13 ms·

Why Apple II Is the World's Best Selling Personal Computer (1978)

55 points by elvis70 6y ago

cromwellian 6y ago
Except it was outsold by the Commodore 64 (5-6 million Apple 2's sold, 17 million C64s + 5 million C128s). Even Vic-20 sold close to 1 million. The Commodore PET sold 4000 units in 1978. The Sinclair Spectrum ZX sold about 5 million units. Given Apple's revenue of $7.9 million in 1978, and a base price of $1300, Apple sold about 6000 Apple 2s in 1978. So I guess on that basis, Apple II > Commodore PET, but the history of 8-bit home computers was written by Commodore. Everyone else is a footnote.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Angostura 6y ago
  The Commodore and Soectrum were definitely hobbyist home computers, the Apple ][ was something rather different. The Commodore PET was its peer
  - cromwellian 6y ago
    You realize of course, that the Commodore 64/128 were better than the Apple 2 and PET in every conceivable way? RAM, graphics, sound, available software library, etc. It wasn't until the IIc/e where it had something that a C64 didn't, 80 column mode (C128 had it) The Apple IIc cost as much as an Amiga 1000, a machine which was a quantum leap better, than both the Apple 2 series, and greatly superior in HW to the Mac until the introduction of the Mac II's introduction (for $12,000 in 2019 dollars)
    - quietbritishjim 6y ago
      > You realize of course, that the Commodore 64/128 were better than the Apple 2 and PET in every conceivable way? "Of course" is indeed is the right phrase to use here. The Commodore 2 is a computer from several years later, at time when Moore's law was in full swing. Put another way, my laptop or smartphone is better than an Apple 2 and was cheaper to buy... Yes, but so what? I don't see what point you're making (in either this comment or the GP one), except that hardware gets better over time.
      - cromwellian 6y ago
        The C64 wasn't better than the Apple 2 because of Moore's law. The C64 and Apple 2 both had 6502s running around 1Mhz. The C64 was better than the Apple 2, because of superior overall design of the HW. The VIC-II, SID, and CIA chips. The overall point I'm making is that for years Apple sold inferior hardware at vastly inflated prices, and made up for it only in superior marketing. Commodore had a whole team of Steve Wozniaks doing wonders, and managed to sell a ton of great, functional computers for people, but go unrecognized because of incompetent management that ultimately doomed the company. HN is flooded continuously with Apple hagiography, but in the 80s, practically no one I knew owned an Apple, whether it was regular kids down the streets, or the hackers and phreakers, crackers, and demo scene folks I frequented with online. But somehow, an entire decade where Commodore computers were ubiquitous and dominated non-business environments, is unknown to today's millennials.
        cromwellian 6y ago
        And by better, I mean, this was the kind of stuff 1982 C64 hardware could do (see whole demo for more, but here's real-time 16fps video decoding + digital sound): https://youtu.be/FTtKHLZTbtA?t=715 https://youtu.be/FTtKHLZTbtA?t=715 And here's what 1985 Amiga HW could do. This isn't Moore's law advantage (compare to 1984 and 85 Mac models). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7rKj0DU8Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7rKj0DU8Xs
        simonh 6y ago
        >...superior overall design of the HW. The VIC-II, SID, and CIA chips. Chips that didn't exist in 1978. The overall point you're making is that technology from several years later was better. Or you're trying to hijack the thread into a rant about Apple in the 1980s and later for some reason.
        cromwellian 6y ago
        > Chips that didn't exist in 1978. The overall point you're making is that technology from several years later was better. Not relevant. Years later, even the Apple IIc (1984) wasn't close to a C64, not to mention an Amiga. The thing you're missing is, Commodore had purchased MOS Technology, just like Apple purchased PA Semi to make their own iPhone SoCs, and had spent years investing in custom silicon going back to the VIC in 1979. The Apple II did not have a "video chip". Wozniak had cobbled together a video chip out of a bunch of 74LS TTL chips. Here, learn to built one yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7rce6IQDWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7rce6IQDWs That's what I meant by "superior design". Commodore actually had integrated CMOS chips for video, audio, I/O, that they had designed in house and fabbed themselves. The Apple 2, well into the IIc days, was built like a semi-decent Arduino project. Even the Mac had gfx and DMA cobbled out of TTL chips.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      > You realize of course, that the Commodore 64/128 were better than the Apple 2 and PET in every conceivable way? Having been launched many years after the II and the PET, I'd expect much better specs. One key selling point of the II was the software library. The Commodores had great games, but Apple II's, aided by the Disk II, had orders of magnitude more, in both numbers and diversity. Up to the 128, disk performance also hurt the Commodore 64 family. The IIs architecture remained very stable over the years and backwards compatibility was always excellent. This allowed Apple to have very healthy profit margins (to the point of hurting itself) because it protected the investment in software. Don't get me wrong - I love the 64 (love the 128 a bit less) and the brilliant idea of having a disk drive that has its own computer inside (same applies to the 8-bit Ataris).
      - jhbadger 6y ago
        Also, many people with other computers in the 1980s maybe don't realize how many of their games were ports of Apple II games. Lord British's "Ultima" series (at least up to Ultima 5) were developed on the Apple II and ported to the C64 and MS-DOS later. Same with Castle Wolfenstein. And the Wizardry series.
    - tenebrisalietum 6y ago
      > You realize of course, that the Commodore 64/128 were better than the Apple 2 and PET in every conceivable way? Disks were WAY faster on Apple II than C-64. Also in the mid 80's when I was in elementary school, all my schools had Apple II's and all of them had 80 columns. I get the feeling it was better supported in software on Apple II than the options available for 80-column output on C64. Both of these were more important to business use than the C-64's SID or VIC chips.
  - memsom 6y ago
