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· Announcement

Apple IIGS (1 MB, ROM 3)

Apple announced one product on 1 October 1989: Apple IIGS (1 MB, ROM 3).

It was the 6th of 6 dated moments the archive holds for 1989, 11 days after the previous one, 20 September 1989.

Apple IIGS (1 MB, ROM 3) product photograph

Ruben de Rijcke · CC BY-SA 4.0

What Apple announced

Apple IIGS (1 MB, ROM 3)

Early computers · Apple II · discontinued 1 December 1992

The Apple IIGS (styled as IIGS) is a 16-bit personal computer produced by Apple Computer beginning in September 1986. It is the fifth and most powerful model of the Apple II family. The "GS" in the name stands for "Graphics and Sound", referring to its enhanced multimedia hardware, especially the "state-of-the-art" audio. It is compatible with earlier Apple II models, and Apple initially sold a kit for converting an Apple IIe into a IIGS. 8-bit Apple II software runs nearly three times as fast on the IIGS by default.

The system is a radical departure otherwise, with a WDC 65C816 microprocessor, 256 KB—1 MB of random-access memory expandable to 8 MB, resolution and color similar to the Amiga and Atari ST, and a 32 channel Ensoniq wavetable synthesis chip. Bundled with a mouse, it is the first computer from Apple with a color graphical user interface (color was introduced on the Macintosh II six months later) and the Apple Desktop Bus interface for keyboards, mice, and other input devices.

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Also in 1989

Sources

  1. Apple IIGS (1 MB, ROM 3) · Wikipedia

Dates on this page are announcement dates, not shipping dates. Product summaries are drawn from the linked articles, and specification claims in them are the publisher’s, not independent testing. Photograph credits and licences are listed in full on the image credits page.