Commercial Failure
For a variety of reasons, the Apple III was a commercial failure. With a starting price between $4,340 to $7,800 US, it was more expensive than many of the CP/M-based business computers that were available at the time. The Apple III's software library was very limited, and while sold as Apple II compatible, the emulation that made this possible was intentionally hobbled; thus it could not make use of the advanced III features (specifically 64 KB RAM or higher, required by a large number of Apple II software titles based on PASCAL), which limited its usefulness.
Early Apple III users were told that they had to use existing 40-column Apple II word processors and spreadsheet programs, which hurt sales since those programs could be used in 80-column mode on the Apple IIs with the suitable hardware installed. It wasn't until several months after the Apple III was introduced that native 80-column business software became available.
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