Apple Advert - December 1978

According to The Register^[1], Apple has long since possessed an alternative view of reality, with Steve Jobs being known as "Old Reality Distortion Field, because when he appeared, facts became fallacies and nonsense became accepted dogma".

This was according to an overheard conversation from none other than Jeff Raskin, the man credited as the single person most responsible for the design of the later Apple Mac and who was given the one-millionth machine after it rolled off the production line^[2].

And reality distortion certainly seems to be in full effect with this advert claiming, again, that Apple is the best-selling computer around, even though in 1978 Apple sold only 7,600 Apple II's whilst another of the 1977 Trinity - Tandy - shifted 150,000 of its TRS-80^[3] machines.

The Apple II did eventually outpace both the TRS-80 and Commodore's PET, but its delayed popularity was very much driven by the release of Visicalc in 1979. It went on to sell more than 5 million units in its various versions.

Steve Wozniak, designer of the Apple II, as featured in May 1979's Practical Computing

Despite being launched after the Commodore PET, and only a couple of months before the TRS-80, Steve Wozniak, designer of the Apple II, still regarded his machine as "the first non-kit computer", saying in an interview in May 1979's Practical Computing that:

"Well, now of course there's the Commodre PET and the Radio Shack TRS-80. We don't really think those two have equalled our machine, certainly not in its capability ... Honestly though, the capability of the other two machines is just not as great. The development software available was just not as great, the application software was not in such good shape, the machines have video display limitations, they don't have colour, they don't have high-resolution graphics. I still say we have the best graphics of any of the small computers^[4]".