    For us, the Spectrum was everything the Apple ][ was to you. But the BBC Micro used a lot in education is probably what you should really be comparing the Apple ][ to. It was better than the Apple ][ in many ways. It had most of the features, but it had some really innovative stuff. Not least the Tube - that allowed a co processor - but could be anything. The BBC Micro was 6502, but the Tube allowed Z80 so you could run CPM. It was also the tool that Acorn apparently used developed the ARM processor prototypes. The main issue with the Apple ][ was that it stayed more or less the same for its entire life, and the way is was got dated. The difference between the PET and the C64 is that the design evolved (but the basic fabric was pretty similar.) I know there was the Apple 2 GS later, but that was a lot later and probably a little too late. IMO the European computer scene was very different from the US, and in many ways more advanced. Because there was constant innovation and competition. That drove things forward, and affected the US computer manufacturers indirectly as they wanted to sell in to this market. So we had all the US computers (Commodore, RadioShack, Atari, TI etc), but also (at least in the UK) Sinclair ZX80/ZX81/ZX Spectrum (TS1000 and most other Timex machines were based on this range), Tangerine Oric 1/Atmos, Amstrad CPC/PCW/NC, Camputers Lynx, Dragon 32/64, Enterprise 64/128, Grundy Newbrain, Jupiter ACE, Memotech MTX range, Acorn Atom/BBC/Electron/Archimedes (latter, for which they invented and used the ARM processor). Our 80's 8bit journey was rich and varied.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      > I know there was the Apple 2 GS later, but that was a lot later and probably a little too late. The IIgs is a weird thing. It's a new computer with an Apple IIe built-in, a bit like the C-128, which was essentially a C-64 with two other computers built-in. In many aspects, the Apple /// was more of an Apple II than the IIgs. The gs was also limited in performance so it wouldn't cannibalize Mac sales. A slightly faster 65816 would run rings around the 68000 in the Mac.
      - icedchai 6y ago
        In the late 80's, the IIgs was often grouped with the Amiga and Atari ST. You'd often see games (like Marble Madness, Zany Golf...) available for all three. The game situation on early Macs was not good. I wanted a IIgs for a while, but a BBSer convinced me the Amiga was a better choice.
- vidarh 6y ago
  Growing up in Norway I never saw an Apple II in person. Apple didn't get a presence until the Mac, which for the first few years stood largely ignored in a corner of my local computer store. It emphasises how much peoples views of these brands were shaped by geographical differences. Commodore totally dominated in large parts of Europe, where Apple was a weird curiosity, behind Commodore, Spectrum, Amstrad. Even machines like Oric and Apricot had more of a presence. Atari was also rare until the ST. Eventually even Acorn Archimedes became more common to see in my circles than Apple. Briefly. Elsewhere in Europe the list of machines was different, but from what I remember Apple struggled to get a foothold most places until the Mac. Largely I suspect because it was so expensive compared to most of the above. It was first in the mid-90s Apple became something I came across regularly.
  - cromwellian 6y ago
    During the 80s, I often traded software with Europeans in the C64 and Amiga scenes. I'd send them US software, and they'd send me European software. Most Americans had C64, 1541 drives, 2400 baud modems, etc. The Europeans typically had datasettes and 300-1200 baud modems, because the cost of equipment was higher, phone calls were more expensive, and there was even a modem tax in Germany apparently. So the protocol we used was that Americans would send them a 2400 baud modem, and make international calls to them, in exchange for hot new European game releases, because the extra speed would reduce the expense. There's simply no way Europeans were going to buy overpriced, underpowered Apple hardware at that point in time. There was nothing an Apple 2 could do that a C64 couldn't, and a C64 could do substantially more than an Apple 2. The results of the demoscene, which still exists for C64s, Amigas, Atari STs, and Spectrums, but is almost non-existent for the Apple 2, shows how under capable and uninteresting the platform was.
    - vidarh 6y ago
      > So the protocol we used was that Americans would send them a 2400 baud modem, and make international calls to them, in exchange for hot new European game releases, because the extra speed would reduce the expense. I never was that involved in trading. My circle stuck to mailing floppies, mostly within Norway. It was fun seeing how that too became optimised for quick turnaround - sometimes mailed without an envelope, just the protective cover taped in place... And with a lot of the more prolific traders eventually getting caught using wax over the stamps to allow them to scrape off the post mark and reuse the stamp to save money. But, yeah, especially the lack of unmetered local calls in Europe was a massive limiting factor on modems, and coupled with no single standard for type approval of telecoms equipment which drove up the modem cost massively, especially in the smaller markets, it was a massive luxury until early 90's at least. I didn't get one until '93.
- boomlinde 6y ago
  > Except it was outsold by the Commodore 64 I don't see how that is an exception to anything in the ad. It's from 1978, still four years before Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. The claim is that it is the best selling computer, in 1978, not that it always will be. Don't get me wrong, it's interesting information. The phrasing of it as an exception to the claims of the ad is strange and confusing.
- orionblastar 6y ago
  Commodore 64 units were so cheap they got sold in toy stores. This made computer shops angry at Commodore. So when the Commodore Amiga 1000 came out computer stores didn't want to carry it.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    What really angered them was when Tramiel dropped the retail price without informing computer stores first, and without offering to refund the difference between the old a and new retail price. But, yeah, Commodore burned their retail network in the US time and time and time again.
    - cromwellian 6y ago
      Among other things the incompetent Commodore management did. Here was a company that did "vertical integration" Apple-style before Apple. They had their own CPU, their own video chips, their own sound chips, custom. They had a platform years ahead of their peers (just compare a 1985 Amiga to a 1985 Mac). But CBM was epically mismanaged, terrible at marketing, but great at paying their CEO big salaries and bonuses.
      - ecpottinger 6y ago
