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>But the Apple II is mostly so iconic compared to other systems of the general era because Apple as a whole became so iconic. I don't disagree that had Apple g

by TMWNN 4y ago

>But the Apple II is mostly so iconic compared to other systems of the general era because Apple as a whole became so iconic. I don't disagree that had Apple gone bankrupt in 1997, there wouldn't be as much Apple II nostalgia today. But it's not true that Apple's iconic status is a modern-day phenomenon. From the very beginning, Apple had the je ne sais quoi that its rivals didn't, and I say that one who did not own an Apple II. Read this 1984 BYTE piece <https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1984-12/1984_12_BYTE_09-13_Communications#page/n399/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1984-12/1984_12_BYT...>, for instance. Looking back, it's some combination of * Jobs and Woz being the symbols of the company * VisiCalc * Disk II * the slots * color * the focus on industrial design That special something is what made Mac work. No other company in 1984 could have released a non IBM PC-compatible computer and had it go anywhere in the market, or inspire substantial third-party support from large vendors. Atari and Commodore followed only a year later, with superior hardware, and failed.

drewcoo 4y ago
Most of the features you list are geek features. My favorite geek feature was that the hardware was proprietary but open - anyone could see how it worked and even buy schematics. Aside from geek features, Jobs and Woz only became better known later, after Apple was a success. Apple IIs were in most schools. That was what stood out to most people - out of all the various and weird computers on the market at the time, and before IBM clones they were different, Apple was the one "endorsed" by the school system. Macs and iPhones and whatnot aren't even part of the story. The pre-OSX Mac was part of the Star Wars prequel of Apple tech that tried to seem fancy and cool but was awful and no one liked it, so I suppose the iPhone was episodes 7-9.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  > Apple IIs were in most schools. That was what stood out to most people - out of all the various and weird computers on the market at the time, and before IBM clones they were different, Apple was the one "endorsed" by the school system. That's why I think, more than any specific feature of the hardware, the real driver of Apple II success in US was always the one-and-only Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium [1]. I don't think that Apple II would have had anything near as much as the same sort of US-wide reach without its "PBS of educational software" existing at that critical juncture point in history. "Every" school in the country needed an Apple II to run MECC software, because MECC software was easily approved to be parts of the curriculum. The Macintosh was seen as the computer for education riding on the coat-tails of MECC products and the few produced for the early Macintosh. PCs became more common in education exactly as soon as MECC was destroyed by vultures and schools needed to start penny pinching because there were few other as easily approved pieces of software to replace MECC's brief central place in the US classroom. (The fall of MECC was its own sad reminder of how privatization often leads to vultures and scavenging. It is interesting to wonder what might have happened had MECC better followed the "PBS" model, and possibly gotten more national arts and sciences resources behind it, instead of IPO then buyout by vultures.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECC

by TMWNN 4y ago

drewcoo 4y ago

Most of the features you list are geek features. My favorite geek feature was that the hardware was proprietary but open - anyone could see how it worked and even buy schematics. Aside from geek features, Jobs and Woz only became better known later, after Apple was a success. Apple IIs were in most schools. That was what stood out to most people - out of all the various and weird computers on the market at the time, and before IBM clones they were different, Apple was the one "endorsed" by the school system. Macs and iPhones and whatnot aren't even part of the story. The pre-OSX Mac was part of the Star Wars prequel of Apple tech that tried to seem fancy and cool but was awful and no one liked it, so I suppose the iPhone was episodes 7-9.

WorldMaker 4y ago
> Apple IIs were in most schools. That was what stood out to most people - out of all the various and weird computers on the market at the time, and before IBM clones they were different, Apple was the one "endorsed" by the school system. That's why I think, more than any specific feature of the hardware, the real driver of Apple II success in US was always the one-and-only Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium [1]. I don't think that Apple II would have had anything near as much as the same sort of US-wide reach without its "PBS of educational software" existing at that critical juncture point in history. "Every" school in the country needed an Apple II to run MECC software, because MECC software was easily approved to be parts of the curriculum. The Macintosh was seen as the computer for education riding on the coat-tails of MECC products and the few produced for the early Macintosh. PCs became more common in education exactly as soon as MECC was destroyed by vultures and schools needed to start penny pinching because there were few other as easily approved pieces of software to replace MECC's brief central place in the US classroom. (The fall of MECC was its own sad reminder of how privatization often leads to vultures and scavenging. It is interesting to wonder what might have happened had MECC better followed the "PBS" model, and possibly gotten more national arts and sciences resources behind it, instead of IPO then buyout by vultures.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECC