The digital revolution sparked a wide range of products, and the Apple II computer ranked as the second most important. PC World cobbled together a list of the 50 best tech products, and thanks to its influence on personal computers, Appleis computer line that pre-dates the Mac came in second to Netscape Navigator.
The Apple II computer, along with its offspring, the II+, IIe, IIc, and II GS, were functional computers that everyday people could use productively. Christopher Null sums up the Apple II nicely:
"What was so special about the Apple II? It offered plenty of productivity tools (it was the first PC to run the VisiCalc spreadsheet, for instance), it was good at gaming, and it was quite extendable (when is the last time you saw a computer with eight expansion slots?). And the machine itself looked so much cooler than anything that had preceded it, a philosophy that still lives on in the Apple computers of today. The Apple II may not have been the first personal computer, but it was the spark that ignited the personal computing industry."
The Apple II wasnit the only Apple product to make PC Worldis top 50 list. The original iPod came in at number 6, the Macintosh at 14, iTunes 4 at 21, Mac OS X at 30, the original AirPort Base Station at 34, and HyperCard at number 41.