The Apricot Computer was a computer made for personal and business use in Great Britain in the early to mid 80's. As is often the case with computers, many people believed that the Apricot series of computers could have upset IBM in the United States, but slight delays in getting the Apricot out, and IBM's good name (and possibly some FUD) , meant that the Apricot never got a good toe hold on our shores.
The ACT corporation had actually been around in one form or another since the early 1960's, but only during the late 70's did they turn to making computers. The name apricot grew out of the initials ACT. The Apricot series of computers themselves did not have any startling features, having a standard Intel 8086 or 8088 CPU, and usually fielding a few hundred kilobytes of RAM. Many of the computers did not come with hard drives at first. The one thing that the Apricot did introduce to the world of computing is the 3.5 inch disk drive. It was the first computer manufactred outside of Japan to adopt this size of floppy disk.
However, due to IBM's large marketing arm, and the fact that the Apricot didn't have anything spectacular to recommend it, the Apricot series never caught on in America, and later lost it's popularity in Great Britain. The ACT corporation was later bought out by Mitsubishi, who liquidated it sometime in the late 90's.
I myself bought an Apricot F1 at Wacky Willy's in Portland, OR a year or so ago for the grand price of $5. I rollerbladed home with it, but never did get it working.