My first PC was an Apple ][+. I bought it more than 25 years ago with 32KB of RAM and within a week added 16KB more (for $70!) so that it contained the maximum. (Its 6502 CPU could only address 64KB of memory, and 16KB of address space was reserved for the system.)
With it, I also purchased a 160KB floppy disk drive (and one blank floppy, which I thought would take forever to fill), which was an option that had just been made available. Prior to that, in order to run programs, you had to either type in the software commands directly (in Basic), or load them from cassette tape. Yes, cassette tape! The back of the Apple ][ had In/Out jacks that you patched into your cassette deck earphone/microphone jacks to save and/or load programs.
Another thing that I found informative – and vastly different from the Apple of today – was that the Apple ][ came with a schematic diagram and a line by line listing of the internal firmware which it ran. This allowed me to learn how computers worked and how programs were written (machine language). In fact, armed with that information and more, I was able to build my own letter quality printer using an old IBM Selectric typewriter and custom circuitry I soldered together on my workbench.
Things are much different today. The internal workings of Apple products are top secret. Furthermore, if you try to come up with anything similar and are at all successful at it, you will likely be sued. It appears Apple holds the patent on any computing device that is thin with a rectangular screen and responds to touch. They hold patents on numerous other "ideas" too.
Frankly, I prefer the business model Apple started out with. I prefer to use products in creative ways I envision, rather than being confined to the exclusive ways the manufacturer has determined will build their financial empire.
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