beige rant (was Re: IBM 5150 with red case on ebay)

[Jason T]

On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 9:20 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote:
> Apple manufactured an OEM Apple ][+ ?  Really?  I was pretty sure the B&H's were an independent product.  Apple licensed them to try to step on the clone market.  I can't fathom Apple letting someone else sell their own product (modulo case colour) at a price that undercut the official product.

Every part but (iirc) the case was Apple's and Apple-branded.  It was
just a regular //+, except....

> I do recall now the local elementary & jr. high schools gobbled them up. (The B&H variant.)

The story goes that Apple had trouble getting into certain educational
markets because schools weren't used to budgeting for computers; but
they did buy a lot of A/V equipment.  Apple made a deal with
well-known educational vendor B&H, who made black cases with a special
A/V box on the back (a cluster of RCA connectors) and voila, there was
a computer that a school could buy in the same lot as the Wollensak
tape machines, 16mm projectors and those big headphones with the poofy
white ear cushions.

-j