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Ah, for a world where the Apple III was one of the best business machines around. https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_applelisasarketingCatalogSummer1988_285
by msla 3y ago
Ah, for a world where the Apple III was one of the best business machines around.
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_applelisasarketingCatalogSummer1988_28586791/page/n3/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_applelisasarketingCata...
For those who don't know, Jobs got to the Apple III design before anyone could stop him:
https://www.cultofmac.com/541415/apple-iii-overheating-motherboard/ https://www.cultofmac.com/541415/apple-iii-overheating-mothe...
> Steve Jobs insisted that the computer not feature a cooling fan. He also dictated the Apple III’s size and shape, without concern for what this would mean for electrical engineers. This resulted in the overheating motherboard, and Apple’s “just drop your computer” workaround.
https://www.techjunkie.com/apple-iii-drop/ https://www.techjunkie.com/apple-iii-drop/
> One such flaw was overheating, which could cause some of the system’s integrated chips to move or dislodge as they expanded. An obvious solution would be the addition of fans and adequate ventilation, but Jobs hated the relatively loud fans found on many computers of the day, and didn’t want to mar the Apple III’s design with ugly vents. So the Apple III shipped without any fans or vents, relying instead on a design that utilized a massive aluminum heat sink that formed the base of the computer.
> Without proper heat dissipation, computer magazine BYTE reported in 1982, the Apple III’s “integrated circuits tended to wander out of their sockets.” Owners of affected systems would begin to see garbled data on the screen, or notice that disks inserted into the system would come out warped or even “melted.”
> These problems affected Apple’s own employees, too, with one of the company’s early engineers, Daniel Kottke, picking up his Apple III and slamming it down on the desk out of frustration. To his surprise, the computer “jumped back to life.”
> Apple’s support engineers offered Apple III customers a similar solution:
> Apple recommended users facing problems with the Apple III lift the computer two inches and drop it, as this would set the circuits back in place.