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Nobody is denying that Apple made it while Commodore failed. The question is: Was AmigaOS a "major" operating system that should be considered here. And I woul

Nobody is denying that Apple made it while Commodore failed. The question is: Was AmigaOS a "major" operating system that should be considered here. And I would say: Yes, during its time it was: - It had millions of users, at least some percentage of them serious ones. - It was used heavily in the TV industry - For a long time it had the biggest online archive of public domain software and shareware (Aminet) of all contemporary platforms. - Many of today's high-profile game developers started their career on the Amiga and, back on-topic: - It had something similar to AppleScript several years before the Mac. ARexx was available from 1987 and was shipped with the OS from 1990 on. Most commercial productivity software had an "ARexx port" and was scriptable in a uniform, system-wide manner. On the other hand, systems like Smalltalk or the Lisp Machines, though way more powerful, were never really mainstream.

mschaef 8y ago
> Nobody is denying that Apple made it while Commodore failed Sure... my main point is that it's overstating the case a bit to say that the C64 was strictly more powerful than the Apple ][ series. There were technical aspects of the Apple ][ series that were usefully more capable than the C64.
- cromwellian 8y ago
  If you include the the Apple II "series", then you should include the C128/C128D. That nullifies the only advantage non-IIgs models had, which was more RAM and 80 column mode. It also sold more than all Apple II models combined by itself. Other than that, what were the technical aspects of the Apple II (non-GS) that we should be aware of? The IIgs was a very nice machine, but it had to contend with the Amiga which easily outclassed it.
  - mschaef 8y ago
    > then you should include the C128/C128D. Where do the Plus-4 and C16 fit in? (Not to mention all of the 'Secret Weapons of Commodore' that they didn't manage to actually ship? As much as you talk about Apple hobbling the IIgs, it's not like they were the only company with unfulfilled potential from their engineering.) (I did rather like the SX-64, though.) > Other than that, what were the technical aspects of the Apple II (non-GS) that we should be aware of? The machines could do some rather amazing things... by the time the early 90's rolled around, my high school Physics teachers had them generating custom tests for each student with integrated graphics for drawings, grading the tests in real time with an integrated scantron machine, and keeping all the class records on disk. They got a lot of mileage out of some features made easier on the Apple. If I remember right, they had 1MB of RAM they were using and the test scanner plugged into an expansion card. They also swapped out the code to to disk to generate each question and draw the graphics... as they were generating the individualized tests for each student. For a 20 question test on a class of 20 that meant 400 disk read operations, so the faster disk I/O would've been useful to overall throughput. (They hacked a way to do partial loads of BASIC code into Applesoft by modifying the linked lists the interpreter used to maintain lines.) And I'm pretty sure they used a mouse and (80-col) double-hires mode to draw the graphics for the tests. I'm not saying a C64 couldn't have done it, but the SID and the VIC II wouldn't have helped any, and there are a number of Apple ][ capabilities that did...

mschaef 8y ago

> Nobody is denying that Apple made it while Commodore failed Sure... my main point is that it's overstating the case a bit to say that the C64 was strictly more powerful than the Apple ][ series. There were technical aspects of the Apple ][ series that were usefully more capable than the C64.

cromwellian 8y ago
If you include the the Apple II "series", then you should include the C128/C128D. That nullifies the only advantage non-IIgs models had, which was more RAM and 80 column mode. It also sold more than all Apple II models combined by itself. Other than that, what were the technical aspects of the Apple II (non-GS) that we should be aware of? The IIgs was a very nice machine, but it had to contend with the Amiga which easily outclassed it.
- mschaef 8y ago
  > then you should include the C128/C128D. Where do the Plus-4 and C16 fit in? (Not to mention all of the 'Secret Weapons of Commodore' that they didn't manage to actually ship? As much as you talk about Apple hobbling the IIgs, it's not like they were the only company with unfulfilled potential from their engineering.) (I did rather like the SX-64, though.) > Other than that, what were the technical aspects of the Apple II (non-GS) that we should be aware of? The machines could do some rather amazing things... by the time the early 90's rolled around, my high school Physics teachers had them generating custom tests for each student with integrated graphics for drawings, grading the tests in real time with an integrated scantron machine, and keeping all the class records on disk. They got a lot of mileage out of some features made easier on the Apple. If I remember right, they had 1MB of RAM they were using and the test scanner plugged into an expansion card. They also swapped out the code to to disk to generate each question and draw the graphics... as they were generating the individualized tests for each student. For a 20 question test on a class of 20 that meant 400 disk read operations, so the faster disk I/O would've been useful to overall throughput. (They hacked a way to do partial loads of BASIC code into Applesoft by modifying the linked lists the interpreter used to maintain lines.) And I'm pretty sure they used a mouse and (80-col) double-hires mode to draw the graphics for the tests. I'm not saying a C64 couldn't have done it, but the SID and the VIC II wouldn't have helped any, and there are a number of Apple ][ capabilities that did...