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Well, Microsoft wrote Level 2 BASIC which came with the TRS-80 and built the Softcard, which added a Z-80 to the Apple II and ran CP/M. picture

Microsoft even had interest in SCO to get code and make sure they didn't rival their Windows NT.

Erm, your history is a bit off. Microsoft was a pretty substantial contributor to Xenix for the TRS-80 Model 16, which had a 68000 processor.

It seemed that Microsoft's strategy at the time was to travel the Xenix route to higher end computing, but AT&T insisted on a $400/CPU royalty payment. This was of course untenable for "cheap" microcomputers, so Microsoft eventually went the route of developing NT.

It is interesting to think of how things would be if the licensing arrangement had worked out, and Xenix would have been the base for mass computing.

It's claimed that Bill Gates may have been involved with the early versions of CBM Basic on the Commodore PET - http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=45 4684.

Level 2 Basic on the TRS-80 was also from Microsoft.

Applesoft Basic from Microsoft was released in November 1977 on the Apple 1.
http://apple2history.org/history/ah16.html

So although MS were not into operating system or hardware design at the time, they were certainly influencing the personal computer market back in the 1970's, even if they didn't "create" the industry. They started by developing language compilers and interpreters on multiple platforms, and grew from there.

According to the apple2history.org page on the //c the "AppleMouse IIc" plugged into the joystick port.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

You need to be reading your Apple II History, not just Folklore's Mac history.

The relevant parts of how Applesoft BASIC came to the Apple II:

Back in 1975 and 1976, Microsoft was producing BASIC interpreters for nearly every microprocessor that was produced, in hopes of licensing or selling their BASIC to those who built a computer around that chip. In mid-1976, Microsoft's first employee, Marc McDonald, was given the job of creating a version of BASIC that would run on the then-new 6502 microprocessor, even though there not yet any computers that used that processor. They became aware of Steve Wozniak's efforts in designing his 6502 computer (the Apple-1), and one of Microsoft's programmers called Steve Jobs to see if he would be interested in a BASIC language for this computer. Jobs told him that they already had a BASIC (remember that Wozniak had been writing BASIC interpreters before he even had a computer on which to run them), and if they needed a better one, they could "do it themselves over the weekend".

Even without a potential customer for this product, McDonald worked on this BASIC, using a modified 6800 microprocessor simulator (the 6800 had an instruction set that was similar to the 6502). For several months Microsoft had their 6502 BASIC sitting on a shelf, unwanted and unused. But by October 1976 they finally had a contract to put this interpreter into the new Commodore PET computer that was being designed. This would ultimately become the first time that BASIC was included with a computer built into the ROM, rather than being loaded from a paper tape, disk, or cassette. However, the contract Microsoft had with Commodore was no good to them at that time, as far as income was concerned; it stipulated that they would not be paid until some time in 1977, when the computer was to be finished and ready to ship. With income and cash reserves running dangerously low, Microsoft was given a reprieve by none other than Apple Computer.[12]

Apple was receiving increasing numbers of requests by users of the Apple II for a floating point BASIC. Integer BASIC (which Wozniak had also at one time called "Game BASIC") worked well for many purposes, and a skilled programmer could even make use of the floating point routines that were included in the ROM of Integer BASIC.[15] However, the average Apple II user was not satisfied with Integer BASIC, especially as it made them unable to easily implement business software (where the number to the right of the decimal point is as important as the one to left). Wozniak tried to make modifications to his Integer BASIC to make use of the floating point routines, but at that time he was also hard at work on designing the Disk II interface card, and his efforts on creating a floating point BASIC fell further and further behind. Consequently, Apple's management decided to go back to Microsoft and license the 6502 floating point BASIC that had been offered to them in 1976.

In August 1977, Apple made a $10,500 payment to Microsoft for the first half of a flat-fee license that they were able to negiotate. Typically, Microsoft would license its BASIC on a royalty basis; they would be paid a set fee for every copy of BASIC that went out the door -- in this case, with every computer that was sold. The fact that Microsoft was willing to concede and let Apple license their 6502 BASIC on a flat-fee basis is a reflection of the financial straits that Microsoft was under.[13] The version Apple licensed was almost identical to the MITS extended BASIC that Microsoft had previously written for the Altair 8800.[4],[5] At Apple, Randy Wigginton was assigned the job of incorporating into Microsoft's BASIC the graphics commands that were unique to the Apple II.