        It is my understanding that a one time Commodore executives were the highest paid people in the microcomputer industry. Millions that could have gone in research, marketing, and just support programs vanished into the pockets of higher management even as Commodore was losing it's market share.
        vidarh 6y ago
        R&D at Commodore was always notoriously underfunded compared to the competition and compared to their size. Which makes what they achieved at their height all the more incredible.
        orionblastar 6y ago
- timbit42 6y ago
  VIC-20 sold close to 3 million units. VIC-20 was the first computer to sell 1 million units. Regardless, this article is 1978, before the VIC-20 or C64 came out. The TRS-80 was, by far, the best selling of the 1977 Trinity. This was because it had the lowest price and it was readily available from Radio Shack stores. Commodore had trouble producing the PET and the inclusion of the monitor and tape drive made it have a higher price.
- kindall 6y ago
  I think you're underestimating just how dominant the Apple II was in the late seventies to mid eighties, at least in the US.. Apple made the machine until 1993 (and the model I'm talking about isn't even the 16-bit IIgs, but the 8-bit IIe) because they were still selling profitably up until then. Every school had them and every parent who could afford one got one for their kids. Commodore 64s were cheaper, sure, but had a reputation as a game machine and couldn't run Apple software or even exchange files with Apples. Better to buy an Apple II clone if you couldn't afford a real one. Not that there weren't games for the Apple II... there were plenty. Most of the biggest game publishers of the early micro era, including one or two that still exist today, developed for the Apple II first. Sierra On-Line, Broderbund, Electronic Arts. Programming an arcade game on the Apple II was so challenging, what with its bizarre screen memory layout, weird color scheme, and lack of hardware sprites, that many Apple II game programmers viewed programming for the C64 or Atari 400/800 (which used the same CPU but had actual graphics and sound hardware) as akin to cheating. Some of the most creative games of the era arose from these technical limitations. And hordes of young programmers cut their teeth learning how to remove the copy protection from these games so they could trade them for free games others had cracked. The guys who started id Software met at an Apple II publisher. It was as dominant in business right up until the IBM PC took off and even for some time after, thanks to VisiCalc, the first killer app. When Apple released the integrated software package AppleWorks in 1984 it shot to the top of the sales charts. Not merely the Apple II charts, but the industry charts for all computers including the PC. It stayed there for months and served as a foundation of a healthy third-party development ecosystem for years. The profits from the Apple II line paid for the development of the Lisa and then the Macintosh, and kept the company afloat until the Mac was profitable. Yeah, the Apple II was a big deal. I got in a bit late myself (I stared my first job in the industry in 1990) but it was still the foundation of my technology career.
- FraKtus 6y ago
  Not sure, because the Apple II was easy to copy and it was very popular to buy a Pear computer without roms and just insert the copy of the EPROMs to have a full functional Apple II at a bargain price.
- StillBored 6y ago
  I'm curious where these numbers come from. Wikipedia says that by 1980 apples revenue was $118 million and that was before they released the most popular model (the IIe in jan of 1983), which was still being sold in 1993. The C64 by itself may have sold more units than anything apple produced, but you added up the entire 6502 commodore line. Adding up the entire II line might be an interesting comparison. In the US as I remember the 1980's apple ][s were everywhere. And there were 6 models (or more depending on if you count the revisions), and a number of clones (Franklin Ace and laser 128, were two popular ones). So, It would be interesting to get numbers for all those models, because each successive generation definitely cannibalized the previous ones. No one purchased the plus after the 'e' came out, and the gs was definitely the machine to own later in the life-cycle (particularly with an accelerator). I couldn't find overall numbers with a quick google search.
- jecel 6y ago
  Here are the numbers that Jeremy Reimer has for thousands of units sold in 1978[0]: TRS-80: 150 Commodore Pet: 30 Apple II: 7.6 Altair: 4 Others: 100 It lists a total of 258 thousand, which seems to omit Apples and Altairs. His 2005 article[1] talked about 4000 Pets sold in 1978 (the number you gave as well), which is an order of magnitude less. [0] https://jeremyreimer.com/rockets-item.lsp?p=137 https://jeremyreimer.com/rockets-item.lsp?p=137 [1] https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/3/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/3/
TMWNN 6y ago
It's well known that the Apple II was one of the first three prepackaged, preassembled personal computers on the market. It, the TRS-80 Model I, and the Commodore PET all appeared in late 1977. It's not well known that the Apple was not the obvious winner of the three; the TRS-80 was. Every small town in America had Tandy's Radio Shack stores, and even if Radio Shack had a reputation for selling toys and gizmos as opposed to computers, it had a reputation. As a startup, Apple didn't. Commodore wasn't as well known as Tandy but was an established calculator and office-equipment company, with its own semiconductor fab that produced the 6502 CPU that Apple and other rivals used. And, in fact, until about 1980, the TRS-80 dominated the market. What happened? * The disk drive. All three computers only used tape storage in 1977, but their makers soon provided disk drives. Tandy's drive is a horrible, unreliable kludge. Commodore's PET disk drives are gigantic monstrosities that are fast and reliable[1] but far too expensive. Steve Wozniak's Disk II is a combination of a brilliantly simple and reliable disk controller, and inexpensive-to-make (and thus highly profitable) drive mechanism, that still run well today, 40 years later. * Third-party products. Apple published everything needed to create software and hardware for the II. Its slots invited engineers to design cards. The TRS-80 came with a superb BASIC tutorial, but Tandy otherwise kept all technical information secret, hoping to monopolize third-party development.