1 Feb
2007
1 Feb
'07
12:49 p.m.
Jim wrote...
> The apple was a flop, yes. The Commodore also was
a flop. Just look at
> the
> numbers. The apple was a flop because it was marketed as entertainment
> and
> drawing pictures (which it excelled at)
Uh, most definitely not. The C64 and
Apple were both fantastically
successful.
while the TRS-80 was a scientific machine that
crunched numbers.
I disagree. The TRS-80 was originally sold and marketed as a home
system -
certainly not a number cruncher. They sold it with game tapes & home recipe
tapes after all. It wasn't until later models that Tandy started
representing it as a business machine.
> Yes, today the tables are reversed, but back
> then, those of us who were into computers (I had been in computers since
> 1960 on the IBM 7070) were looking for computing power for serious work.
> The Apple was just not that. The Commodore didnt make it because it was
> under powered and again was marketed toward using it for games not
> serious
> work.
You may have been looking for a microcomputer for serious work back then,
but 99.9% of the market was not. They were looking for a home system.
Otherwise, all of the early systems would have been a commercial flop.
Retail sales to home users is what made the market grow initially IMHO.
Jay