> Well, fair enough, but then why not go for the BBC Micro Because the Apple shipped four years earlier? The question isn't what machine is better. Obviously

> Well, fair enough, but then why not go for the BBC Micro Because the Apple shipped four years earlier? The question isn't what machine is better. Obviously later hardware builds on the advances of its ancestors. The idea behind valuing history is understanding where the changes happened. Acorn (and Commodore) shipped an excellent machine given the constraints of the time. Both devices were worth purchasing. Apple shipped an absolutely groundbreaking work of genius that no one had forseen and that no one would duplicate for years. AAA games were shipping in 1988 (c.f. Ultima V and Prince of Persia) designed directly to a framebuffer design architected in the spring of 1977. If you can't see the difference there and perceive which device is more important to understand and study, I don't know what to say.