And, how they kept from getting bent over by Microsoft:

A significant part of the story of Applesoft and Apple Computer occurred in March of 1985. At this time, Apple was still struggling to get the new Macinto

"BASIC (standing for Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was written (invented) in 1963, at Dartmouth College, by mathematicians John George Kemeny and Tom Kurtzas[sic] as a teaching tool for undergraduates. BASIC has been one of the most commonly used computer programming languages, a simple computer language considered an easy step for students to learn before more powerful languages such as FORTRAN" (Kurtz is the correct spelling)

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blbas ic.htm

So the first version of BASIC that was ever written was Dartmouth BASIC and it ran on a GE-265 mainframe (created by General Electric). A bit of trivia: The first BASIC program ran on May 1, 1964 at 4:00 am.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jrh29/kemeny.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_programming_lan guage#History (has a big list of dialects)

Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Monte Davidoff wrote a version of the BASIC programming language for the Altair in 1975, which, incidentally, was Microsoft's first product--he went on to produce BASIC interpreters for many different processors.

Apple and Microsoft: The first BASIC for Apple, called Integer BASIC was written by Steve Wozniak. Microsoft offered to sell them their BASIC but Steve Jobs told them they already had one, and if needed, they "could write a better one in a weekend". Apple later needed a floating-point version of BASIC, and since Wozniak was too busy with other projects, they bought Microsoft's floating-point BASIC--it was called Applesoft. As is the standard with Microsoft products, there were initially some bugs, instability, and memory hogging that had to be worked out. Some speculate that if Apple hadn't bought Microsoft's version, Microsoft would have gone under--Apple was able to buy it for a flat fee of $10,500 (and no royalties).

http://apple2history.org/history/ah16.html#Appleso ftI

I suppose this falls into the same je ne sais quoi that some people experience in using the OS X interface, but I find something about the feel of coding applications for OS X is nicer than coding for Windows (though I do admit the documentation as MSDN is better than Apple's work in progress at developer.apple.com).

And since Xcode is free, any user can choose to become a developer; like the good old days when computers came with a bundled programming language burned into the ROM. Admitedly, this is also one of the joys of Linux (and all *NIX in general) over Windows ($550 for Visual Studio Pro Upgrade?).

"I would, however, like to see Apple truly create a market."

Like, ummm, perhaps the personal computer market? :)

'cept an Apple...

They've licensed good equipment to put the microsoft name on. They haven't manufactured anything good themselves.

You are wrong! Among the first Microsoft products of 1970's were some fine pieces of hardware. They made an expansion card for the venerable Apple II computer. It was called Microsoft Softcard and it allowed to run CP/M and all its applications on Apple II. Basically it was just a Z-80 daughterboard. They also manufactured RAM expansion card. These cards were good and they were manufactured by themselves.

O the irony - back in 1980 Apple was making the most popular personal computer, expandable like in a hacker's wet dream (lots of expansion slots with well-documented standards allowed anyone create an expansion card to do anything - and they did! and they did!) and Microsoft was just a small manufacturer of third party hardware extension for Apple computers. Plus a vendor of the popular multiplatform BASIC interpreter - and that was all about Microsoft back then. Who could have guessed...

They've licensed good equipment to put the microsoft name on. They haven't manufactured anything good themselves.

You are wrong! Among the first Microsoft products of 1970's were some fine pieces of hardware. They made an expansion card for the venerable Apple II computer. It was called Microsoft Softcard and it allowed to run CP/M and all its applications on Apple II. Basically it was just a Z-80 daughterboard. They also manufactured RAM expansion card. These cards were good and they were manufactured by themselves.

O the irony - back in 1980 Apple was making the most popular personal computer, expandable like in a hacker's wet dream (lots of expansion slots with well-documented standards allowed anyone create an expansion card to do anything - and they did! and they did!) and Microsoft was just a small manufacturer of third party hardware extension for Apple computers. Plus a vendor of the popular multiplatform BASIC interpreter - and that was all about Microsoft back then. Who could have guessed...

