1gb
Apple Mac Pro. Apple's fastest computer, replacing the Power Mac for business users, running on a high-speed Intel Xeon processor until June 2023, now M2
US$1099
512mb
Apple MacBook, replacing the PowerBook. Apple's portable notebook computer. Intel 2006-2020, now M3
US$499
Apple iPhone. A "smart phone" that uses Apple's proprietary iOS operating system and runs on an ARM-designed Samsung processor. Apparently, Steve Jobs saw it more like an iPod than a computer, at least initially. However in 2008, Google released an "open source" operating system called Android that any phone manufacturer is allowed to use, providing it uses ARM technology, which ARM is quite happy to license for a royalty fee. Android has also been ported to run on an Intel processor chip.
US$499
Apple iPad. A portable tablet computer running on an ARM-designed Samsung processor. Numerous competing tablets e.g. Samsung's own Galaxy Tab which is marketed independently of Apple since 2010, and ARM is quite happy to license.