[2] Radio Shack stores were not allowed to sell non-Tandy products, and couldn't carry third-party publications like 80 Micro that by default became the major way companies sold TRS-80 products (since other retailers didn't want to compete with Radio Shack stores). Commodore's Jack Tramiel never ever understood the importance of software development, and the PET fell far behind Tandy and Apple in the US; until the VIC-20 in 1980 most of Commodore's computer sales were in Europe and Canada, where Apple and Tandy didn't compete. * VisiCalc. Because of the above, VisiCalc was written for the Apple when market share should have caused it to be written for TRS-80 (Dan Fylstra of Personal Software, VisiCalc's publisher, was one of the first owners of the TRS-80). Being only available for Apple massively drove sales of the II; for the first time, people bought a computer to run a specific killer app, as opposed to the other way around. In turn, others chose the II to develop for Even after 1980, when Apple had clearly gained sales momentum, Tandy still had the bulk of the installed base. 80 Micro's December 1982 issue (https://archive.org/details/80-microcomputing-magazine-1982-12 https://archive.org/details/80-microcomputing-magazine-1982-...) has 484 pages. I'm pretty sure no Apple magazine ever came close to that thickness; the only other computer magazines in history to be that thick are 1) PC Magazine before it went bimonthly in 1984 after the December 1983 issue hit 800 pages, and 2) BYTE. Wayne Green, the publisher of 80 Micro, had by that time written editorials in almost every single issue pleading with Tandy to encourage third-party developers. Tandy didn't relent until the Model 16, introduced that year, had zero third-party software after six months. But by then it was too late. As fat as they are, reading Tandy magazines like 80 Micro and Rainbow (https://archive.org/details/rainbowmagazine-1983-12/ https://archive.org/details/rainbowmagazine-1983-12/) from the early 1980s is like visiting a sad and barren alternate world; instead of Origin, Epyx, MicroProse, and SSI, there are much cruder-looking ads from tiny companies offering bad clones of popular arcade games. [1] Two virtues Commodore's later drives did not retain [2] It's clear in retrospect that TRS-80 was intentionally designed to not be compatible with the existing 8080/Z80 standards. ROM's location in the memory map broke CP/M compatibility, and the expansion bus is not S-100 compatible.
jcun4128 6y ago
Isn't it amazing, looking at those images... have no idea about future companies. I already feel like "what is there to make" now. I mean making value from digital "stuff" vs. more tangible things like making a physical product/doing manual labor.
notmadnomad 6y ago
Memories. I remember the Apple //e in elementary school ('83 or '84) with LOGO and Oregon Trail. (Thanks Apple!) Oddly enough, I also remember almost burning my finger on some of the units with the light on the right/bottom area of the keyboard. Oh, and seeing Woz' house just as it finished construction because my grandparent's neighbor was the realtor IIRC.
jd115 6y ago
Growing up in eastern Europe in the 80's, I learned to program in Basic on a "Pravetz 82" - an almost exact replica of the Apple II in all but name, except every single component and material used was manufactured in Bulgaria from scratch. Communists were firmly convinced that they've actually done a better job than the capitalist pigs at Apple and even self credited themselves with the invention of personal computing. It was a wildly successful product throughout the whole eastern bloc. It was accompanied by a whole ecosystem of home-made software, games, peripherals, robotics kits, literature, magazines, and was very popular in the educational systems of nearby countries. A good portion of the brightest software engineers to come out of eastern Europe made their baby steps in programming on this gem [1] I have very fond memories of it. 1. https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-these-communist-era-apple-ii-clones-helped-shape-central-europes-it-sector/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-these-communist-era-apple-...
- jhbadger 6y ago
  And likewise, the Soviet Union had their "Agat" series of computers that were likewise Apple II clones, but if I recall the Pravetz computers were made in larger quantities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agat_(computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agat_(computer)
taylodl 6y ago
The things that separated Apple II from the rest of the "gaming" computers such as the C64 (which is what I owned) were its bus and its software. First the software. 8 bit software for small business ran on the Apple II (especially in the late 70s/early 80s). Ever hear of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet? Originally released for the Apple II. dBase? One of the earliest databases available for microcomputer systems? First ran on Apple II and then MS-DOS. Even a word processor was available: Apple Writer. So in 1979 you had a spreadsheet, database and word processor. Just the tools you needed for a small business. Now the bus. Apple II had expansion slots and a whole industry devoted to creating every kind of interface imaginable. You had the standards such as printers and floppy disk drives, but you also had hard disk drives (which few of the other 8 bit micros of the time supported) and a plethora of lab equipment. It was kind of like the Raspberry PI of it's day - people were hooking up all kinds of stuff to those machines. Bottom line, Apple II focused on small business, labs, and hobbyists. C64 and Atari focused more on a game console that could also double as a computer. Apple II went to the office while the C64 and Atari went to the home. Apple II would continue to dominate in the small business environment until the MS-DOS machines reached price and feature parity - which happened in the late 80s. By that time it was clear Apple was headed the way of GUIs and wasn't as interested in investing more into the Apple II line, so it withered. But for a period of about 8-10 years the Apple II dominated the business and hobbyist market. P.S. - the "Apple Tax" existed even back then. The Apple II machines were way more expensive than the Atari 400/800 (even the ST) and the Commodore VIC 20/64. I remember my C64 costing $600 whereas an Apple II+ (which was targeted for homes) ran $1,200-$1,400. Unless you were actually running a business you simply couldn't cost justify those machines.
musicale 6y ago
Adding a top-level comment, because this is as exciting as the Apple ad if not more so: an article describing the classic Oregon Trail game, including its source code (!) in BASIC, as well as a transcript of someone actually winning (!!) the game, starts on page 132.

