Edit: Actually, I think the Apple I only had the monitor in ROM; Basic was typed in using the monitor, and then saved/loaded using cassette. Apple II put Basic in ROM; the shipping version used mask ROM; maybe they used PROMs in development, although at the time PROMs generally had half the capacity of mask ROMs.
Which is why technically HP would've owned some of the IP for the Apple I. I remember hearing some account in a book where he told jobs "Wait a second; I did some of this at work, I used their equipment, I think my employer owns this." But then they got HP to sign a release that they had no interest in the IP, and then they were all good to start the company and get funding. Bet HP is kicking themselves for signing that release, though.
"Hey, this kid named Steve down in systems has been using one of the PROM burners to work on some hobbyist computer that he and another Steve who doesn't work for us have been working on.
I got a letter from one of them asking if that was OK -- it was just signed Steve."
HP sells more personal computers than Apple, and has for effectively as long as they've competed in the market, overtaking Apple in 1997.
They didn't bother Competing with Apple for nearly two decades, and once they entered the market, they were beating Apple about a year and a half after launch.
[−]tonyedgecombe · 2026-11-15 Sun 09:45 UTC ·
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They never really made much money on it though, for a long time the only thing keeping the company afloat was printer ink.
What the Apple II did iirc depended on what version of the ROM. I believe the early versions booted into the monitor, at which point you had to type the magic commands. But they could be upgraded to a "II+" which autostarted the disk or dropped to AppleSoft. (And of course the easiest way to get the facts is to be wrong on the internet :)
Or the magic command to load a program from cassette tape, which was all they had. My later impression is the original Apple II monitor was a horrible UI. So probably most early Apple IIs were upgraded to the "II+" ROM.
Integer BASIC was part of the original ROM. If I had to make a guess, it defaulted to the monitor since you could buy machines in a 4 kB configuration. Even though Integer BASIC was in ROM, some memory would be used by the interpreter and some memory was used for video. That wouldn't leave much memory for software. (Heck, 4 kB wasn't sufficient to support high-resolution graphics.)
Loading Integer BASIC from cassette was a thing, but that was after the autostart ROM was introduced since AppleSoft and Integer BASIC were not compatible.
Our Apple II+ booted to Applesoft without a floppy disk. I think it automatically tried to boot from the floppy first. I remember that the oldest models booted to the monitor, but don't think I ever saw it myself.
See: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/18321/how...
He used equipment at his day job at HP
Edit: Actually, I think the Apple I only had the monitor in ROM; Basic was typed in using the monitor, and then saved/loaded using cassette. Apple II put Basic in ROM; the shipping version used mask ROM; maybe they used PROMs in development, although at the time PROMs generally had half the capacity of mask ROMs.
I got a letter from one of them asking if that was OK -- it was just signed Steve."
They didn't bother Competing with Apple for nearly two decades, and once they entered the market, they were beating Apple about a year and a half after launch.
Loading Integer BASIC from cassette was a thing, but that was after the autostart ROM was introduced since AppleSoft and Integer BASIC were not compatible.