Apple II

The Apple II (1977) was the third of the “1977 trinity” launches, alongside the Commodore PET and TRS-80 Model I, and the one that leaned hardest into being an actual consumer product: a full keyboard built in, a plastic case, and — its standout feature — colour graphics, achieved by exploiting NTSC video artifacts rather than dedicated colour hardware. That combination made it the platform of choice for early hobbyist and educational software, and it stayed in production in various forms for over a decade, long enough to fund the company through the Macintosh’s development.

Reference photo: Wikimedia Commons (“Apple II-IMG 7064.jpg” by Rama & Musée Bolo), CC BY-SA 2.0 FR. Shown with a later pair of Disk II floppy drives, not part of the original 1977 cassette-based configuration.