Microsoft got its start writing BASIC interpreters. Bill Gates created one for the Altair, which he charged for, and which was widely pirated. Setting the tone for the rest of his career, he lashed out with a scathing open letter to computer hobbyists, saying that quality software couldn't possibly be created without sinking a significant amount of money into it.

Deja vu, eh? Helps to know your history.

Wow. duodisk -- that's something I haven't thought of in a while! Thanks.

CPU frequency: 512-fold
RAM: 4096-fold
Removable storage: 1792-fold
VRAM: 3066-fold
Network speed: 4551-fold
Mouse buttons: 1-fold
Price: 1.015-fold

As it happens, while advising a friend on how much memory to buy in 2004, I had just looked at how Apple's nominal RAM stacks up against Moore's Law. Pretty much confirmed, if you ask me:

1976: $ 666, 8 kB ( Apple I)
1980: $1200, 32 kB (Apple II+)
1984: $2500, 128 kB (Macintosh)
1987: $2000, 512 kB (Macintosh 512k)
1990: $1500, 2 MB (Macintosh Classic)
1993: $1440, 8 MB (Macintosh Quadra)
1998: $1300, 32 MB (iMac G3)
2001: $1500, 128 MB (iBook G3)
2004: ?

6. PC Laptop with LCD, very portable!! Actually the Apple ][ c had a laptop profile but no LCD screen.

Apple did sell a ][c with a LCD screen for a while but ended up dropping it due to low takeup. Writeup available here.

1984 is not that old, the Mac and IBM PC were already out, for heaven's sake! 1984 is long after real classics like the Kim-1, Sinclair ZX80, and Apple II appeared. The real golden age of microcomputing was when you could fit the entire OS, basic interpreter and maybe a game or two into 8 K of RAM. Back then, a budding nerd could easily understand what every single chip and instruction did.

Real men use PEEK, POKE, and GOTO!

Poke around this site. It's more history than I knew.

Short answer: For marketing reasons, the Apple III was first, then the IIe, then the IIc. All three had the open-apple and closed-apple buttons.

The keyboard itself underwent some changes, both by users and by Apple. The original RESET key was in the upper right-hand corner of the keyboard. The problem with that key was that it had the same feel as the keys around it, making it possible to accidentally hit RESET and lose the entire program that was being so carefully entered. One user modification was to pop off the RESET keycap and put a rubber washer under it, making it necessary to apply more pressure than usual to do a RESET. Apple fixed this twice, once by replacing the spring under the keycap with a stiffer one, and finally by making it necessary to press the CTRL key and the RESET together to make a RESET cycle happen. The keyboards that had the CTRL-RESET feature made it user selectable via a small slide switch just inside the case (some people didn't want to have to press the CTRL key to do a RESET).

1-3 belong to commedore.(Amiga)

1. The VIC-20 shipped in 1980 and the Commodore 64 in 1982. The Apple I shipped in 1976 and Apple II in 1977.

2. The Amiga didn't ship until September 1985. The Macintosh shipped in January 1984 (remember the SuperBowl ad?).

3. The Amiga used the same Motorola 680x0 CISC chips the old Macs did. Only the new ones are PowerPC-based. Apple has been shipping PowerMacs since 1994.

1-3 belong to commedore.(Amiga)

1. The VIC-20 shipped in 1980 and the Commodore 64 in 1982. The Apple I shipped in 1976 and Apple II in 1977.

2. The Amiga didn't ship until September 1985. The Macintosh shipped in January 1984 (remember the SuperBowl ad?).

3. The Amiga used the same Motorola 680x0 CISC chips the old Macs did. Only the new ones are PowerPC-based. Apple has been shipping PowerMacs since 1994.

But it does seem to more closely resemble "Cassie".

When I went to high school, we used TRS-80's. At home, I used an Apple II In college, the net was VAX . Later, I used the product of a company that will go unnamed and unlinked. Recently (and for the past half-decade) I used linux because what I learned was the idea, not the platform. Don't underestimate the curiosity and inquisitiveness of young humans. They are amazing creatures.

Mid eighties? That's far too late. In 1977, this Apple II advertisement did note that Apple Integer Basic boasted Any length variable names (ALPHA, BETA$).

