Appraising the Apple IIe

By Erik Sandberg-Diment
The New York Times

January 25, 1983,

LAST week Apple Computer Inc. stopped making the tremendously popular Apple II Plus and immediately started the assembly lines running again to crank out the Apple IIe. The company had added a letter to the name, removed a lot of pieces from the computer, and came up with two questions: Will it sell? And should you as a consumer consider buying one? The answer to both is a definitive ''maybe.''

Although it may sound surprising, Apple Computer has never really been a technological leader. As the famous dynamic Apple duo of Steven Jobs and Stephen Wozniak were ''inventing'' the personal computer in a garage, a number of other personal computers, emanating from Imsai, Mits, Ohio Scientific, Polymorphic and Processor Technology, were already out in the real world.

What Apple did invent was the marketing plan that converted the microcomputer from an elegant technical toy into the small-business man's leading-edge tool and launched computers into the sea of mass merchandise. Some of the other companies turned out computers in many ways superior to Apple's, but if an item doesn't sell well enough ...

The Apple IIe (the ''e'' stands for ''enhanced'') falls into the same marketing strategy. Essentially a catch-up machine, the Apple IIe provides what the manufacturer describes as a more simply installed device to produce an 80-character line on the display screen (the 80-column circuit card required is extra, however, at $125) and it offers lower-case as well as upper-case characters, features many competitive computers have offered for some time.

Apple's keyboard has been expanded from 53 keys to 63. As a safeguard, the Reset key, which if accidentally pressed abruptly halts whatever the computer is doing and takes the machine back to square one, has been set off from the rest of the keyboard. Four cursor movement keys have been added, though for some strange reason they are arranged linearly rather than in the compass-rose pattern that is so much easier to use.

There are also Solid Apple and Open Apple keys. These features are more innovative. The Solid Apple key, for instance, if pressed along with the Control and the Reset keys, will run a 20-second selfdiagnostic test to check that the computer's internal circuits are functioning properly. It often puts the user's mind at rest when faced with the computer-age-old conundrum, ''Is it the software or the hardware that's not working?'' One of the Open Apple key's several functions is to restart the computer and disk drive if you have been forced to jettison a program in the middle.

New keys aside, the Apple II and the IIe are externally almost as alike as two apples in a bushel. The back panel has been reworked to make the task of connecting such peripheral circuit cards as the one that controls the disk drive easier and neater. And as we approach the core of the machine, the major change in the Apple becomes apparent. The Apple IIe is an almost empty box.

IN the new, enhanced Apple, two large-scale integrated circuits (L.S.I.'s) replace 79 of the older, smaller integrated circuits of the Apple II. All in all, the internal circuitry has been reduced from 110 integrated circuits to 31. From a technical standpoint, this a quite elegant exploit, producing more reliable, and much cooler, operation. From the consumer's point of view, it means a less expensive machine.

This factor brings us back to marketing. In the personal computer field today, pricing determines sales to a large extent. At a suggested retail price of $1,395 for the basic computer itself or $1,995 for the starter package, a bundle which includes 64K, or roughly 64,000 characters, of usable memory - that's about 40 percent more built-in storage than the Apple II without the ''e'' has - a disk drive, a monitor, and an 80-column card, the IIe is competitively a little on the pricey side. However, the reduced number of parts and improved manufacturing techniques allow the company a fair amount of price flexibility. If I were to conjecture on the Apple IIe's marketing future, I would surmise that its base price would drop significantly, perhaps to less than a $1,000 before next Christmas. Then, predictably, for a large group of buyers the Apple IIe would become, like its predecessor, the personal computer all others must try to beat, at least for a couple of years more. The reason would be the software factor, Apple's original marketing coup.

Unlike its earlier competitors, Apple unveiled the technical secrets of its computers both to outside vendors of software and to suppliers of hardware attachments. It actually encouraged competition, in fact - a move some Apple critics viewed as foolish. One result was a host of companies producing Apple-compatible peripherals, the extra bells and whistles buyers wanted because such add-ons allowed them to build complete computer systems, much in the way model railroad buffs could add new cars and track facilities to their layouts. Another end result was an incredibly large selection of software designed to run exclusively on Apples - software that can now run on Apple IIe's without modification.

When it comes to seeing what's available for the Apple IIe in the way of software, your task is easy. A book usually referred to simply as ''VanLoves,'' although the full title for the current edition is ''VanLoves 1983 Apple II/III Software Directory'' (available for $24.95 from Advanced Software Technology Inc., telephone 913-648-4442), lists in its 1,000-plus pages almost all the existent Apple-compatible programs. One caveat is in order: The simple fact that a program is listed doesn't mean it will run the way it's supposed to run.