55 points by elvis70 6y ago

Except it was outsold by the Commodore 64 (5-6 million Apple 2's sold, 17 million C64s + 5 million C128s). Even Vic-20 sold close to 1 million. The Commodore PET sold 4000 units in 1978. The Sinclair Spectrum ZX sold about 5 million units. Given Apple's revenue of $7.9 million in 1978, and a base price of $1300, Apple sold about 6000 Apple 2s in 1978. So I guess on that basis, Apple II > Commodore PET, but the history of 8-bit home computers was written by Commodore. Everyone else is a footnote.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Angostura 6y ago
The Commodore and Soectrum were definitely hobbyist home computers, the Apple ][ was something rather different. The Commodore PET was its peer
- cromwellian 6y ago
  You realize of course, that the Commodore 64/128 were better than the Apple 2 and PET in every conceivable way? RAM, graphics, sound, available software library, etc. It wasn't until the IIc/e where it had something that a C64 didn't, 80 column mode (C128 had it) The Apple IIc cost as much as an Amiga 1000, a machine which was a quantum leap better, than both the Apple 2 series, and greatly superior in HW to the Mac until the introduction of the Mac II's introduction (for $12,000 in 2019 dollars)
  - quietbritishjim 6y ago
    > You realize of course, that the Commodore 64/128 were better than the Apple 2 and PET in every conceivable way? "Of course" is indeed is the right phrase to use here. The Commodore 2 is a computer from several years later, at time when Moore's law was in full swing. Put another way, my laptop or smartphone is better than an Apple 2 and was cheaper to buy... Yes, but so what? I don't see what point you're making (in either this comment or the GP one), except that hardware gets better over time.
    - cromwellian 6y ago
      The C64 wasn't better than the Apple 2 because of Moore's law. The C64 and Apple 2 both had 6502s running around 1Mhz. The C64 was better than the Apple 2, because of superior overall design of the HW. The VIC-II, SID, and CIA chips. The overall point I'm making is that for years Apple sold inferior hardware at vastly inflated prices, and made up for it only in superior marketing. Commodore had a whole team of Steve Wozniaks doing wonders, and managed to sell a ton of great, functional computers for people, but go unrecognized because of incompetent management that ultimately doomed the company. HN is flooded continuously with Apple hagiography, but in the 80s, practically no one I knew owned an Apple, whether it was regular kids down the streets, or the hackers and phreakers, crackers, and demo scene folks I frequented with online. But somehow, an entire decade where Commodore computers were ubiquitous and dominated non-business environments, is unknown to today's millennials.
      - cromwellian 6y ago
        And by better, I mean, this was the kind of stuff 1982 C64 hardware could do (see whole demo for more, but here's real-time 16fps video decoding + digital sound): https://youtu.be/FTtKHLZTbtA?t=715 https://youtu.be/FTtKHLZTbtA?t=715 And here's what 1985 Amiga HW could do. This isn't Moore's law advantage (compare to 1984 and 85 Mac models). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7rKj0DU8Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7rKj0DU8Xs
      - simonh 6y ago
        >...superior overall design of the HW. The VIC-II, SID, and CIA chips. Chips that didn't exist in 1978. The overall point you're making is that technology from several years later was better. Or you're trying to hijack the thread into a rant about Apple in the 1980s and later for some reason.
        cromwellian 6y ago
        > Chips that didn't exist in 1978. The overall point you're making is that technology from several years later was better. Not relevant. Years later, even the Apple IIc (1984) wasn't close to a C64, not to mention an Amiga. The thing you're missing is, Commodore had purchased MOS Technology, just like Apple purchased PA Semi to make their own iPhone SoCs, and had spent years investing in custom silicon going back to the VIC in 1979. The Apple II did not have a "video chip". Wozniak had cobbled together a video chip out of a bunch of 74LS TTL chips. Here, learn to built one yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7rce6IQDWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7rce6IQDWs That's what I meant by "superior design". Commodore actually had integrated CMOS chips for video, audio, I/O, that they had designed in house and fabbed themselves. The Apple 2, well into the IIc days, was built like a semi-decent Arduino project. Even the Mac had gfx and DMA cobbled out of TTL chips.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    > You realize of course, that the Commodore 64/128 were better than the Apple 2 and PET in every conceivable way? Having been launched many years after the II and the PET, I'd expect much better specs. One key selling point of the II was the software library. The Commodores had great games, but Apple II's, aided by the Disk II, had orders of magnitude more, in both numbers and diversity. Up to the 128, disk performance also hurt the Commodore 64 family. The IIs architecture remained very stable over the years and backwards compatibility was always excellent. This allowed Apple to have very healthy profit margins (to the point of hurting itself) because it protected the investment in software. Don't get me wrong - I love the 64 (love the 128 a bit less) and the brilliant idea of having a disk drive that has its own computer inside (same applies to the 8-bit Ataris).
    - jhbadger 6y ago
      Also, many people with other computers in the 1980s maybe don't realize how many of their games were ports of Apple II games. Lord British's "Ultima" series (at least up to Ultima 5) were developed on the Apple II and ported to the C64 and MS-DOS later. Same with Castle Wolfenstein. And the Wizardry series.
  - tenebrisalietum 6y ago