Actually, it was Microsoft's code, licensed and then modified by Apple.

Check the Apple II History before you post stuff on the Apple II. Here's what you're looking for.

If you need exact quotes, here goes:

The names of the lo-res graphics commands were very different from those that existed in Integer BASIC (and in the later versions of Applesoft). The commands were:

PLTG = Go to lo-res graphics mode
TEX = Go to text mode
PLTC N = Set color to N (0-15)
PLTP X,Y = Plot square at X,Y
PLTH X1,X2,Y = Plot horizontal line from X1 to X2 at Y
PLTV Y1,Y2,X = Plot vertical line from Y1 to Y2 at X

In spring 1978, Randy Wigginton and some others at Apple made some needed revisions to Applesoft. Using a cross-assembler running on a North Star Horizon (Z-80) microcomputer, they fixed the known bugs and added other commands to control features unique to the Apple II. These commands included the ones needed to draw and manipulate hi-res graphics. Also, the lo-res graphics commands were renamed to be more consistent with the equivalent commands in Integer BASIC (GR, HLIN, VLIN, etc.) This version was called "Applesoft II", and eventually it was available in five forms: Cassette RAM and Diskette RAM (which loaded to the same memory locations that interfered with hi-res graphics as did Applesoft I), Firmware card ROM, Language card RAM, and finally main board ROM (in the Apple II Plus).

When Applesoft II was started up from cassette or diskette versions, the display screen now showed a copyright date of 1978 by Apple Computer, Inc., and 1976 by Microsoft (which may be either their copyright date for the original Microsoft BASIC, or possibly for Microsoft's first 6502 version).[6]

Apple put a copyright on it, which must mean Apple did something.

<flame type="obligatory" target="microsoft">Did you see that there were many bugs that needed to be fixed, and the code they recieved was almost identical to the Altair 8800 BASIC done by MS?</flame>

Actually, it was Microsoft's code, licensed and then modified by Apple.

Check the Apple II History before you post stuff on the Apple II. Here's what you're looking for.

If you need exact quotes, here goes:

The names of the lo-res graphics commands were very different from those that existed in Integer BASIC (and in the later versions of Applesoft). The commands were:

PLTG = Go to lo-res graphics mode
TEX = Go to text mode
PLTC N = Set color to N (0-15)
PLTP X,Y = Plot square at X,Y
PLTH X1,X2,Y = Plot horizontal line from X1 to X2 at Y
PLTV Y1,Y2,X = Plot vertical line from Y1 to Y2 at X

In spring 1978, Randy Wigginton and some others at Apple made some needed revisions to Applesoft. Using a cross-assembler running on a North Star Horizon (Z-80) microcomputer, they fixed the known bugs and added other commands to control features unique to the Apple II. These commands included the ones needed to draw and manipulate hi-res graphics. Also, the lo-res graphics commands were renamed to be more consistent with the equivalent commands in Integer BASIC (GR, HLIN, VLIN, etc.) This version was called "Applesoft II", and eventually it was available in five forms: Cassette RAM and Diskette RAM (which loaded to the same memory locations that interfered with hi-res graphics as did Applesoft I), Firmware card ROM, Language card RAM, and finally main board ROM (in the Apple II Plus).

When Applesoft II was started up from cassette or diskette versions, the display screen now showed a copyright date of 1978 by Apple Computer, Inc., and 1976 by Microsoft (which may be either their copyright date for the original Microsoft BASIC, or possibly for Microsoft's first 6502 version).[6]

Apple put a copyright on it, which must mean Apple did something.

<flame type="obligatory" target="microsoft">Did you see that there were many bugs that needed to be fixed, and the code they recieved was almost identical to the Altair 8800 BASIC done by MS?</flame>

Shortsighted

One of the reasons DRM is so insane is because it is incredibly short sighted. I have records that are over 50 years old. I can play those records on virtually any turntable out there. Imagine if those records had been made with some sort of primitive DRM that required them to be played on a specific machine or required a call into a company to input a code before they would play. The truth is that most of those record companies don't even exist today. A huge cultural legacy would be lost.

