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The Apple III, or Apple /// as it was sometimes styled, was the first completely new computer designed by Apple Computer, Inc. (the Apple II having been designed by Steve Wozniak prior to the company's incorporation in 1976). Design work on the Apple III started in late 1978 under the guidance of Dr. Wendell Sander. It had the internal code name of "Sara". The Apple III was introduced in May 1980.

The Apple III was designed to be a business computer. It featured an advanced operating system called SOS (the Sophisticated Operating System) and a new BASIC interpreter, "Apple /// Business BASIC". Other features included an 80-column display with upper and lowercase characters, a numeric keypad, a real-time clock, a hierarchical file system, and the ability to emulate a 48 KB Apple II+. There was a built-in 5¼" floppy disk drive, with up to three additional external "Disk ///" floppy disk drives and a "Profile" 5 megabyte hard disk drive available as options.

The Apple III was powered by a 2 MHz 6502The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced it was the least expensive full featured CPU on the market by far, at about 1/6th the price, or less, of competing designs from larger companies 8-bit8-bit refers to the number of bits used in the data bus of a computer. It is the number of bits of data transferred on each read or write of the memory, and the number of bits used internally in the CPU to carry out processing. Similarly, a 4-bit CPU woul CPUThe central processing unit (CPU is the part of a computer that interprets and carries out the instructions contained in the software. In most CPUs, this task is divided between a control unit that directs program flow and one or more execution units that and, like some of the more advanced machines in the Apple II family, used bank switchingBank switching (also known as paging but unrelated to the ordinary meaning of this term in computing) was a technique common in 8-bit microcomputer systems, to increase the amount of addressable RAM and ROM without extending the address bus. Since 8-bit C techniques to address up to 128K of memory. One of the most impressive technologies at this time was the fact that the Apple III did not include a fan.

It was a commercial failure, mainly due to the cost, lack of good programs designed specifically for it, and a large number of hardware and software bugA computer bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from working correctly or produces an incorrect result. Bugs arise from mistakes and errors, made by people, in either a program's source code or its desigs. One popular anecdote about the Apple III is probably better remembered than the machine itself: in a technical bulletin, customers were instructed to lift the machine three inches (75 mm) and drop it – this was supposed to reseat internal DIPIn electronics, a Dual In-line Package (DIP sometimes called a DIL package, is an electronic device package with a rectangular housing and a row of electrical connecting pins along each of two opposite sides, usually the longer sides of the rectangle. chips that had a tendency to come loose.

An improved version, the Apple III Plus, was introduced in December 1983Events January January 1 Beat Raaflaub became Basel Boys Choir's new conductor January 1 the ARPANET officially changes to use the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet. January 1 compulsory wearing of seat belts becomes law in the UK. January 2 The mu. The III Plus fixed the hardware problems of the original III, included 256K of memory, and featured a keyboard in the style of the Apple IIe. The Apple III line was discontinued four months later.