After the success of the first Apple II in the United States, Apple expanded its market to include Eurpoe and theFar East in 1978, with the Apple II Europlus (Europe) and the Apple II J-Plus (Japan). In these models, Apple made the necessary hardware, software and firmware changes in order to comply to standards outside of the US. The power supply was modified to accept the local voltage, and in the European model the video output signal was changed from color NTSC to monochrome PAL — an extra video card was needed for color PAL graphics, since the simple tricks Wozniak had used to generate a pseudo-NTSC signal with minimal hardware didn't carry over to the more complex PAL system. In most other countries the international Apple was sold with an unmodified American keyboard; thus the German model still lacked the umlauts, for example. For the most part, the Apple II Europlus and J-Plus were identical to the Apple II Plus. Production of the Europlus ended in 1983.
