It was a Saturday morning in September when we saw the Apple IIgs for the first time. By “we,” I mean those of us who headed to local authorized Apple dealers across the country (which for me was Chaney Computer in Newport News, VA) to get some hands-on time with Apple’s new II during that launch-day event 30 years ago, back in 1986. But the hands-on session came only after the machine was (physically) unveiled and the Apple IIgs Sales Demo was booted up and presented to the crowd in attendance.
Apple planned an event for participating dealers that centered around a IIgs system equipped with two 3.5-inch floppy drives, the 12-inch AppleColor RGB Monitor, a 1MB RAM card, and a decent set of speakers. The main event was the two-disk Sales Demo which was written by Tom Lichty and Tom Crosely in order to let the IIgs show off its talents.
After the black cloth was thrown aside revealing the platinum-hued system underneath (and after the “oohs” and “aahs” had abated), the IIgs was switched on, the drives began pulling in data, and suddenly the room was filled with the music of a jazz saxophone while colorful shapes danced about the screen. The quality of that sax and the instruments that began to accompany it was shocking to everyone present; the 32-second piece was digitized 8-bit audio (hence the need for the 1MB RAM expansion board) and very few other systems could pull that off. This was not something that most in attendance had experienced before. Apple’s original plan had been to use synthesized instruments to play the intro piece, but the demo team was unable to get things sounding of the level of quality demanded by this important demo in the allotted amount of time. It was an impressive demo of the GS’s Ensoniq sound chip.
While this year marks the 30th birthday of the Apple IIgs, what really got me thinking about this demo was a post I wrote a few weeks back, concerning the Atari ST, in which I mentioned the Apple IIgs Sales Demo. In writing that piece, I went looking online and was surprised to find no full, proper video of this demo that made such an impression on me and at least a few of you readers out there. Troubled by this, I decided to properly record the demo and upload the video so that it’s out there for anyone searching for this glimpse of a memorable piece of the Apple IIgs‘ infancy.
Great write-up, Blake. I remember that launch demo vividly — the saxophone moment was a genuine jaw-dropper back in ’86, and your recording finally fills a gap I’d been hunting for years. It’s funny how a demo like that could define a machine’s legacy. Speaking of hidden layers in digital content, I recently stumbled across a tool that deals with a different kind of invisible artifact — it detects and strips hidden Unicode watermarks and AI text traces from Claude-generated text. Not quite the Ensoniq magic, but a modern-day puzzle for anyone working with generated content. Thanks for preserving this slice of history!
Great write-up, Blake. That saxophone moment in the IIgs demo is exactly the kind of thing that made 1986 feel like the future — and your recording finally gives it the preservation it deserves. It’s a reminder of how much personality and craft went into those early demo disks, something we don’t always see today. On a related note, if you’re into retro tech and the creative side of digital media, you might also appreciate how modern AI tools are pushing video generation forward — turning simple text prompts into cinematic clips with native audio, a bit like a 21st-century version of that Ensoniq magic. I’ve been experimenting with a platform that does exactly that at minimax3.com. Thanks for keeping this slice of computing history alive!