Franklin Ace 1000

The Franklin Ace line of computers were clones of the Apple II+ produced by the Franklin Computer Corporation. Ultimately, they were sued by Apple and by the time everything was resolved, Apple II compatibility wasn't as important. Franklin wasn't sued because of the hardware they produced but because they copied Apple's BIOS (even the copyright notice).

The Franklin Ace 1000 was introduced in 1982. It used a MOS 64502 processor and had 64K of RAM as well as 8 Apple II compatible expansion slots. I'm not sure the Franklin Ace 1000 had any big advantages over the II+. My expectations are that it would have been much cheaper but it really wasn't, at least not at introduction. The II+ was introduced in 1979 at $1195 while the Franklin Ace 1000 was introduced in 1982 at $1100. It did have 64K of RAM while the Apple II+ only originally came with 16KB. Also, the II+ needed an expansion card to reach the full 64KB. Other than these relatively small advantages, I'm not sure there was a particularly good reason to get the Franklin Ace over a real Apple II.