The truth is obsolescence is already built in. Formats change computer file systems change, OSes change, our standards of quality change. My bet is that 50 years from now it will be just as rare to find someone playing mp3 files as it is tto find people playing old records now. You will have find a machine to read a certain kind of hard disk, find a way to read a particular file system, and then to interpret the format. Making those formats closed is virtually insuring the digital death of the music (or the video or whatever data they happen to contain).

I already see this problem with old software and data. I have a ton of programs from the apple ][ days. With some doing I can get that data off the old 5 1/2 inch disks and into an emulator under OS X. Most programs work and I can see the data (mainly high school book reports in appleworks), but it's a lot of effort. Luckily I was pretty good about keeping serial numbers around, but the programs that inevitably fail are the ones with anti-copy copy protection. Even back then the odd sector layout would cause problems on certain disk drives. Now the programs are essentially dead. With enough work I could probably revive them, but who has the time? We see the same problem now with certain cds with bad data written in on purpose to foil copying, but also foil playing on certain systems (actually in this case maybe it is a good thing to prevent Celine Dion from propagating her evil).

I have the same problem with my old Mac data circa 1984/85 even without copy protection. I have data in formats of programs that simply don't exist anymore (does anyone remember Fullwrite...so far ahead of it's time, but doomed by MS Word). My only hope for reading this data is finding an old machine or waiting until someone builds a good 68000 emulator (vmac has a ways to go)

Doing this to music (on purpose no less) is particularly insidious because music is one of the things that should live on as a cultural legacy. When I buy a CD I want it to last and I want to be able to play it whether I am here in LA or in a Kashgari taxi. I doubt that 2053 my grandkids will enjoy my Nada Surf mp3s the way I enjoy my grandfather's Vera Lynn and Tex Williams records, but I would like them to have the chance at listening to them in the first place.

You'r right, but you'r wrong:

From the apple 2 history homepage: LITTLE BRICKOUT was an abbreviated Applesoft version of Woz's Integer BASIC Breakout game (the reason he designed the Apple II in the first place)

I'm actually not sure which version was the one with the bug thoug. But i'm nearly sure that the game was called Breakout, not Brickout.

I believe these people took the slogan Apple ][ Forever more seriously than Apple ever imagined.

What I meant, was that the APPLE Box hooked up where a cassette player hooked up to a computer. You would call your friend, use alligator clips to hook it to the phone line, and use the SAVE command on your end and the LOAD command on your friend's end to simulate a cassette drive over the phone line. The details are somewhere within Apple II History by Steven Weyhrich.

> Besides schools, where were Apple II's embraced by business?

A lot. Common programs were: Peachtree Accounting, dBase II, WordStar, Print Shop, Sensible Speller, etc.

Take a look here for others.

> And damn AppleWorks was a bad wordprocessor.
But it was one of the first integrated office apps.

--
This is NOT a .sig! :)

There were spreadsheets, powerful word processors, databases, CAD apps for early PCs, and "StickyBear's Learning Adventure" for the Apple II.

This is entirely wrong. Long before IBM had even made a PC, there was VisiCalc. VisiCalc was _the_ killer business app. Read more here.
Apple was _the_ business pc before IBM entered the market.

In any case, this was about OS wars. Windows never competed against the Apple II's OS! DOS (and eventually windows) was in competition with the Macintosh System. If you compare a Mac and an IBM Compatible from 1984-1995 running software from that time,the Mac is the better system hands down. Hell, as far as business use, which system did Excell and Word come out for first? The Mac. Shitty marketting in the early '90s stopped Apple from taking its rightful place as the market leader in the computer industry. OS X is giving Apple back some hope of recapturing the market share it lost in the IBM PC vs Apple II days.

Not only will this allow a new lease on life to old equipment (which otherwise would likely be leaching arsenic into a third world water table somewhere), it's also an opportunity for low-income folks to get onto the net.

My college days were spent writing educational software for these 8-bit, 6502-based systems (typing tutors, etc.) These were great machines to "cut your teeth" on - ROM-based BASIC interpreters, software bootstrapped OS, 320x200 graphics in "8" colors - including black and white (Okay - C64 had more than Apple ][, I admit...) Ahh... 10 HGR2 : HCOLOR 3 : HPLOT 20,20 TO 300, 200...

