"Built in 1977, the Apple II was based on Wozniak's Apple I design, but with several additions. The first was the design of a beige plastic case -- a rarity at the time. The second was the ability to display color graphics--a holy grail in the industry. The Apple II also included a larger ROM, more expandable RAM (4K to start), and 8 expansion slots. It had integer BASIC hard-coded on the ROM for easier programming, and included two game paddles and a demo cassette for $1,298. In early 1978 Apple also released a disk drive for the machine, one of the most inexpensive available. The Apple II remained on the Apple product list until 1980. It was also repackaged in a black case (pictured above) and sold to educational markets by Bell & Howell." (photo credit: Personal Computing magazine, Nov. 1984)

CPU
CPU: MOS Technology 6502
CPU Speed: 1 MHz
FPU: none
Bus Speed: 1 MHz
Data Path: 8 bit
ROM: 12 kB
RAM slots: 1st expansion slot can be used
Expansion Slots: 8 proprietary

Video
Max Resolution: 6 color at 280x192, 4-bit color at 40x48

Storage
Floppy Drive: optional

Input/Output
Serial: optional expansion card
Speaker: mono

Miscellaneous
Codename: ?
Introduced: 1977
Terminated: 1980

This byte of Apple's history from Wired's "30 Years of Apple Products."