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My memories of being 12 and watching the C64 shelves at the video game store rapidly give way to IBM/PC shelves definitely support this narrative. I don't reme

by damon_c 11y ago

My memories of being 12 and watching the C64 shelves at the video game store rapidly give way to IBM/PC shelves definitely support this narrative. I don't remember any Apple shelf...

protomyth 11y ago
My memories was that an Apple II was a luxury item like a BMW. We got an Atari 400 and 410 by trading in my Atari 2600 and 23 cartridges. My dad bought the BASIC cartridge with it[1]. There was no way our family could have afforded an Apple ($1,000+), and frankly in 1983 we didn't have the information sources to pick a Commodore[2]. I still don't think most parents are educated enough to do something as simple as a Raspberry Pi, and I worry about the whole that the loss of the 8-bit under $200 market left. I do wonder if someone built $100 Lisp Machines here in 2016 what that would do for CompSci education, but with App Stores and all the modern machinery, handing a cassette to friend to run on his computer is long gone. 1) I do wonder how it would have gone if he had bought the LOGO or Assembler cartridge instead. 2) I will say I'm glad we got the Atari (except for the keyboard) because I got to play with the great Jay Miner chipset
scholia 11y ago
Apple dominated the microcomputer market with the Apple ][ before IBM joined in with the IBM PC in 1981. Apple targeted the business market with high-priced machines including the Apple III and the Lisa. That's where it lost out to IBM. The PC took over the business market, and Apple was reduced to the education and hobbyist markets. (Exception: after the Mac was launched in 1984, Apple also picked up a big share of the graphics market.) Commodore went into the home computer business with the Vic-20 and C=64 at console-type prices (a couple of hundred dollars rather than $1,500-$3,000).
- protomyth 11y ago
  > Apple dominated the microcomputer market with the Apple ][ before IBM joined in with the IBM PC in 1981. In 1981, the Commodore VIC-20 (announced in Jan) dominated the market being the first computer to sell over 1 million units. It picked up from the Commodore PET and was succeeded in 1982 by the Commodore 64 which sold 17 million systems. Atari sold more computers in 1981 than Apple. Apple did profit not market domination.
  - scholia 11y ago
    TIME magazine cover story 1982: America's Risk Takers "Steven Jobs, 26, the co-founder of five-year-old Apple Computer, practically singlehanded created the personal computer industry. This college dropout is now worth $149 million." From: "Striking It Rich, Feb. 15, 1982" The VIC-20 was a mediocre computer, but it succeeded as a cheap toy.
    - protomyth 11y ago
      I think he was fired a little over 2 years later, seems the hype was better than the reality[1]. > The VIC-20 was a mediocre computer, but it succeeded as a cheap toy. That "cheap toy" delivered the ability to learn to program to more kids than Apple's BMW priced computers did. It also dominated the market. Saying Apple dominated the market in 1981 is about as true as saying Apple invented the personal computer. 1) I did love my NeXTSTEP 3.3 on Intel machine, though
      - scholia 11y ago
        Jobs was shown the door because the Mac flopped. It had nothing to do with the ][, which was keeping Apple afloat.... > That "cheap toy" delivered the ability to learn to program to more kids than Apple's BMW priced computers did. Arguable since only a tiny percentage of Vic-20 owners ever wrote more than two lines of code, while vast numbers of kids use the Apple ][ in schools.... Incidentally, Sinclair Spectrum/Timex owners make the same claim as Vic-20 owners and it's just as specious ;-)
        erickhill 11y ago
        > Arguable since only a tiny percentage of Vic-20 owners ever wrote more than two lines of code, while vast numbers of kids use the Apple ][ in schools.. I don't know about your school, but at mine folks were playing Oregon Trail and simple math word problems on Apple ]['s and that was about it. "Coding" didn't happen until maybe 11th or 12th grade - as an elective choice. Prior to that time, on my C64 I was copying programs (painfully) out of the back of magazines in my free time after school. Point is, just because there were computers in schools did not somehow create a legion of CS majors. Heck, more than half the folks in the programming class I took (late 80s) all had 'cheap' computers at home. They only the class because they perceived it to be an easy A or B.
- MagerValp 11y ago
  Jeremy Reimer has a great article collecting sales numbers for personal computers: http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137 http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137 In 1981 the Apple II sold less than both the TRS-80 and the Atari 800. Also remember that the Apple II was almost exclusively sold in the US.

