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 sof

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.