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He's obviously talking about business failure. I remember when I first saw a Macintosh. To my childish eyes it was a joke compared to the Apple II because of

He's obviously talking about business failure. I remember when I first saw a Macintosh. To my childish eyes it was a joke compared to the Apple II because of its laughable screen. Tiny and B&W? What? What the hell were they thinking? I still have no idea, though I realize that's not such a big deal. To my adult eyes it's still a joke compared to the Amiga, but that's another story. I'm still not sure what was supposed to be special about that original Mac. WYSIWYG? I get a squint. The later ones were okay, though expensive.

yuhong 8y ago
What is fun is how they raised the list price of a Mac II in late 1988 by ~$1100, and even the IIcx in 1989 was not much cheaper. To their credit, they did release the SE/30 which had the processing power and was even cheaper but still had the same screen.
pmarreck 8y ago
I don't know. Perception is a funny thing. The high resolution of the screen made it seem more like paper than any other computer of the time. The Amiga always struck me as "janky". Sure it had color and games, but some kind of magic was missing.
duskwuff 8y ago
> Tiny and B&W? Physically small, but much higher resolution. The high-resolution mode of the Apple II was 280x192. The image was much crisper, too, as it didn't have to be passed around as composite video. :)
icedchai 8y ago
I had an Amiga in the late 80's. The Mac felt like a joke in comparison. The Amiga OS was much more advanced (true multitasking, shell, etc.), never mind the games. You could even emulate a Mac on an Amiga (using AMax.) There were pirated versions that had the ROMs on disk.
blihp 8y ago
Remember, Apple had the market to itself in 1984. The Amiga and Atari ST weren't out until 1985. That said, I'm with you as I was an Apple //e user who jumped to the Amiga 1000 on day 1: it was a decade ahead of anything else at an unbelievable price point. The Mac made no economic sense if you were somewhat technologically savvy in the 80's. But for that first year, the Mac was amazing product that stood alone.

yuhong 8y ago

What is fun is how they raised the list price of a Mac II in late 1988 by ~$1100, and even the IIcx in 1989 was not much cheaper. To their credit, they did release the SE/30 which had the processing power and was even cheaper but still had the same screen.

pmarreck 8y ago

I don't know. Perception is a funny thing. The high resolution of the screen made it seem more like paper than any other computer of the time. The Amiga always struck me as "janky". Sure it had color and games, but some kind of magic was missing.

duskwuff 8y ago

> Tiny and B&W? Physically small, but much higher resolution. The high-resolution mode of the Apple II was 280x192. The image was much crisper, too, as it didn't have to be passed around as composite video. :)

icedchai 8y ago

I had an Amiga in the late 80's. The Mac felt like a joke in comparison. The Amiga OS was much more advanced (true multitasking, shell, etc.), never mind the games. You could even emulate a Mac on an Amiga (using AMax.) There were pirated versions that had the ROMs on disk.

blihp 8y ago

Remember, Apple had the market to itself in 1984. The Amiga and Atari ST weren't out until 1985. That said, I'm with you as I was an Apple //e user who jumped to the Amiga 1000 on day 1: it was a decade ahead of anything else at an unbelievable price point. The Mac made no economic sense if you were somewhat technologically savvy in the 80's. But for that first year, the Mac was amazing product that stood alone.