However the last posting was so over the top by someone who apparently wanted to rant about how much he hates apple.
I wouldn't say I hate Apple, at least not classic Apple. Love playing with my IIe Platinum... I do kind-of hate what they became; a media darling that's managed complete revisionist history of their products... that people turn a blind eye too because "Ooh, this the big shiny Apple".
The reality was this... Before Apple, computers were either for big business, or for the hobbyist.
... and Apple did WHAT exactly to address that? Sure as shine-ola wasn't their price or availability.
The closest "home" computer idea people had was computers would maintain your recipes. Apple pioneered the idea that you could use a cheap TV set and your own cassette player and not flip switches to turn on the machine.
Which of course is why a 4k model with Integer basic, the CHEAPEST one they offerred was TWICE the cost of a 4K Level 1 TRS-80... which INCLUDED it's own display. They REALLY could have offerred more considering they were asking twice the cost.
They also pioneered the idea it shouldn't look like a metal box.
Not sure what you even mean by that, since the Model 1 wasn't the "cheap metal enclosure" either -- it was the same "let's use cheap plastic" as the Apple. (though at least Woz REFUSED to compromise on using a metal baseplate)
Though your argument kinda falls apart given what they released in '84... an all in one box with a built in display.
Yes, Processor Technology had some of those ideas, but not all and they were more expensive than apple
ON WHAT PLANET?!? IN WHAT UNIVERSE?!?
The disk drive is what made the company. Their disk drive at the time was half the price of everyone else's
BULL! or at least, bull if you look at the overall cost. Oooh yay they got the price for a drive and controller down to $595 when doing the same on a TRS-80 was $495 just for the drive and you needed the expansion interface... but when a 48k original II with a floppy controller and two drives was $3200 when a similarly equipped model 1 (and we're talking '78 here so that's your two players in the market) was only $2500, whenever people talk about Apple's designs being cheaper my bullshit alarm goes off full blast. The only thing I can figure is the people making these claims are akin to those who claim to remember the 1960's.
Old joke --
If you remember the 1960's, you weren't there!
The thing that made this attitude change was Steve Jobs and his hippie idea that anyone should be able to use a computer and by the time the C64 came out, he had moved on to the idea of an appliance computer, the Mac.
Which also comparitively speaking sold so few until they duped educators into thinking they were of value, it's a miracle they showed a profit; but I guess if you price gouge every sale you can get profit regardless of how few you actually sell.
Something Jobbo the clown proved very well at NeXT.
Now when the C64 came out, it had better graphics and sound than the Apple II, but the Apple II was more expandable and more importantly had 80 columns, it's targets audience had changed. They demanded less game features and more business like features.
By which time something else came out that made the Apple II ridiculously overpriced and laughed at by business... the PC.
Which of course is why the 5150 in it's first year matched the II's sales from 1977 to 1982.
Apple's outdated architecture and no significant improvements for close to a decade made the II a joke by 1981 -- and if they hadn't actively campaigned to prey on the ignorance of the average educator it wouldn't have been surprising if they'd gone the way of Osbourne.
I'll given them big props for embedding themselves as the go-to in education. It may have been sleazy nube predation and prepared entire generations to be completely full of manure when they got into the business world where nobody gave a *** about Apple, but it propped up their company with sales. Of course, it's easy to "slash prices" and "make deals" for education when you start out at a 200% margin...
Then the Mac and Lisa arrived and the idea of an easy to use appliance computer was there. But it took time to get people to accept that idea.
Well. Time and sub-thousand dollar PC clones that could do the same job... Since that ridiculous $2000 to $2500 price put it out of reach for most of it's intended audience.
Meanwhile the Amiga arrived and said you could have your cake and eat it too, as it was part Mac and Part C64 in concept.
Assuming you could find someplace to BUY ONE. That's the problem Apple had too in the '80's is where the **** could you go to buy one? The II, the Mac, and the Amiga were nowhere to be found anyplace I knew of at retail; and at the time you weren't going to plunk down a grand or more on a mail order computer when you could go to the 'shack and get a T1K.
At least the C64 you could buy at Child World or Toys R. Us. (I actually remember the drive to the ONLY Toys R' Us near us some 60 miles away to get my VIC-20 back in '80)
Apple today is really not that different than back in the late 70's. Trying to make technology more accessible.
... and there's another word that Apple folks throw around that much like "quality" I have to go "WHAT ACCESSIBILITY?!?" -- though as someone who has studied a lot of usability and accessible design for both hardware (handheld scanners for warehouses) and websites, I've been seeing the "new generation of idiocy" industry wide on that front.
Though really ALL the companies have been guilty of "accessibility, what's that" since ~2003-ish when all the research studies of the '90's were thrown in the trash and they started hiring Photoshop jockeys who know **** about **** to spank it on the screen then have the giant set of brass to call themselves "designers".
Just look at the preponderance of things like "false simplicity" and "ambiguous interfaces" that are creeping into damned near everything -- like the train wreck known as Windows 8. (that's so bad they're talking free Win9 "upgrade" for all 8 owners)
Basically, don't let my ranting about Apple make you think I've singled them out for special treatment; I could do just as big a rant about TRS-80, Atari, IBM, Sinclair... They all sucked, just in different ways.
You should hear me go on about Linux as a Desktop OS some time!
The only major problems I have with Apple is their ridiculously absurd price gouging, complete revisionist history on their importance and influence mated to the nonsensical fiction people claim about the products.
Like the whole drives were cheaper thing... had better be cheaper when the base computer was twice the cost OR MORE...
