2 ms·
One months salary is still an awful lot for something that no middle class family ever needed. If the goal is educational and/or recreational (games), then a 65
by grumpyprole 3y ago
One months salary is still an awful lot for something that no middle class family ever needed. If the goal is educational and/or recreational (games), then a 6502 machine could be had at a fraction of the cost and with a community. In the UK, the Macintosh basically didn't exist as far as I remember, my first 68000 machine was an Atari ST in 1986/7, still a fraction of the price of a Mac. I didn't see a Mac until the early nineties and it was by then nothing new or interesting (the OS was already considered technically obsolete).
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoYep, same here in Canada. My mother was a teacher and my father a sometimes-unemployed machinist, so on the upper side of working class, really, and big exciting family expenditures in the early & mid 80s were things like a microwave or a dishwasher which we could afford maybe once a year at tax return time. It was a big expenditure for them to get me the VIC-20, which I ran off an older B&W 9" TV. Saved my own allowance money & money from bottle recycle returns to get a used Atari 520ST in 1987. They had a single Macintosh at the school, which I sometimes got to play with. Even the Apple II was priced out of the "home" market possibilities. Family friends had one, but it was like a luxury product like their hi-fi system or boats. Maybe the US was a different story. But here a Mac was way out of the reach out of people on a typical income. Also people didn't typically take on debt like they do now. Interest rates were double-digits.