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> The Apple II was brutally outsold by the Commodore 64 which was far more powerful There's no doubt that the Commodore 64 had better graphics and sound hardw

> The Apple II was brutally outsold by the Commodore 64 which was far more powerful There's no doubt that the Commodore 64 had better graphics and sound hardware, but the idea that it's more powerful in general seems dubious at best. By the time 1983-84 rolled around, an Apple ][ machine was available with 80 column text, 128KB of memory, and a disk that transferred data 30 times faster than the 1541. Sprites and 3-voice audio are nice and all, but it doesn't make the C64 the machine I'd have chosen (even then) for anything other than games. The 1541 disk is notably amazing because that blazing performance was the result of making the disk drive an entirely separate computer in its own right. This did at least make it possible to upload new firmware to the drive to improve the performance... but that was hardly standard. The only material advantages to the 1541 disk architecture was that it let the main machine be slightly cheaper, and it also enabled single disk drives to be multiplexed across multiple C64's. From an educational point of view, it's also interesting to compare the difference in graphics programming models. Drawing a line on the screen in Applesoft: 10 HGR 20 HPLOT 100, 120 to 150, 200 Drawing a line on the screen in Commodore BASIC 2.0: 1. Switch the machine to graphics modes by POKEing data into graphics hardware control registers 2. Implement something like Bresenham's algorithm to get the pixels on the screen. One of these is something that an interested layperson (teacher) can communicate to a class of elementary school students. The other is something out of an upper division undergraduate computer science curriculum. (Admittedly, Terrapin's wonderful C64 Logo made things a lot better for the Commodore.) > and became the most popular 8bit home computer ever sold. (That is, the Apple II was far less important than the hagiography makes out) It's important to consider the machines in their historical contexts. The Commodore 64 and Amiga were great machines at single points in time, but neither of them were created by an organization with the capability to effectively continue and promote their development. (ie: How much of the C64's success was due to setting its price so low that it couldn't fund ongoing development of the platform? Or due to short-term gains produced by a management strategy that alienated key allies in the long term?) Viewed in that context today, Apple is now the most valuable company in the world and successful to the extent that I can look across the aisle of this train and see somebody watching a movie on an Apple product. Commodore, in contrast, is happy memories, a bankrupt company that hasn't existed for decades, and a condemned Superfund environmental contamination site in a Philadelphia suburb. While I have great personal fondness for the C64 machines, there are reasons the industry turned out the way that it did, reasons for Commodore's failure, and reasons for Apple's success... including the Apple ][.

cromwellian 8y ago
Sorry, but no. Commodore’s failure is almost entirely related to terrible business decisions, but machine wise, the C64 was more powerful by virtue of flexibility. (The built in basic is irrelevant and could be easily upgraded to SuperBasic if you wanted that) Ask yourself why 4 decades later, there is still a huge demo scene around the C64 and Amiga, but not the Apple II? The C64 could do things on stock hardware that would have blown your mind in the early 80s as having come from the future: look at the 11 minute mark at the Onslaught Demo https://youtu.be/FTtKHLZTbtA https://youtu.be/FTtKHLZTbtA find me an Apple II demo on stock original hardware that comes even close. (Full screen video and digital audio streaming from floppy at 15fps) my school had Apple IIs, they did not inspire me to learn to program, my C64 did, and I learned 6502 Assembly, not basic, because the graphics I saw in demos and games were jaw dropping and inspiring unlike anything a kid saw on an Apple II. And less 1 year after the Mac128, Commodore launches what was the iPhone of 1985, vertically integrated custom chips and software, for half the price that did all this: https://youtu.be/q7rKj0DU8Xs https://youtu.be/q7rKj0DU8Xs The Mac128 was priced way outside a home users budget, had an almost unusable Tiny amount of memory, non expandable, terrible graphics and sound. It was not a home brew system, or for kids, Or for engineers. For those reasons Commodore computers were way more popular with hackers and with kids, excellent games, and when you chose to explore, excellent hardware to learn to code on. Apple’s success was mostly due to marketing, and don’t forget, Apple failed and almost went bankrupt too. BTW, the total number of Apple IIs sold were less than six million, including 1.25 million IIgs as opposed to Five million Amigas and 12 million C64s. In Europe especially, the C64 dominated.
- mschaef 8y ago
  > machine wise, the C64 was more powerful by virtue of flexibility. What do you mean? Are you referring to the demo scene being able to push the internal hardware as far as they've been able to? > The Mac128 was priced way outside a home users budget, had an almost unusable Tiny amount of memory Probably better to consider a comparison with the Apple model I was alluding to in my earlier post. The Apple //c was much cheaper than a Mac, had 80 column text, 128K RAM, and could run Appleworks. It didn't do games nearly as well as a C64, but you'd have been hard pressed to find as good a machine from Commodore for small office tasks. (Maybe the C128... it was cheaper and had a numeric keypad, but I don't think the software was as strong there as it was for Apple.) > Apple failed and almost went bankrupt too. That 'almost' is rather important, don't you think?

cromwellian 8y ago

Sorry, but no. Commodore’s failure is almost entirely related to terrible business decisions, but machine wise, the C64 was more powerful by virtue of flexibility. (The built in basic is irrelevant and could be easily upgraded to SuperBasic if you wanted that) Ask yourself why 4 decades later, there is still a huge demo scene around the C64 and Amiga, but not the Apple II? The C64 could do things on stock hardware that would have blown your mind in the early 80s as having come from the future: look at the 11 minute mark at the Onslaught Demo https://youtu.be/FTtKHLZTbtA https://youtu.be/FTtKHLZTbtA find me an Apple II demo on stock original hardware that comes even close. (Full screen video and digital audio streaming from floppy at 15fps) my school had Apple IIs, they did not inspire me to learn to program, my C64 did, and I learned 6502 Assembly, not basic, because the graphics I saw in demos and games were jaw dropping and inspiring unlike anything a kid saw on an Apple II. And less 1 year after the Mac128, Commodore launches what was the iPhone of 1985, vertically integrated custom chips and software, for half the price that did all this: https://youtu.be/q7rKj0DU8Xs https://youtu.be/q7rKj0DU8Xs The Mac128 was priced way outside a home users budget, had an almost unusable Tiny amount of memory, non expandable, terrible graphics and sound. It was not a home brew system, or for kids, Or for engineers. For those reasons Commodore computers were way more popular with hackers and with kids, excellent games, and when you chose to explore, excellent hardware to learn to code on. Apple’s success was mostly due to marketing, and don’t forget, Apple failed and almost went bankrupt too. BTW, the total number of Apple IIs sold were less than six million, including 1.25 million IIgs as opposed to Five million Amigas and 12 million C64s. In Europe especially, the C64 dominated.

mschaef 8y ago
> machine wise, the C64 was more powerful by virtue of flexibility. What do you mean? Are you referring to the demo scene being able to push the internal hardware as far as they've been able to? > The Mac128 was priced way outside a home users budget, had an almost unusable Tiny amount of memory Probably better to consider a comparison with the Apple model I was alluding to in my earlier post. The Apple //c was much cheaper than a Mac, had 80 column text, 128K RAM, and could run Appleworks. It didn't do games nearly as well as a C64, but you'd have been hard pressed to find as good a machine from Commodore for small office tasks. (Maybe the C128... it was cheaper and had a numeric keypad, but I don't think the software was as strong there as it was for Apple.) > Apple failed and almost went bankrupt too. That 'almost' is rather important, don't you think?