In 1978, Apple again relocated, this time to Bandley Drive in "beige
structures, one or two stories high, that aspired to a suburbanized Spanish
mission style but failed to achieve it" (Rose 19). That year, Apple released
the Disk II, which allowed for real software development by providing a
standard medium. Two employees could put out thirty of them per day. In
December, according to Apple Computer, they became one of the fastest growing
companies in the US. The Apple II+, which sported 48K of RAM
(3), an auto-start
ROM(4), and a price
of $1,195, was released in June of 1979. That year, Apple also founded the
Apple Education Foundation, which granted Apple Computers to schools. They
introduced their first printer, the Silentype, and started a same-day nationwide
repair program as well as introduced a low cost one-year extended warranty.
Apple II Pascal, a programming language which is still widely used today, was
also released. Apple II sales rose over 400% from the previous year (1978)
to 35,000 units.
Apple FORTRAN, another programming language which is primarily used for
higher-end programs, was released and regional support centers opened in
Massachusetts, North Carolina, California, Texas, and Canada. Manufacturing
plants opened in Texas and Apple Europe opened one in Ireland. The Apple III,
which had a new
OS(5), a built-in
disk controller, and four peripheral slots (where expansion cards can be
plugged in) debuted at the National Computer Conference. Apple unsuccessfully
tried to sell it for $3,495. Then, in December of 1979, Apple went public
with an initial offering of 4.6 million shares at $22.00 each. This was the
largest public offering since Ford in 1956. The employee count broke 1,000 and
Apple Seed, a computer literacy program was announced. All this happened in 1980.