Also that year, a new factory was built in Freemont, CA just for the Mac.
300-baud and 1200-baud
modems(10) were
released at $299 and $495,
respectively.(11)
Apple finally discontinued the Apple III, which was a failure from the
beginning. At the same time, they released the IIc (at a price of $1,295) at
the "Apple II Forever" conference. Later that year, Apple made the Macintosh
multi-lingual, now speaking German, Italian, and English, which was distributed
by Apple Europe. It also released another Mac with more memory, the 512K Mac,
in September for $3,195. Apple's net revenue that year was $1.52 billion.
Macintosh sales were slowing in 1985, with Apple's net revenue at only
$1.92 billion. Apple responded by laying off 20% of the work force and
closing three plants. Microsoft shipped its GUI OS, Windows 1.0, with
borrowed components from the
MacOS(12). Apple
introduced the LaserWriter, their first laser printer, and AppleTalk. AppleTalk
was the first attempt at a network which, now highly modified, is still
being used. It was at first attractive because of the ease of setting-up
a printer. In a desperate attempt to save her, the Lisa was renamed the
Mac XL. Microsoft also introduced MS Word which was "beyond MacWrite"
(MacUser 85). Wozniak first left to form a new company, and then, a few
months later, Steve Jobs followed and formed NeXT, taking five key Apple
employees with him. NeXT never made it in the computer industry. Finally,
Dayna(13) became
the first to try to make the Mac compatible with
MS DOS(14), with
their software, MacCharlie.