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The Apple II At 30
turnitover sends us to eWEEK for an appreciation of the Apple II on the 30th anniversary of its shipping. An overview of the history of the Apple II puts it in context. A nice tidbit: how important the floppy drive was to sales. The article quotes Sellam Ismail, the proprietor of VintageTech, which maintains archives of computers, documents, and software: "You could think of the Apple II's importance on two levels — the Woz level and the Steve Jobs level." The former refers to its allure to hackers, and the latter to its appliance-like polish, a first for its time, There is also an interview with Woz, who says, "[A]t the start there were no computers in the home — we had to make the word computer compatible with homes."
Windows = Christian (Large userbase, heirarchical)
Linux = Buddhism (Smaller userbase, approaching state of Nirvana)
Mac = Islam
I got an Apple ][+ with 48k back in 1981. I had a chance to use a couple of computers before then, but this was the first one I spent any real time with. I taught myself to program on it and it sparked my life long interest in computer graphics and game development (which I attempt to do professionally today). I have the awesome manuals that came with it to thank. That's the way to do a computer right. And now it makes me feel very, very old. I wish I still had that particular computer, I should have never given it away. I still have an Apple IIe, two Apple //c's, and a Laser 128. What Woz did with Apple is the most inspiring and amazing thing. What an engineer!
+0 Meh
...Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds again. Same thing, just a few years earlier.
What's the big thing that seems to have changed at Apple over 30 years?
In 1977, Apple Computer included the schematics for all of the motherboard and CPU design for the Apple ][.
In 2006, Apple Ceased & Desisted a site for merely linking to a service manual.
Please come back Woz, we miss you.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I *still* use my Apple ][ whenever I want a quick retro games thrash. Plus the "cracked by" screens give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. :)
:)
They don't make computers like they used to... The 8086 works as well.
The good old days of really simple games, where game played mattered the most and the GFX and sound were a last thing on the devs minds. i wish they still made games where i could play them on a computer from 4 years ago, why cant they do this now, and most of the time (like bat2) there is barely ANY muti-player, what ever happened to the story line
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
I learned about computers on a ][c at Motorola back in the day and enjoyed the crap out of the novelty of it at the time. I consider myself very lucky to have been born at just the right time to experience the PC explosion - Mac or otherwise. It lead to my purchase of a Laser 386SX [I couldn't afford the extra $300 for the DX (math processor) model] by VTECH (buy a cordless phone lately?) loaded with Windoze 3.1, 2 MB of RAM upgradable to 4 MB and an 85 MB HDD. Yeah yeah, glory daze I know, but what a heady time to be a new user. I was never smart enough to get into the programming aspect of it, but it was cool enough to me to be a knowledgable user on the cutting edge of reboot after reboot.
SJ gives a good overview of the original goals of the Apple ][ and later the Mac. He gives interesting details of the Apple ][... "we wanted people to be able to code themselves," and on Woz's implementation of Integer Basic and how broken it was (and that Woz knew he needed to fix it with something that supported floating point, but never got around to it). Was pretty neat.
There are some clips on the "All things Digital" conference site, and I believe on iTunes as well.
Jobs is a gaping quivering asshole.
Of course assholes tend to make companies great. Whereas the good guys start the companies and then get driven out.
From TFA: "[Jobs] opposed the inclusion of expansion slots... Woz himself had to demand their inclusion, and the two compromised on having four."
Of course, the Apple ][ had seven (7) slots.
The BEST thing about starting with the Apple ][ was the manuals. They explained clearly and with examples how to use the computer and write BASIC programs. Nothing since has been as comprehensive, or easy to use.
There are so many layers and problems which todays desktop make difficult, and were easy back then. A much better introduction to computers couldn't be had.
But does it run Vista?
*duck*
Well, the Red book is okay, but I think that the later generation of manuals was better.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
one of the best games ever. i really (honestly!) miss the days spent swapping 5.25" disks in my apple IIc.
