2 ms·
> Apple always wanted to be better, more expensive and in a sense more "premium" than the competition, even back in the beginning I don’t think so. They wanted
by Someone 3y ago
> Apple always wanted to be better, more expensive and in a sense more "premium" than the competition, even back in the beginning
I don’t think so. They wanted to be better, but not more expensive. Certainly, a lot of Woz’s hardware was dirt cheap for what it did and sacrificed programmability.
For example, the Apple 2 graphics modes “were peculiar even by the standards of the late 1970s and early 1980s” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_graphics#Peculiarity_of_graphics_modes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_graphics#Peculiarity_...), and Personal Computer World wrote “no-one has colour graphics like this at this sort of price” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II#Reception)
Similarly, WOZ’s disk controller cut corners to be cheap relative to the competition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II#Overview: “The approach taken in the Disk II controller is typical of Wozniak's designs. With a few small-scale logic chips and a cheap PROM (programmable read-only memory), he created a functional floppy disk interface at a fraction of the component cost of standard circuit configurations.”)
- CamperBob2 3y agoWhat corners did he cut, exactly? The only engineering screwup I can think of with regard to the Disk ][ system was that the original DOS could have been several times faster if the tracks had been laid out in the opposite order. That was a software problem, fixed later with ProDOS and with numerous third-party utilities. Hardware-wise, it was basically unassailable.
- glimshe 3y agoThey were more expensive for the consumers. Apple's engineering acumen allowed them to keep a higher profit margin.
- Someone 3y ago> They were more expensive for the consumers The claim I replied to isn’t that Apple always was more expensive, but that it always wanted to be more expensive, even back in the beginning. Who doesn’t want to sell their product for more money? I also think that, certainly in the beginning, they wanted to build better products and accepted higher costs. Also, what computer with comparable features could people buy “even back in the beginning” for less? One could argue there were none when the Apple II debuted. The PET and TRS-80 were a lot cheaper ($1298 vs $795 respectively $599,95) and shipped with displays but didn’t do colour. The PET and, reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80#Keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80#Keyboard, also the TRS-80 had an inferior keyboard.
- drewzero1 3y agoI wouldn't characterize the Disk II controller as "cutting corners" (a term which connotes shoddy design/construction or reduced quality) but instead as using clever tricks to do more with less. By most accounts it did the job at least as well as the contemporary standard. For one thing, Wozniak's design was able to pack the sectors tighter than the standard radial configuration[0], resulting in a slight increase in disk capacity compared to the standard formatting. The lasting legacy of the Apple II has been much more "No-one has colour graphics like this" than "peculiar"... though the machine was designed around multiples of TV signal clocks which made future upgrades challenging. They were able to push the platform surprisingly far with the IIGS. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_II#Disk_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_II#Disk_II