One of the most noticeable limitations of the Apple II was its medium for storing data: the widely available, but hardly efficient, cassette tape. The Apple II features a built-in cassette port that can read and write data using any decent off-the-shelf cassette recorder, matching most other computers' storage abilities at the time.

_{The inside of the Apple IIe. All Apple II models, save for the compact Apple IIc series, had easily accessible internal expansion card slots.}

However, cassettes are cumbersome and unreliable media for storing computer data, as anyone who has ever waited twenty minutes to play a game only to be told there's been a tape loading error knows.

Woz's trump card was his design for an efficient, speedy, and relatively inexpensive 5.25" floppy disk drive called the Disk II, which was released in 1978 to instant and near-universal acclaim. Disks soon ejected cassettes as the storage medium of choice on Apple systems, and it would take competitors years to catch up to Apple's decisive lead in this critical area.

The early disk standardization complemented the platform's color graphics and sound, making the Apple II series the preferred target of both application and game developers into the late 1980s. As a result, other platforms often had settle for ports of games and programs that had originated on the Apple.

_{Although initially supporting only game paddles, a whole range of controllers would come to be created for the Apple II, including tablets, mice and two-button analog joysticks, such as the three examples shown here behind the Wico Command Control, a device that allows use of Atari-style digital joysticks.}

The two Steves, who got by early on with the help of friends and a select group of talented associates, continued to grow the business into a "real" company with a steady influx of business professionals and other new employees.

By 1980, the company boasted nearly 1000 employees and had outgrown several office spaces. In December of 1980, Apple Computer, Inc., successfully went public, with a valuation close to $2 billion. Several millionaires were created in the process, Jobs and Woz among them.

In 1981, after an injury received in a plane crash, Woz took a leave of absence and returned only briefly before departing for good to explore educational, charitable and other business ventures. In the same year, Jobs became chairman of Apple.

"Just about anything the acquisitive computerist might want for his or her system is available to the Apple II owner." - Electronic Games magazine, December 1983

In 1983, Jobs appointed John Sculley, then president of Pepsi-Cola, to become president and CEO of Apple. By 1985, significant differences between Sculley and Jobs caused Jobs to resign. He didn't return until 1997, when he managed to turn around what had become an ailing and financially weakened company in his absence.