Fiasco of Apple III

First, the major reason was that it designed by its marketing head who was later appointed as a CEO Steve Jobs.

Second, the chip used in manufacturing of Apple III was made by National Semiconductor and was prone to useless after using long time.

Third, Apple directly fit chips in to motherboards so it was impossible to replace it, requiring soldering or a complete board replacement.

Fourth, Jobs wanted to reduce sounds which was generated by computer while operating so he designed it without cooling fan so that it would operate silently. He thought that the case could be engineered so that electronics would cool by convention and that heat would dissipate through chassis. This turned out to be incorrect and the chassis wasn’t able to adequately system, and Apple III became prone to overheating and crashing. When it would heat some of the IC would became disconnected from the motherboard.

And for such this type of computer they put a price $4340 to $7800. Far higher than the price of their competitor.

For this Apple had to replace as many as 14k of first Apple III for free.

Later on Apple released, Apple III plus was launched at $2995. The revised model fixed most of the problems and also included 256KB RAM, an Apple II keyboard etc. but the damage was already done.