by damon_c 11y ago

My memories of being 12 and watching the C64 shelves at the video game store rapidly give way to IBM/PC shelves definitely support this narrative. I don't remember any Apple shelf...

protomyth 11y ago

My memories was that an Apple II was a luxury item like a BMW. We got an Atari 400 and 410 by trading in my Atari 2600 and 23 cartridges. My dad bought the BASIC cartridge with it[1]. There was no way our family could have afforded an Apple ($1,000+), and frankly in 1983 we didn't have the information sources to pick a Commodore[2]. I still don't think most parents are educated enough to do something as simple as a Raspberry Pi, and I worry about the whole that the loss of the 8-bit under $200 market left. I do wonder if someone built $100 Lisp Machines here in 2016 what that would do for CompSci education, but with App Stores and all the modern machinery, handing a cassette to friend to run on his computer is long gone. 1) I do wonder how it would have gone if he had bought the LOGO or Assembler cartridge instead. 2) I will say I'm glad we got the Atari (except for the keyboard) because I got to play with the great Jay Miner chipset

scholia 11y ago

Apple dominated the microcomputer market with the Apple ][ before IBM joined in with the IBM PC in 1981. Apple targeted the business market with high-priced machines including the Apple III and the Lisa. That's where it lost out to IBM. The PC took over the business market, and Apple was reduced to the education and hobbyist markets. (Exception: after the Mac was launched in 1984, Apple also picked up a big share of the graphics market.) Commodore went into the home computer business with the Vic-20 and C=64 at console-type prices (a couple of hundred dollars rather than $1,500-$3,000).

protomyth 11y ago
> Apple dominated the microcomputer market with the Apple ][ before IBM joined in with the IBM PC in 1981. In 1981, the Commodore VIC-20 (announced in Jan) dominated the market being the first computer to sell over 1 million units. It picked up from the Commodore PET and was succeeded in 1982 by the Commodore 64 which sold 17 million systems. Atari sold more computers in 1981 than Apple. Apple did profit not market domination.
- scholia 11y ago
  TIME magazine cover story 1982: America's Risk Takers "Steven Jobs, 26, the co-founder of five-year-old Apple Computer, practically singlehanded created the personal computer industry. This college dropout is now worth $149 million." From: "Striking It Rich, Feb. 15, 1982" The VIC-20 was a mediocre computer, but it succeeded as a cheap toy.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    I think he was fired a little over 2 years later, seems the hype was better than the reality[1]. > The VIC-20 was a mediocre computer, but it succeeded as a cheap toy. That "cheap toy" delivered the ability to learn to program to more kids than Apple's BMW priced computers did. It also dominated the market. Saying Apple dominated the market in 1981 is about as true as saying Apple invented the personal computer. 1) I did love my NeXTSTEP 3.3 on Intel machine, though
    - scholia 11y ago
      Jobs was shown the door because the Mac flopped. It had nothing to do with the ][, which was keeping Apple afloat.... > That "cheap toy" delivered the ability to learn to program to more kids than Apple's BMW priced computers did. Arguable since only a tiny percentage of Vic-20 owners ever wrote more than two lines of code, while vast numbers of kids use the Apple ][ in schools.... Incidentally, Sinclair Spectrum/Timex owners make the same claim as Vic-20 owners and it's just as specious ;-)
      - erickhill 11y ago
        > Arguable since only a tiny percentage of Vic-20 owners ever wrote more than two lines of code, while vast numbers of kids use the Apple ][ in schools.. I don't know about your school, but at mine folks were playing Oregon Trail and simple math word problems on Apple ]['s and that was about it. "Coding" didn't happen until maybe 11th or 12th grade - as an elective choice. Prior to that time, on my C64 I was copying programs (painfully) out of the back of magazines in my free time after school. Point is, just because there were computers in schools did not somehow create a legion of CS majors. Heck, more than half the folks in the programming class I took (late 80s) all had 'cheap' computers at home. They only the class because they perceived it to be an easy A or B.
MagerValp 11y ago
Jeremy Reimer has a great article collecting sales numbers for personal computers: http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137 http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137 In 1981 the Apple II sold less than both the TRS-80 and the Atari 800. Also remember that the Apple II was almost exclusively sold in the US.