February 6: 1981: Q: “What Time Is It?” A: “I Have No Idea, I Use an Apple III.”

The Apple III had been out since November and while it was positioned as a powerful business computer, it was in actuality, one of the worst machines Apple ever produced. Naturally no company is ever going to admit that one of the products they produce is an absolute dog, so the marketing department put on a brave face and pushed the Apple III as though it were as revolutionary as the writings of Adam Smith as far as businesses were concerned.

It was only a matter of time before the problems of the Apple III were noticed by the general public (the engineers at Apple were rightly worried the entire time), and one of the first flaws noticed was that the computer couldn't keep time. The culprit was a single chip, but instead of replacing the malfunctioning lump of silicon Apple announced the computer would no longer have date and time functionality built in.

In an interesting side note, the Apple III was designed, poorly, by a committee and the committee was chaired by Steve Jobs. In any event, the public heard the first rumblings that the Apple III never should have left the factory floor during this week in 1981.