    > You realize of course, that the Commodore 64/128 were better than the Apple 2 and PET in every conceivable way? Disks were WAY faster on Apple II than C-64. Also in the mid 80's when I was in elementary school, all my schools had Apple II's and all of them had 80 columns. I get the feeling it was better supported in software on Apple II than the options available for 80-column output on C64. Both of these were more important to business use than the C-64's SID or VIC chips.
- memsom 6y ago
  For us, the Spectrum was everything the Apple ][ was to you. But the BBC Micro used a lot in education is probably what you should really be comparing the Apple ][ to. It was better than the Apple ][ in many ways. It had most of the features, but it had some really innovative stuff. Not least the Tube - that allowed a co processor - but could be anything. The BBC Micro was 6502, but the Tube allowed Z80 so you could run CPM. It was also the tool that Acorn apparently used developed the ARM processor prototypes. The main issue with the Apple ][ was that it stayed more or less the same for its entire life, and the way is was got dated. The difference between the PET and the C64 is that the design evolved (but the basic fabric was pretty similar.) I know there was the Apple 2 GS later, but that was a lot later and probably a little too late. IMO the European computer scene was very different from the US, and in many ways more advanced. Because there was constant innovation and competition. That drove things forward, and affected the US computer manufacturers indirectly as they wanted to sell in to this market. So we had all the US computers (Commodore, RadioShack, Atari, TI etc), but also (at least in the UK) Sinclair ZX80/ZX81/ZX Spectrum (TS1000 and most other Timex machines were based on this range), Tangerine Oric 1/Atmos, Amstrad CPC/PCW/NC, Camputers Lynx, Dragon 32/64, Enterprise 64/128, Grundy Newbrain, Jupiter ACE, Memotech MTX range, Acorn Atom/BBC/Electron/Archimedes (latter, for which they invented and used the ARM processor). Our 80's 8bit journey was rich and varied.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    > I know there was the Apple 2 GS later, but that was a lot later and probably a little too late. The IIgs is a weird thing. It's a new computer with an Apple IIe built-in, a bit like the C-128, which was essentially a C-64 with two other computers built-in. In many aspects, the Apple /// was more of an Apple II than the IIgs. The gs was also limited in performance so it wouldn't cannibalize Mac sales. A slightly faster 65816 would run rings around the 68000 in the Mac.
    - icedchai 6y ago
      In the late 80's, the IIgs was often grouped with the Amiga and Atari ST. You'd often see games (like Marble Madness, Zany Golf...) available for all three. The game situation on early Macs was not good. I wanted a IIgs for a while, but a BBSer convinced me the Amiga was a better choice.
vidarh 6y ago
Growing up in Norway I never saw an Apple II in person. Apple didn't get a presence until the Mac, which for the first few years stood largely ignored in a corner of my local computer store. It emphasises how much peoples views of these brands were shaped by geographical differences. Commodore totally dominated in large parts of Europe, where Apple was a weird curiosity, behind Commodore, Spectrum, Amstrad. Even machines like Oric and Apricot had more of a presence. Atari was also rare until the ST. Eventually even Acorn Archimedes became more common to see in my circles than Apple. Briefly. Elsewhere in Europe the list of machines was different, but from what I remember Apple struggled to get a foothold most places until the Mac. Largely I suspect because it was so expensive compared to most of the above. It was first in the mid-90s Apple became something I came across regularly.
- cromwellian 6y ago
  During the 80s, I often traded software with Europeans in the C64 and Amiga scenes. I'd send them US software, and they'd send me European software. Most Americans had C64, 1541 drives, 2400 baud modems, etc. The Europeans typically had datasettes and 300-1200 baud modems, because the cost of equipment was higher, phone calls were more expensive, and there was even a modem tax in Germany apparently. So the protocol we used was that Americans would send them a 2400 baud modem, and make international calls to them, in exchange for hot new European game releases, because the extra speed would reduce the expense. There's simply no way Europeans were going to buy overpriced, underpowered Apple hardware at that point in time. There was nothing an Apple 2 could do that a C64 couldn't, and a C64 could do substantially more than an Apple 2. The results of the demoscene, which still exists for C64s, Amigas, Atari STs, and Spectrums, but is almost non-existent for the Apple 2, shows how under capable and uninteresting the platform was.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    > So the protocol we used was that Americans would send them a 2400 baud modem, and make international calls to them, in exchange for hot new European game releases, because the extra speed would reduce the expense. I never was that involved in trading. My circle stuck to mailing floppies, mostly within Norway. It was fun seeing how that too became optimised for quick turnaround - sometimes mailed without an envelope, just the protective cover taped in place... And with a lot of the more prolific traders eventually getting caught using wax over the stamps to allow them to scrape off the post mark and reuse the stamp to save money. But, yeah, especially the lack of unmetered local calls in Europe was a massive limiting factor on modems, and coupled with no single standard for type approval of telecoms equipment which drove up the modem cost massively, especially in the smaller markets, it was a massive luxury until early 90's at least. I didn't get one until '93.
boomlinde 6y ago
> Except it was outsold by the Commodore 64 I don't see how that is an exception to anything in the ad. It's from 1978, still four years before Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. The claim is that it is the best selling computer, in 1978, not that it always will be. Don't get me wrong, it's interesting information. The phrasing of it as an exception to the claims of the ad is strange and confusing.
