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There's an ad for the Franklin Ace 1200, an Apple ][+ clone (although it had lower case and 64K it really wasn't an Apple //e clone as the //e hadn't come out y
by jhbadger 4y ago
There's an ad for the Franklin Ace 1200, an Apple ][+ clone (although it had lower case and 64K it really wasn't an Apple //e clone as the //e hadn't come out yet and so the machine "looked" like a ][+ to software in programs that checked). I had the earlier model, the Franklin Ace 1000, which didn't have included disc drives.
- whartung 4y agoAccessibility for one. Sophistication for another. At that point not everyone was comfortable with writing a check for $1000-2000, stuffing it in an envelope and hoping to get a computer back in the mail. Apples were in computer stores, the Ace, perhaps, not so much. Having an actual use case to run both Apple and CP/M software was rare. It was also complicated. If you were an end user running CP/M on your Apple, it very well just stayed that way. Hard enough to wrangle a single computer system, much less two completely different ones. While the value proposition of the Ace was there, a market large enough to leverage it was not. And by the time the market was experienced enough to appreciate the system, the IBM was coming out.
- flomo 4y agoI do recall seeing a Franklin in a computer store. But then Apple sued and the outlook was grim. One use case for Apple and CP/M was to be able to run business software by day and play games at night.