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Price wasn't the main driver, either. Dealer network mattered a LOT. Lots of kids who grew up away from larger cities ended up with computers from Radio Shack,
by ubermonkey 7y ago
Price wasn't the main driver, either. Dealer network mattered a LOT.
Lots of kids who grew up away from larger cities ended up with computers from Radio Shack, because they were EVERYWHERE, while Apple or Commodore dealers were harder to find.
But I'm still curious, because I don't remember: How did (e.g.) Apple II pricing compare to equivalent-ish, contemporaneous models from Commodore or Tandy?
- dfxm12 7y agoHow did (e.g.) Apple II pricing compare to equivalent-ish, contemporaneous models from Commodore or Tandy? Apple ][: $1,298 Commodore PET: $795 Tandy TRS-80: $600 At these prices, in 1977, only the Apple had color graphics.
- hsitz 7y agoI was one of the young kids (age 15) who saved up and bought a TRS-80 in 1979. Apple IIe was definitely better, but more expensive. PET was a bit of an odd bird, with chiclet square calculator keys and built in small monitor, no real keyboard. Apple II was the only one that was color, and if I recall it had bitmapped graphics with 256 x 192 resolution. TRS-80 had crude 48 x 128 graphics. My school had an Apple II for use by some science students, and I did some fooling around on it. It was definitely much nicer. But TRS-80 was mostly a tool to learn about computers; somehow I scrounged up resources (probably guided by magazines), got a CPU manual, and did some simple Z80 machine language programming, later got an assembler.