9 Apr
1999
9 Apr
'99
3:47 a.m.
During the design phase, Woz had more time than money,
chips cost money
and software only cost time. Remember that he _wanted_ to use the 8080
but the 6502 cost only a tenth the price. (Imagine what the Apple
might have been like with a decent CPU from the start).
It may be hard to imagine now the typical processors are about a thousand
times faster than the first 6502 Apple used, but the CPU was not the weak
point of the system, it was slow or limited peripherals. Only later when
the IIgs became weighted down with GUI etc. did the cpu start to lag the
rest of the system.