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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 ev

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

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