The Apple II (sometimes written as Apple ][ or Apple //) was the first popular microcomputer manufactured by Apple. Its direct ancestor was the Apple I, a limited production circuit board computer for electronics hobbyists which pioneered many features that made the Apple II a commercial success.
The first Apple II computers went on sale on June 5, 1977 with a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at 1 MHz, 4 KB of RAM, an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs. The video controller displayed 24 lines by 40 columns of monochrome, upper-case-only text on the screen, with NTSC composite video output suitable for display on a monitor, or on a TV set by way of an RF modulator.
The original retail price of the computer was US$1298 (with 4 KB of RAM) and US$2638 (with the maximum 48 KB of RAM). In the UK it retailed for between £995 (4K) and £1900 (48K). To reflect the computer's colour graphics capability, the Apple logo on the casing was represented using rainbow stripes, which remained a part of Apple's corporate logo until early 1998. The earliest Apple IIs were assembled in Silicon Valley, and later in Texas. The printed circuit boards were manufactured in Ireland and Singapore.