Apple September 1985 Announcement

Apple's major product event of September 1985 — the largest Apple product reveal between the Mac launch (January 1984) and the Apple IIGS launch (September 1986). Five products:

1. ImageWriter II — color-capable, near-letter-quality successor to the original ImageWriter; sheet-feeder and accessory-slot expansion
2. UniDisk 3.5 — 800K 3.5" floppy drive for the Apple //e and //c (the //c finally gets the 3.5" disk)
3. Composite color monitors for //e/c — Apple's first dedicated color monitor for the Apple II line, monochromatic in 80-column text mode
4. 20MB Mac Hard Disk — first official Apple Mac hard disk
5. Apple Personal Modem — 300/1200 baud

Pi coverage

• 1985-10 — V07 N10 — "New Apple Product Releases" by Adrien Youell (p75); Clinton Computer's full-page Pi-member ad with 25% discount on all the new products

Significance at Pi

Pi members had been on the //e and //c for 2-3 years by this point; the 3.5" drive (UniDisk) finally let them match the Mac's storage capacity. The ImageWriter II added near-letter-quality output to the long-running Pi printer culture.

Apple's 25% Pi-member discount via Clinton Computer became a recurring benefit through the late 1980s.

Connections

• Predecessor: Apple //c launch April 1984
• Successor: Apple IIGS launch September 1986 (1986-10 — V08 N10)
• Concurrent: Steve Jobs had been ousted from Apple in May 1985 — the September event was Sculley/Apple's first major product push post-Jobs