Ah-ha, well! There are actually two Apple IIe models. (Well, there was a third "platinum" one too, but let's not talk about that.) One would have shown "Apple ][" at boot time, and this was the original model with a 6502 NMOS-based chip. But they later released an "enhanced" model, which had a 65C02 CMOS chip. You could tell the difference because the later model would have instead shown "Apple //e" when booting.
It's quite possible (perhaps because you typed it as Apple //e!) that you were actually working with that 65C02 variant, and thus, your janky stuff was forgiven by the Gods of Early Personal Computing (blessed be).
It's quite possible (perhaps because you typed it as Apple //e!) that you were actually working with that 65C02 variant, and thus, your janky stuff was forgiven by the Gods of Early Personal Computing (blessed be).
(See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe)