14 Sep
1998
14 Sep
'98
4:34 a.m.
Doug Yowza wrote:
Color graphics was only part of the equation, and a
pretty small part.
The Apple ][ was the first mass-produced high-quality high-availability
micro. If you looks at any successful product, you'll generally find that
it did *several* things right. So, start with the fact that on paper,
that Apple had specs that met or exceeded just about anything else
available. Then add the price, then the fact that it looked good (don't
underestimate that), then the fact that the fit-and-finish surpassed
anything else out there (ask Toyota how important that is), and perhaps
most importantly, add the Apple dealer network. Most of the people buying
Apples weren't hobbyists who read BYTE, they were yuppies who bumped into
an Apple store.
The same stores where I first saw Apples were the same stores where I
first saw Pets and Compucolors and Cromemcos -- the Byte Shop in
Mountain View and the Computerland in Los Altos. While what I wanted
was a Cromemco 3, the credit rating of a guy fresh out of the USAF
was insufficient to get a loan for the $10k for the configuration I
wanted, so I went with a more incremental approach involving the
TRS-80. I do remember the Compucolor II as a nice system. (Never
have yet gotten into the Apple II, or for that matter anything else
with a 6502 -- never liked the specs on the processor).
The only other machine that was comparable at the time was the TRS-80
available at Radio Shack (I remember it being a failrly rare event to see
a PET at a computer store, compared to those two). Color bitmapped
graphics certainly helped the Apple when compared to te TRS-80, but the
Apple was just so damn *pretty* compared to the rest.
And the TRS-80 would have driven Apple into receivership by 1980 if it
hadn't been for VisiCalc -- that one product saved the whole company,
allowing it to survive long enough to produce the Lisa and the Mac,
causing the plague of GUIs that haunts us more every day. (Oh, the
GUIs would _exist_, but there wouldn't have been so much _pressure_).
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram@cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked me if I had any
firearms with me. I said "Well, what do you need?" -- Steven Wright