Instruction Manual

Page 1 of 84II gs
Printed: Thursday, July 25, 2002 12:14:50 PM
Apple IIgs Owner's Guide
Preface - The Incredible Stretching Machine
The Apple IIgs is a direct descendant of the Apple I the creation of an engineer who hated so
much to leave his computer behind at the end of the workday that he made himself a home
computer.
Steve Wozniak, the engineer, showed the machine to his friend Steve Jobs, and they showed it to
other engineers and computer enthusiasts at the Homebrew Computer Club. It wasn't much to look
at. It didn't have a case or a keyboard or a matching monitor, but no one saw what it wasn't.
They saw what it could be, and they all wanted one.
So Wozniak and Jobs started building computers for their friends. And those friends started
building cases for their naked circuit boards and writing programs that stretched the machine
to its limits. Except that the limits kept expanding.
The first machine was built to grow, and it's still growing. The memory size, for example which
determines how elaborate a program can be and how big a document can be has gone from 4K on the
Apple I to 256K on the Apple IIgs. And when you need more memory, you can stretch that 256K
beyond 8 megabytes.
Despite the considerable difference in memory size and other features, most of the programs
originally designed for the first generation of Apple computers can run on the Apple IIgs. It's
not a coincidence. It's the result of a commitment to compatibility among the computers in the
Apple II family. And it's the reason you have so many programs, printers, and other Apple
products to choose from today.
You'll learn how you can use those programs and products to stretch your machine as you go
through the training disk and the books that came with your Apple IIgs.
Learning By Doing
The best way to get acquainted with the Apple IIgs is to use it that's the purpose of Your Tour
of the Apple IIgs, the interactive training disk that came packed with your Apple IIgs. The
owner's guide expands on the concepts presented on the training disk, but neither the guide nor
the disk can tell you exactly in a step-by-step way how to use your computer to write reports,
do financial planning, or create graphics. The step-by-step instructions come with the programs
you buy for your computer. The fascinating (and initially confusing) thing about computers is
that how they work depends on what you use them for.
If you have any questions that other manuals don't answer, come back to this manual for help.
If you can't find the answer here, your best resource is a more experienced Apple user. If you
don't know such a person, consider joining an Apple user group in your area.
Road Map to the Manuals
Your Apple IIgs came with several books: Setting Up Your Apple IIgs, the Apple IIgs Owner's
Guide, the Apple IIgs System Disk User's Guide, and A Touch of Applesoft BASIC.
If you haven't done so already, read the setup guide to get your computer set up, and then
start reading this book. Not the whole thing just enough so you feel comfortable with your new
machine. What you do after that depends on whether you want to use a program (for writing,
calculating, list making, drawing) or whether you want to write programs yourself.
You can buy programs to accomplish almost any task you can think of (and many you can't), so