Why the Apple II Didn’t Support Lowercase Letters
I&#x27;ve always wanted to know why Apple II video screen is only 280 pixels wide.<p>The Apple II video screen is 40 bytes wide, but it only draw 7 pixels per byte, for a total of 280 pixels. The 8th bit was used for selecting the color pallet (eventually; initially the 8th bit was just ignored)<p>Drawing 7 pixels per byte makes everything a lot more complicated, so it would seem to go against Woz&#x27;s obsession for simplicity.  It&#x27;s hard to believe that 7 pixels per byte would reduce the chip count, and it certainly makes the software a lot more complicated (lots of divide-by-sevens).<p>CGA graphics and the Atari 400&#x2F;800 also provide a composite graphics mode similar to the Apple II, where each pixel lines up with the NTSC color burst frequency, but they draw 8 pixels per byte for a total of 320 pixels, and therefore use a wider portion of the screen.<p>Perhaps Woz thought (incorrectly) that the NTSC screen wasn&#x27;t wide enough to accommodate 40x8 (320) pixels so he cut it down to 40x7, or he planned all along to use the 8th bit to provide extra color.  It would be interesting to know the actual reason.