These ~1Mhz systems are going to have their work cut out for them trying to multitask, but I presume that their TCP/IP traffic is going to be limited to the comm technology of their day (1200/2400 baud)

Also - I think the Apple ][ has the drop on C64 in age - Commodore had the PET our before the 64, methinks...

Ummm...Someone doesn't know what they are talking about.

I played Castle Wolfenstein when I was in jr. high on an Apple IIe.

This was years and years before Wolfenstein 3D came out....

Supporting docs at this link

Oh boy! I get to plug a couple of programs of mine that were published in Nibble way back in the early 80s! Apple M.A.T. was a database program to keep track of interesting articles in various magazines. Also an ASCII game called Idol of Monterey -- a very simple dungeons n' dragons turn-based game. I was young enough (and from Canada) that I didn't even know Monterey was someplace in California :-)

Interestingly, I recently found a "What Ever Happened To..." article on Mike Harvey who was the publisher of Nibble. It doesn't have his email address or anything which is too bad because I'd really like to thank him for giving me a break all those years ago as a kid.

How was the Amiga "not a success?" Sure, it's not around and popular today, like PCs, but then again, neither are Apple IIs, Commodore 64s, Atari 8-bits, Atari STs, etc. It's called progress.

With TiVo, we're talking about a VERY simple concept. To the end user, all it does is record and play back (and all that other good stuff). It's not something you have to go out and buy software for, and hope that the latest and greatest Laser printer will work for it.

Comparing TiVo to (un)successful computer platforms is like apples to oranges.

Also, I didn't really understand this part:
Joe Six-Pack, however, was stumped. VCRs and video-game machines had just recently made a splash in the mass market.

Umm... "Recently" as in "8 years before?" (The Amiga 1000 came out in 1985. The Atari VCS (aka 2600) came out in 1977.)

This, too:
he Amiga, which featured such revolutionary perks as a full-color screen (a big plus in the age of green-and-black Apple IIc monitors) and stereo sound.

Let's see - we what else had full-color screens? Atari 400/800 (1979), Commodore 64 (1982), and hey! Apple II! (You just needed the right monitor, I believe.)

Apple II's came out in 1977 and was still in production through 1993.

I can nitpick further, but I actually have something productive to do... somewhere... (checking pockets) No, not there...

See this if you're still confused.
Apple Advertisement (notice the Personal Computer line)

> Remember Copy II+"

What, no mention of COPYA, Muffin, Disk Muncher or Locksmith ? ;-)

I still remember how Copy ][+ had 1 BIG sector on tracks 2 and 3. The thing loaded *FAST*.

"Cracking Techniques" was a bunch of text files describing how to break each game protection. It even had a 'tut on Copy ][+. Copy the ROM over to the language card. Modify the RAM so that reset would enter the "monitor" (built in disassembler on the Apple), and then finally make the 16K language read only. Copy ][+ never checked for the language card, so voila, you had a memory image. Moving the memory down so that DOS 3.3 wouldn't clobber it, and then BSAVE COPY ][+, A$800,L$8E00 :) (Dos3.3 started at 0x9600)

> all those cool things...like modified TOC's....

Sad, that I still remember that the DOS3.3 TOC was on track 17 after all these years. I like how some games would embed control-chars in the filename.

{rant}
My 8-bit Apple had 20 character filenames. Who's the dumbass that limits filenames to 8.3 in CPM and MSDOS ?
{/rant}

> Half tracks....

The Apple drive was actually capable of 1/4 tracks. I believe Broderbund games made use of it. Write a small section on track 0. Increment to track 1/4, write another small section. Repeat. Normally, tracks were 4 quarter tracks apart, due to interference from data written on quarter tracks.

> Modified sector headers....

The thing that made Apple games disk so much fun to backup was that the drive couldn't write 2 consequetive zeros (aside from Sync Bytes, which was 0xFF, followed by two zero bits.) Ah, the days of 5+3 (13 sector tracks) and 6+2 encoding (16 sector tracks). For 6+2, you expand a sector of 256 bytes out to 384 bytes.)
Some interesting technical info here http://www.enteract.com/~enf/afc/apple2

Little bit of history here http://apple2history.org/history/ah15.html

Then someone figured out that you *could* write a few "illegal" bytes, such as C5.