I suggest you read Slashdot
It was color that made the Apple so successful. Anything else, on the market, close to Apple's price was monochrome. Color just knocked people's socks off.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
During the summer before 3rd and 4th grade (2000ish), we moved the family's first computer (Apple ][gs) out of the basement to make room for the slightly less old Windows 98, and the new Windows 2k machine. The computer stayed in my room for two years, despite sitting right next to a new box running Linux (the pride of my life for a couple of years) for a year of that. Simply because, for those two years, I spent about half the time I spent on computers on the Apple, programming and in general tinkering with everything. TFM and the ability to teach myself a whole new world was what got me into computers. Oh, and the keyboard was amazing. The loud click still takes me to a happy place. We should replace some elementary school computers with Apple ][s. I'm not terribly smarter than the average, I just RTFM and let my curious instinct lead me. Which any 3rd grader can do, as long as the latter isn't crushed by bad teachers.
I have a working Apple //c that, while seldom used any more, I plan on using to introduce my son to programming when he's ready.
I began learning to write code on an Apple IIe and an NCR Decision Mate V, and I firmly believe that the reason I was so engrossed at such an early age was because of the simplicity of those machines! (esp. the Apple... it had COLOR!!!)
I don't have any software for it right now, but I still have my old binders with the 65C02 assembler instruction set and my notes of the peek and poke addresses... every once in a while it's fun to hack out a little game or a stupid little 'screensaver' and let it run...
The NCR-DMV PC had technical manuals, too... but early DOS (and CP/M) and PCs simply weren't nearly as inviting and accessible as those early Apple computers!
Cheers to the Apple II!
I'm done with sigs. Sigs are lame.
The BEST thing about starting with the Apple ][ was the manuals. They explained clearly and with examples how to use the computer and write BASIC programs. Nothing since has been as comprehensive, or easy to use.
Totally agree. I actually keep a set of Apple ][c manuals around on my bookshelf, as an example/reminder of what good technical writing (and illustrating!) is.
The authors of those manuals managed to take a subject that was completely and utterly foreign to many of their readers, and make it comprehensible, un-intimidating, even a little fun to read. They didn't assume that the reader knew much going in, but they didn't treat them as a mental incompetent, either.
Modern computer manuals are burned toast to the early Apple manuals' filet mignon. They may serve the same essential function, but the old Apple ones did it so much more pleasantly.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Why am I wasting time here? I should proofread my Physics term paper. I call for a moratorium on Apple fluff pieces during finals week.
Even better than the BASIC manuals.... the Technical reference manual, that most dealers would give to you for free or nearly so if you asked for it.
The tech reference manual had a full schematic for the motherboard on a fold out 20" x 30" sheet that looked like a National Geographic map, included a fairly detailed memory map, pin out diagrams for the peripherial cards with expected voltage levels and even a physical diagram for making your own boards, I/O memory locations and signal levels, a complete 6502 opcode listing including byte codes for hand assembly, and frankly just about everything you needed in order to clone an Apple ][ from scratch, including the original source code for the ROM including comments. Sure, it had the Apple Computer copyright disclaimer, but nearly every thing you needed to know about that computer was very public and accessible.
Apple stopped doing this level of technical support for the hobbyist crowd when they started to go for business customers, and when it came to the Mac, their attitude was that you were a user unless you were a part of their "special" developer community with the appropriate large licensing fee. And technical information was on a "need to know" basis.
But at least for the original Apple ][ and II+, the company was very open about its equipment and strongly encouraged outsiders to experiment and add both software and hardware to their system.
The value of the floppy drive is best appreciated by those of us who spent hours typing in code only to entrust it to that gambling device which was the cassette tape drive, or to face the reality of having no storage device at all. I remember leaving my trusty Commodore 64 on for a few days straight before I got my tape drive.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Umberto should go lick some more page corners... (Connery played the best Scots-burr-speakin' Guinea monk that's ever been played).
