Editing Apple III (section)

==Design flaws==
{{more citations needed section|date=September 2022}}
According to Wozniak, the Apple III "had 100 percent hardware failures".<ref name="byte198501" /> Former Apple executive Taylor Pohlman stated that:<ref name="bartimo19841210">{{cite magazine | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=si4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA41 | title=Q&A: Taylor Pohlman | magazine=[[InfoWorld]] |volume=6|issue=50|location=United States|publisher=IDG|issn=0199-6649|oclc=923931674| date=December 10, 1984 | access-date=January 5, 2015 | last1=Bartimo|first1=Jim | page=41}}</ref>

{{Blockquote|There was way too short a time frame in manufacturing and development. When the decision was made to announce, there were only three Apple IIIs in existence, and they were all [[wire wrap|wire-wrapped]] boards.

The case of the Apple III had long since been set in concrete, so they had a certain size logic board to fit the circuits on ... They went to three different outside houses and nobody could get a layout that would fit on the board.

They used the smallest line circuit boards that could be used. They ran about 1,000 of these boards as preproduction units to give to the dealers as demonstration units. They really didn't work ... Apple swapped out the boards. The problem was, at this point there were other problems, things like chips that didn't fit. There were a million problems that you would normally take care of when you do your preproduction and pilot run. Basically, customers were shipped the pilot run.}}

Jobs insisted on the idea of having no fan or air vents, in order to make the computer run quietly. He would later push this same ideology onto almost all Apple models he had control of, from the [[Apple Lisa]] and [[Macintosh 128K]] to the [[iMac]].<ref>{{cite web|first=Bob|last=Estes|date=May 15, 2009|website=On-Screen Scientist|url=http://onscreen-scientist.com/?tag=fan-control|title=First Cool, Now Quiet|access-date=August 2, 2009|archive-date=August 23, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110823180201/http://onscreen-scientist.com/?tag=fan-control|url-status=live}}</ref> To allow the computer to dissipate heat, the base of the Apple III was made of heavy cast aluminum, which supposedly acts as a [[heat sink]]. One advantage to the aluminum case was a  reduction in RFI (Radio Frequency Interference), a problem which had plagued the Apple II series throughout its history. Unlike the Apple II, the power supply was mounted – without its own shell – in a compartment separate from the logic board. The decision to use an aluminum shell ultimately led to engineering issues which resulted in the Apple III's reliability problems. The lead time for manufacturing the shells was high, and this had to be done before the motherboard was finalized. Later, it was realized that there was not enough room on the motherboard for all of the components unless narrow traces were used.

[[File:Apple III+ case.jpg|thumb|Apple III Plus showing the RFI shield over the floppy drive and the cast aluminum case]]

Many Apple IIIs were thought to have failed due to their inability to properly dissipate heat. ''inCider'' stated in 1986 that "Heat has always been a formidable enemy of the Apple ///",<ref name="obrien198609" /> and some users reported that their Apple IIIs became so hot that the chips started dislodging from the board, causing the screen to display garbled data or their [[Floppy disk|disk]] to come out of the slot "melted".<ref>{{Cite web|date=2007-07-14|title=Apple III and Apple IIe › Mac History|url=https://www.mac-history.net/computer-history/2007-07-14/apple-iii-and-apple-iie|access-date=2021-07-21|website=Mac History|language=en-US|archive-date=July 21, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210721182841/https://www.mac-history.net/computer-history/2007-07-14/apple-iii-and-apple-iie|url-status=live}}</ref> ''[[BYTE]]'' wrote, "the integrated circuits tended to [[chip creep|wander out of their sockets]]".<ref name="moore198209">{{cite magazine | url=https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1982-09/1982_09_BYTE_07-09_Computers_and_the_Disabled#page/n93/mode/2up | title=The Apple III and Its New Profile | magazine=[[Byte (magazine)|BYTE]] |volume=7|number=9|publisher=UBM Technology Group|issn=0360-5280|oclc=637876171|location=United States| date=September 1982 | access-date=October 19, 2013 | author=Moore, Robin | page=92}}</ref> It has been rumored Apple advised customers to tilt the front of the Apple III six inches above the desk and then drop it to reseat the chips as a temporary solution.{{sfn|Linzmayer|2004|pp=41–43}} Other analyses blame a faulty automatic chip insertion process, not heat.<ref>{{cite web|title=What Really Killed the Apple III|url=http://www.applelogic.org/AIIIDesignBugs.html|website=AppleLogic|access-date=July 9, 2015|archive-date=September 14, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220914193313/http://www.applelogic.org/AIIIDesignBugs.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Case designer [[Jerry Manock]] denied the design flaw charges, insisting that tests proved that the unit adequately dissipated the internal heat. The primary cause, he claimed, was a major logic board design problem. The logic board used "fineline" technology that was not fully mature at the time, with narrow, closely spaced traces.<ref name="youtube.com">{{cite AV media|date=Nov 13, 2007|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--7Br07QKMk| archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211122/--7Br07QKMk| archive-date=2021-11-22 | url-status=live|first1=Robert|last1=Brunner|first2=Jerry|last2=Manock|publisher=Computer History Museum|title=Apple Industrial Designers Robert Brunner and Jerry Manock|id=Catalog number 102695056}}{{cbignore}}</ref> When chips were "stuffed" into the board and [[Wave soldering|wave-soldered]], solder bridges would form between traces that were not supposed to be connected. This caused numerous short circuits, which required hours of costly diagnosis and hand rework to fix. Apple designed a new circuit board with more layers and normal-width traces. The new logic board was laid out by one designer on a huge [[drawing board|drafting board]], rather than using the costly [[Computer-aided design|CAD]]-[[Computer-aided manufacturing|CAM]] system used for the previous board, and the new design worked.

Earlier Apple III units came with a built-in real time clock. The hardware, however, would fail after prolonged use.<ref name="moore198209" /> Assuming that [[National Semiconductor]] would test all parts before shipping them, Apple did not perform this level of testing. Apple was soldering chips directly to boards and could not easily replace a bad chip if one was found. Eventually, Apple solved this problem by removing the real-time clock from the Apple III's specification rather than shipping the Apple III with the clock pre-installed, and then sold the peripheral as a level 1 technician add-on.{{sfn|Linzmayer|2004|pp=41–43}}