> having to use the nibble editor

Copy ][+ had a ton of options for it's nibble editor. And if you still couldn't make a backup, there was always the option of boot tracing the program. Remember how the first sector had to be delimited by D5 AA 96 because thats what the Disk Prom checked for.

Some interesting cracking technique from yore:

Wildcard and Replay were 2 interesting products. They generated a NMI and let you enter the disassembler. I wanted one, but found out that I didn't really need one after I learnt about that language card trick.

The other trick to "stop" a game, was to search for 30 C0, since that was the address of the speaker! (I was *so* thankfull Copy ][+ ver 7 added a search bytes function!) Change a few bytes, and now the game will stop when it tries to play a sound. ;-)

Cheers

Mac OS, a blatant ripoff of Windows

Uh, no, its the other way round, sort of (actually Apple originally ripped from Xerox and so did MS)... ever use a 1984 or pre-1984 Apple system? If you had, it would be obvious to you that Windows 3.1 was obviously a horrible ripoff of the early Apples. (Anyone else remember those old systems with McWrite, McDraw, McPaint etc? Complete with mouse, windows, menus, icons, buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, even thumbnail views in the file manager which it took MS until around 2000 to really do) Check your history, Apple had Windows-like OSs long before MS did, Windows *1.0* was released, what, around 1985?

Check out http://apple2history.org/ and http://www.apple-history.com/ if you don't believe me. I remember actually using some of these systems in the early 80's. Check out screenshots of the Apple Lisa (1983), Mac128k (1984) etc. Microsoft Windows was indisputably a ripoff of Apple, to state the opposite is outright incorrect. Take a look at http://www.theyopy.de/applehistory/lisa.html (a mirror of apple-history.com) and http://www.theyopy.de/applehistory/gui.html where they describe to what extent Apple had in fact ripped off the ideas themselves from Xerox Parc from the Alto. Apple had tried to sue MS for copying them, but the fact that they themselves copied so much contributed to a weakening of their case. Also see http://www.theyopy.de/applehistory/horn1.html.

The ADB port was also available on the Apple IIgs. I remember plugging in my IIgs' keyboard into my Mac IIci because I liked the smaller size of the IIgs' keyboard.

MR. GATES: Let me start out, really the reason that you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines, and the bios of that should be open to everybody to use, and all the extensibility should be there.

How very droll.

This history site is pretty good. I too dumped apple for a PC in the early 90's because frankly the PC was closer to the ideals of the Apple I/][ than the mac was. It sill pains me to think that if the PHB's at Apple had recognized the market force that was the Apple ][ and focused on it rather than constantly trying to 1 up it then we would all probably be using Apple ][ derivatives rather than PC clones. Again and again apple tried to change the focus of the company from a hobbyist / home (with a business following) to a business computer. First there was the Apple /// then there was the Lisa then there was the Mac. For 4+ years apple spun its wheels trying to sell everyone new technology while crippling the Apple ][. Apple basically stopped marketing the Apple ][ by 1980 yet it still continued to sell like mad well into the '80s. In fact the site
above has this wonderful quote from the IIc release to the effect that the original Apple ][ sold 50k units in 2.5 years, the PC sold 50k units in 8 months, the mac did the same in 74 days and the IIc took orders for 50k in the first 7 hours. The margins were way higher than the Mac and well into the 1980's the II kept Apple alive from quarter to quarter so they could pour craps loads of R&N into new mac's that would have lukewarm sales.. What was so frustrating for Apple fans is that Apple (unlike every other company, Intel continues to make x86's even though they want to make IA64's(or i860's in the past), MS continues to make windows 9x's even though they want to sell NT, etc) refused to hedge their bets and make decent Apple ][ systems to at least maintain their outrageous market share. Instead they only resurrected new II's when the company needed more money. There was a saying to this effect in the 80's. Something along the lines that when the mac R&D was broke and apple didn't have any money they released a new II to stay alive for a couple more years. Meanwhile PC's ate into the market share one huge bite at a time until apple was left where they are today. A minority player with a single digit market share.