Like any geek 30+, I had an AppleII too (in fact, the computer's name was TK2000, a brazilian clone). And I must say that the world of computers were sooo funnier then... Obviously I'm takking from a romantic point of view, where typing 500 lines of BASIC code to save it in a K7 tape (after 3 hours debugging your mistypings) is real fun! I remember a book called "the black book of TK2000" that contained several hard-to-find informations that allowed me to really explore my machine, and the assembly programs that made it read even bugged tapes without errors. :-) And, last but not least, Karateka! :-)))
:-) IRQs, DMAs, conflicts, fun, fun, fun! :-) But since then, everything went downhill (or uphill). From 64Kb to 4Gb of RAM in 10 years...
After that, I had a MSX (I don't know if this japanese computer was famous in other countries, but here in brazil it was) with a single-sided drive, and some years later my first 386SX.
Today, you buy a computer, connect it to your 8Mb internet connection, download a 2Gb game in half an hour and play games that are almost real... You don't need to worry about tapes, typing, basic, anything. It's obviously better... But it's sad too. There's no fun anymore...
Yes, I know I'm getting old... But I really think that I was happy and I didn't knew...
--- Illogical Spock
Check out this fascinating time line for an overview of when each model was being produced, along with some computer industry milestones for context. The site has in depth history on the whole story.
Versions of the Apple II were still going strong when Linux and Windows 3.1 were released.
Retirement finally came shortly before Windows 95, but by that time software emulation had become more convenient.
SLM
main() {1;}
My first real computer (not to count my very dear hex-codes programmable calculator, though at that time I did not know it was hex codes, just some numbers and first couple letters, in 4th or 5th grade :) ) was a Bulgarian clone of Apple ][. Yes, with (equally pirated) p-code system written in that strange unknown place called UCSD, had something to do with mythical California... I still do not understand how did they fit p-code interpreter, compiler, libraries (including graphics), editor and file browser runnable on 32K and loadable from a 5" floppy (it was not 360K, more like 128K, right?)... Eat THAT, JVM! :)
;) ).
Moscow, 1984, I think... (Hmm, interesting year...
Paul B.
Sort of amazing that this was so long ago. I had an education version of the Apple II (Bell and Howell) with a floppy. If we want to emulate the possibilities of something like this, a real concerted effort at platform development needs to happen. The concept of print graphics (I'm a designer) is not long for the world, and frankly neither is the concept of a personal computer. The platform is the network (sorry Sun you missed it.).
Framing thought around computing is the future, and it is platform independent. Imagine if Google were untied from the server and existed in code or essentially tags. Processing would become a commodity. Processing would again become personal. This is the problem. In 1977 we thought of computing and programming as personal. Information a a personal responsibility. Today we outsource to platform vendors.
Tomorrow we define. Define content. Define a context. And, define a connection scenario.
I first saw the apple //e in high skool. I never really learned anything in class, but got lots of cracked games and stuff. Even so, it's what got me into the IT world. I didnt get my own computer until I bought a highly modified ][+ with no disk drives for $200 in 1987 and I still have it, although it's always been rather unstable, probably due to overheating issues. I still have dozens of NIBBLE magazine programs to type in! I currently have a pretty large collection of 8bit Apple stuff, and I have every model except for the original Apple ][ and the Woz edition GS (if that counts as a seperate model).
One day I'll have to set up a SCSI drive and archive all my disks I still have. Love playing castle wolfenstein, loderunner, INFOCOM games, Leisure suit larry, et al.
-- After all is said and done, more is said than done.
"Like any geek 30+, I had an AppleII too"
Let's not forget about those 30+ year old geeks that had Commodore 64s which were much less expensive.
I had Apple IIs at school and learned some stuff on them but most of my early computing was done on Commodores.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
It was Commodore, not Apple, who released the first true home computer.
It was Commodore, not Apple, who "brought computing to homes" by making their machines affordable.
Lastly, it was the success of Commodore, not Apple's, that made computing mainstream.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
I've read the book "On the Edge", about Commodore. The author (usually via quotes) bashes early Apple.