orionblastar 6y ago
Commodore 64 units were so cheap they got sold in toy stores. This made computer shops angry at Commodore. So when the Commodore Amiga 1000 came out computer stores didn't want to carry it.
- vidarh 6y ago
  What really angered them was when Tramiel dropped the retail price without informing computer stores first, and without offering to refund the difference between the old a and new retail price. But, yeah, Commodore burned their retail network in the US time and time and time again.
  - cromwellian 6y ago
    Among other things the incompetent Commodore management did. Here was a company that did "vertical integration" Apple-style before Apple. They had their own CPU, their own video chips, their own sound chips, custom. They had a platform years ahead of their peers (just compare a 1985 Amiga to a 1985 Mac). But CBM was epically mismanaged, terrible at marketing, but great at paying their CEO big salaries and bonuses.
    - ecpottinger 6y ago
      It is my understanding that a one time Commodore executives were the highest paid people in the microcomputer industry. Millions that could have gone in research, marketing, and just support programs vanished into the pockets of higher management even as Commodore was losing it's market share.
      - vidarh 6y ago
        R&D at Commodore was always notoriously underfunded compared to the competition and compared to their size. Which makes what they achieved at their height all the more incredible.
      - orionblastar 6y ago
timbit42 6y ago
VIC-20 sold close to 3 million units. VIC-20 was the first computer to sell 1 million units. Regardless, this article is 1978, before the VIC-20 or C64 came out. The TRS-80 was, by far, the best selling of the 1977 Trinity. This was because it had the lowest price and it was readily available from Radio Shack stores. Commodore had trouble producing the PET and the inclusion of the monitor and tape drive made it have a higher price.
kindall 6y ago
I think you're underestimating just how dominant the Apple II was in the late seventies to mid eighties, at least in the US.. Apple made the machine until 1993 (and the model I'm talking about isn't even the 16-bit IIgs, but the 8-bit IIe) because they were still selling profitably up until then. Every school had them and every parent who could afford one got one for their kids. Commodore 64s were cheaper, sure, but had a reputation as a game machine and couldn't run Apple software or even exchange files with Apples. Better to buy an Apple II clone if you couldn't afford a real one. Not that there weren't games for the Apple II... there were plenty. Most of the biggest game publishers of the early micro era, including one or two that still exist today, developed for the Apple II first. Sierra On-Line, Broderbund, Electronic Arts. Programming an arcade game on the Apple II was so challenging, what with its bizarre screen memory layout, weird color scheme, and lack of hardware sprites, that many Apple II game programmers viewed programming for the C64 or Atari 400/800 (which used the same CPU but had actual graphics and sound hardware) as akin to cheating. Some of the most creative games of the era arose from these technical limitations. And hordes of young programmers cut their teeth learning how to remove the copy protection from these games so they could trade them for free games others had cracked. The guys who started id Software met at an Apple II publisher. It was as dominant in business right up until the IBM PC took off and even for some time after, thanks to VisiCalc, the first killer app. When Apple released the integrated software package AppleWorks in 1984 it shot to the top of the sales charts. Not merely the Apple II charts, but the industry charts for all computers including the PC. It stayed there for months and served as a foundation of a healthy third-party development ecosystem for years. The profits from the Apple II line paid for the development of the Lisa and then the Macintosh, and kept the company afloat until the Mac was profitable. Yeah, the Apple II was a big deal. I got in a bit late myself (I stared my first job in the industry in 1990) but it was still the foundation of my technology career.
FraKtus 6y ago
Not sure, because the Apple II was easy to copy and it was very popular to buy a Pear computer without roms and just insert the copy of the EPROMs to have a full functional Apple II at a bargain price.
StillBored 6y ago
I'm curious where these numbers come from. Wikipedia says that by 1980 apples revenue was $118 million and that was before they released the most popular model (the IIe in jan of 1983), which was still being sold in 1993. The C64 by itself may have sold more units than anything apple produced, but you added up the entire 6502 commodore line. Adding up the entire II line might be an interesting comparison. In the US as I remember the 1980's apple ][s were everywhere. And there were 6 models (or more depending on if you count the revisions), and a number of clones (Franklin Ace and laser 128, were two popular ones). So, It would be interesting to get numbers for all those models, because each successive generation definitely cannibalized the previous ones. No one purchased the plus after the 'e' came out, and the gs was definitely the machine to own later in the life-cycle (particularly with an accelerator). I couldn't find overall numbers with a quick google search.
jecel 6y ago
Here are the numbers that Jeremy Reimer has for thousands of units sold in 1978[0]: TRS-80: 150 Commodore Pet: 30 Apple II: 7.6 Altair: 4 Others: 100 It lists a total of 258 thousand, which seems to omit Apples and Altairs. His 2005 article[1] talked about 4000 Pets sold in 1978 (the number you gave as well), which is an order of magnitude less. [0] https://jeremyreimer.com/rockets-item.lsp?p=137 https://jeremyreimer.com/rockets-item.lsp?p=137 [1] https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/3/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/3/

