25 Aug
2020
25 Aug
'20
7:30 p.m.
On 8/22/20 8:52 AM, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
45 yrs. ago last month, mid-July, Dick Heiser started
a new industry,
the retail computer store. It opened in West L.A. under the name
Arrow Head Computer Company. aka, The Computer Store. This began the
direct marketing of microcomputers to hobbyists, later to the masses
of the middle class.
Slight correction: The name was Arrowhead (one word, not two) Computer
Company.
I remember this very well. I was living in Santa Monica at the time,
and drove down Pico Boulevard almost every day. Needless to say, I
immediately noticed the "Computer Store" sign and stopped in, soon
becoming one of the regular "hangers on".
Dick Heiser and his wife Lois were taking a big chance, but it
proved to be a good bet. Initially, their business consisted of
buying Altair 8800 kits and assembling them in the back of the
store. A lot of people were happy to pay extra to not have to
solder all those hundreds of connections.
Dick was a regular fixture at meetings of the Southern California
Computer Society (SCCS), often making deliveries and taking orders
there. In those days, SCCS monthly meetings were *the* place for
computer geeks to get together and exchange news and get help.
A few months later, two guys named Steve showed up at a meeting
with a kit they called the "Apple I", for the grand price of
$666.66. I wish I had had the foresight to buy one! Instead,
I wound up joining the SCCS group purchase of DEC LSI-11 systems.
I still have that system, with a case and power supply from a
TRW surplus sale. It isn't worth nearly as much as an original
Apple I, though! :-)
Alan "Hindsight is 20-20" Frisbie
25 Aug
25 Aug
7:51 p.m.
On Tue, 25 Aug 2020, Alan Frisbie via cctalk wrote:
Dick was a regular fixture at meetings of the Southern
California
Computer Society (SCCS), often making deliveries and taking orders
there. In those days, SCCS monthly meetings were *the* place for
computer geeks to get together and exchange news and get help.
A few months later, two guys named Steve showed up at a meeting
with a kit they called the "Apple I", for the grand price of
$666.66. I wish I had had the foresight to buy one! Instead,
I wound up joining the SCCS group purchase of DEC LSI-11 systems.
I still have that system, with a case and power supply from a
TRW surplus sale. It isn't worth nearly as much as an original
Apple I, though! :-)
"Worth"??
Value can be more than what price they currently sell for.
Q: although WE call it "Apple I", did the Steves call it "Apple I" or
"Apple Computer"?
The answer tells us whether they were explicitly planning on making other
models later!
Wikipedia (a terrible choice of citation in anything DISPUTED) says that
the '1' came later, and says that the first demonstration was by Woz at
the Palo Alto Homebrew Computer Club. (Started by Gordon French and Fred
Moore, with Lee Felsenstein soon after)
For example, what we call "TRS80 Model 1" was NOT called "Model 1"
until
the "Model 2" (and then 3) was announced
What we call "World War 1" was not called "1", nor even "World
War",
until "World War 2" was obvious.
What we call "single density" was not called "single density" until
MFM
was developed, and the MARKETING people called MFM "double density".
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
9:27 p.m.
Kind of hopping in in the middle of an ongoing discussion that I haven't been
following, but:
On Aug 25, 2020, at 10:51 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Q: although WE call it "Apple I", did the
Steves call it "Apple I" or "Apple Computer"?
The answer tells us whether they were explicitly planning on making other models later!
Wikipedia (a terrible choice of citation in anything DISPUTED) says that the '1'
came later, and says that the first demonstration was by Woz at the Palo Alto Homebrew
Computer Club. (Started by Gordon French and Fred Moore, with Lee Felsenstein soon
after)
For example, what we call "TRS80 Model 1" was NOT called "Model 1"
until the "Model 2" (and then 3) was announced
What we call "World War 1" was not called "1", nor even "World
War", until "World War 2" was obvious.
What we call "single density" was not called "single density" until
MFM was developed, and the MARKETING people called MFM "double density".
The circuit boards say "Apple Computer 1" on them. So they had the optimistic
"1" in the name originally.
-Paul
9:39 p.m.
> Q: although WE call it "Apple I", did
the Steves call it "Apple I" or "Apple Computer"?
> The answer tells us whether they were explicitly planning on making other models
later!
> Wikipedia (a terrible choice of citation in anything DISPUTED) says that the
'1' came later, and says that the first demonstration was by Woz at the Palo Alto
Homebrew Computer Club. (Started by Gordon French and Fred Moore, with Lee Felsenstein
soon after)
>
> For example, what we call "TRS80 Model 1" was NOT called "Model
1" until the "Model 2" (and then 3) was announced
> What we call "World War 1" was not called "1", nor even
"World War", until "World War 2" was obvious.
> What we call "single density" was not called "single density"
until MFM was developed, and the MARKETING people called MFM "double density".
On Wed, 26 Aug 2020, Hagstrom, Paul wrote:
Kind of hopping in in the middle of an ongoing
discussion that I haven't been following, but:
The circuit boards say "Apple Computer 1" on them. So they had the optimistic
"1" in the name originally.
Thank you.
That is more trustworthy and definitive than Wikipedia.
It shows that they considered the possibility that it was not solely a
one-shot venture.
It may seem like an irrelevaant piece of trivia, but it is interesting to
go back to what our expectations had been.
Yeah. I know. Like how I felt that it was important to create captions
for "Hyperland"
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
26 Aug
26 Aug
11:11 a.m.
On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 10:28 PM Hagstrom, Paul via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
The circuit boards say "Apple Computer 1" on
them. So they had the
optimistic "1" in the name originally.
The user manual, schematic, and some but not all advertisements also say
"Apple 1" or "Apple-1".
I haven't seen any official documents or communication that used the roman
numeral "I", though some third-party material does.
1579
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1579
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cisin＠xenosoft.com -
Flash688＠flying-disk.com -
hagstrom＠bu.edu -
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