Remembering Apple IIs by their keyboards

Memory is a funny thing, especially during our formative years. The most random things can imprint, where other pertinent details are forgotten to the sands of time. There often doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it; or if there is, I’m oblivious to them. It wouldn’t be the first time. Such is the case with the Apple II and its descendants. I got seriously into retrocomputers when I was in school in the 2000s, but at that point my interest was mostly confined to Commodore kit (and minicomputers from the likes of DEC that ran UNIX, but that’s another post). That naturally led me to learn more about machines that used 8-bit CPUs, and eventually I started reading about the origins of Microbee, Sinclair, Amstrad, and eventually… Woz. I had a vague memory that we used “Apple” computers when I started primary school in Melbourne in the 1990s, but I couldn’t tell you the specific machines, model numbers, or their general configuration. Granted, I was six! I could recall a couple of…