TMWNN 6y ago

It's well known that the Apple II was one of the first three prepackaged, preassembled personal computers on the market. It, the TRS-80 Model I, and the Commodore PET all appeared in late 1977. It's not well known that the Apple was not the obvious winner of the three; the TRS-80 was. Every small town in America had Tandy's Radio Shack stores, and even if Radio Shack had a reputation for selling toys and gizmos as opposed to computers, it had a reputation. As a startup, Apple didn't. Commodore wasn't as well known as Tandy but was an established calculator and office-equipment company, with its own semiconductor fab that produced the 6502 CPU that Apple and other rivals used. And, in fact, until about 1980, the TRS-80 dominated the market. What happened? * The disk drive. All three computers only used tape storage in 1977, but their makers soon provided disk drives. Tandy's drive is a horrible, unreliable kludge. Commodore's PET disk drives are gigantic monstrosities that are fast and reliable[1] but far too expensive. Steve Wozniak's Disk II is a combination of a brilliantly simple and reliable disk controller, and inexpensive-to-make (and thus highly profitable) drive mechanism, that still run well today, 40 years later. * Third-party products. Apple published everything needed to create software and hardware for the II. Its slots invited engineers to design cards. The TRS-80 came with a superb BASIC tutorial, but Tandy otherwise kept all technical information secret, hoping to monopolize third-party development.[2] Radio Shack stores were not allowed to sell non-Tandy products, and couldn't carry third-party publications like 80 Micro that by default became the major way companies sold TRS-80 products (since other retailers didn't want to compete with Radio Shack stores). Commodore's Jack Tramiel never ever understood the importance of software development, and the PET fell far behind Tandy and Apple in the US; until the VIC-20 in 1980 most of Commodore's computer sales were in Europe and Canada, where Apple and Tandy didn't compete. * VisiCalc. Because of the above, VisiCalc was written for the Apple when market share should have caused it to be written for TRS-80 (Dan Fylstra of Personal Software, VisiCalc's publisher, was one of the first owners of the TRS-80). Being only available for Apple massively drove sales of the II; for the first time, people bought a computer to run a specific killer app, as opposed to the other way around. In turn, others chose the II to develop for Even after 1980, when Apple had clearly gained sales momentum, Tandy still had the bulk of the installed base. 80 Micro's December 1982 issue (https://archive.org/details/80-microcomputing-magazine-1982-12 https://archive.org/details/80-microcomputing-magazine-1982-...) has 484 pages. I'm pretty sure no Apple magazine ever came close to that thickness; the only other computer magazines in history to be that thick are 1) PC Magazine before it went bimonthly in 1984 after the December 1983 issue hit 800 pages, and 2) BYTE. Wayne Green, the publisher of 80 Micro, had by that time written editorials in almost every single issue pleading with Tandy to encourage third-party developers. Tandy didn't relent until the Model 16, introduced that year, had zero third-party software after six months. But by then it was too late. As fat as they are, reading Tandy magazines like 80 Micro and Rainbow (https://archive.org/details/rainbowmagazine-1983-12/ https://archive.org/details/rainbowmagazine-1983-12/) from the early 1980s is like visiting a sad and barren alternate world; instead of Origin, Epyx, MicroProse, and SSI, there are much cruder-looking ads from tiny companies offering bad clones of popular arcade games. [1] Two virtues Commodore's later drives did not retain [2] It's clear in retrospect that TRS-80 was intentionally designed to not be compatible with the existing 8080/Z80 standards. ROM's location in the memory map broke CP/M compatibility, and the expansion bus is not S-100 compatible.

jcun4128 6y ago

Isn't it amazing, looking at those images... have no idea about future companies. I already feel like "what is there to make" now. I mean making value from digital "stuff" vs. more tangible things like making a physical product/doing manual labor.

notmadnomad 6y ago

Memories. I remember the Apple //e in elementary school ('83 or '84) with LOGO and Oregon Trail. (Thanks Apple!) Oddly enough, I also remember almost burning my finger on some of the units with the light on the right/bottom area of the keyboard. Oh, and seeing Woz' house just as it finished construction because my grandparent's neighbor was the realtor IIRC.

jd115 6y ago

Growing up in eastern Europe in the 80's, I learned to program in Basic on a "Pravetz 82" - an almost exact replica of the Apple II in all but name, except every single component and material used was manufactured in Bulgaria from scratch. Communists were firmly convinced that they've actually done a better job than the capitalist pigs at Apple and even self credited themselves with the invention of personal computing. It was a wildly successful product throughout the whole eastern bloc. It was accompanied by a whole ecosystem of home-made software, games, peripherals, robotics kits, literature, magazines, and was very popular in the educational systems of nearby countries. A good portion of the brightest software engineers to come out of eastern Europe made their baby steps in programming on this gem [1] I have very fond memories of it. 1. https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-these-communist-era-apple-ii-clones-helped-shape-central-europes-it-sector/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-these-communist-era-apple-...

jhbadger 6y ago
And likewise, the Soviet Union had their "Agat" series of computers that were likewise Apple II clones, but if I recall the Pravetz computers were made in larger quantities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agat_(computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agat_(computer)

taylodl 6y ago

The things that separated Apple II from the rest of the "gaming" computers such as the C64 (which is what I owned) were its bus and its software. First the software. 8 bit software for small business ran on the Apple II (especially in the late 70s/early 80s). Ever hear of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet? Originally released for the Apple II. dBase? One of the earliest databases available for microcomputer systems? First ran on Apple II and then MS-DOS. Even a word processor was available: Apple Writer. So in 1979 you had a spreadsheet, database and word processor. Just the tools you needed for a small business. Now the bus. Apple II had expansion slots and a whole industry devoted to creating every kind of interface imaginable. You had the standards such as printers and floppy disk drives, but you also had hard disk drives (which few of the other 8 bit micros of the time supported) and a plethora of lab equipment. It was kind of like the Raspberry PI of it's day - people were hooking up all kinds of stuff to those machines. Bottom line, Apple II focused on small business, labs, and hobbyists. C64 and Atari focused more on a game console that could also double as a computer. Apple II went to the office while the C64 and Atari went to the home. Apple II would continue to dominate in the small business environment until the MS-DOS machines reached price and feature parity - which happened in the late 80s. By that time it was clear Apple was headed the way of GUIs and wasn't as interested in investing more into the Apple II line, so it withered. But for a period of about 8-10 years the Apple II dominated the business and hobbyist market. P.S. - the "Apple Tax" existed even back then. The Apple II machines were way more expensive than the Atari 400/800 (even the ST) and the Commodore VIC 20/64. I remember my C64 costing $600 whereas an Apple II+ (which was targeted for homes) ran $1,200-$1,400. Unless you were actually running a business you simply couldn't cost justify those machines.

musicale 6y ago

Adding a top-level comment, because this is as exciting as the Apple ad if not more so: an article describing the classic Oregon Trail game, including its source code (!) in BASIC, as well as a transcript of someone actually winning (!!) the game, starts on page 132.