First, it claims that Apple greatly exaggerated sales figures. Apple was a distant 3rd in sales behind Commodore PET and TRS-80's until VisiCalc (first spreadsheet) arrived, which was written for Apple because the PET and TRS's were booked in the development shop. It was not chosen for technical reasons, but because it wasn't being used at the time.
Altough Apple beat PET on floppies, the floppy was so expensive that it didn't help Apple's sales volume much. Plus, PET had more stuff in ROM such that one didn't need external programs as much. Commodore was able to produce ROM much cheaper than Apple could get because they owned a major ROM company. (PET sold better in Europe than the US, so US'ers don't remember PETs as much. Still, it sold more than Apple until 1980 or 81.)
And, the Commodore-64 eventually beat the daylights out of Apple II as far as sales volume. It probably had far more impact on consumers than Apple. Apple exaggerates the power, influence, and abilities of the Apple II. The only thing that saved Apple as a company from the PC clones was they lucked into desktop publishing with the Mac. Had the Commodore Amiga captured that niche, Apple would perhaps be dead instead of Commodore now.
The book did give praise for Apple's clever marketers, but not its machines.
Table-ized A.I.
Yes, I was referring to the later set of manuals that shipped with the Apple ][+ and not the original Red book.
As another poster indicated, the Technical Reference gave it all to you in nice chunks.
As an aside, In Grade 5, I taught myself to program, hacked keyboard interfaces onto games which required paddle controllers so I could play them. Over a few years learned assembler, made variable Level of Detail animations, rendered 3D wireframes with one of the first desktop 3D apps. I still remember the first good digitized audio I ever heard, it was the riff of the MTV theme, sampled as a series of very fast clicks. The cheesy voices in the first wolfenstein doesnt count.
hmm and other memories like 10 and 50 baud modems..
I had the opportunity a couple months ago to attend a speech by the Woz. I'm sure the creation of Apple Computers is not a foreign story to many of us here but it's a really neat experience to hear it direct from the man himself. He just has such an overwhelming passion for technology and the way it affects our lives. Quite aside from the normal mac vs pc wars here on Slashdot I think it is important to remember the history involved. I am sure many of you are like me. We define ourselves by our relationships, our hobbies, and our passions. Who would we be without the invention of the personal computer? What would we be doing with out lives absent the idea of bringing computers out of the corporation and in to every last home? I learned basic at 4 years old. I don't remember a time in my life when computers weren't a huge part of it. I salute Jobs and Wozniak both for having the vision (and the luck!) to spawn a revolution.
The BEST thing about starting with the Apple ][ was the manuals. They explained clearly and with examples how to use the computer and write BASIC programs.
10 RTFM
20 GOTO 10
Table-ized A.I.
I brought my C-64 to school in 1988 and made all the Apple Machines look stupid. Now when I went to College I fell in love with the Mac but always though the Apple II line got too much attention.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My parents got me an Apple //c with a green monochrome monitor (not that tiny one -- the box one used for IIe] after TI-99/4A (didn't die). I played a lot of games on it, but I also learned BASIC and LOGO. At school, I had an awesome sixth grade teacher (Mr. Mangel? I wonder if he reads /.]) who was a geek and perfect mentor for me since I was into computers. I remember I got introduced to LOGO and he had one of those Apple robot turtle like a plotter on the floor/ground. It was neat!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I particularly remember the example that went something like this:
10 HELLFREEZESOVER = 0; (or was is FALSE?)
20 DO UNTIL HELLFREEZESOVER;
[Code]
100 ENDO;
I can still remember it after all these years. Those were good manuals and they taught me a lot.
Happy 30th Birthday to all of them, because all of them were introduced the same year. I think the only reason to single out the Apple II is that Apple is still around, since the TRS-80 and Commodore Pet were technically at least as good as the Apple II.
Seriously. Re-release it as a kit for kids to learn computers on. I remember getting a 'computer kit' from Radio shack as a kid that was basically a bunch of resistors and transistors and wires. (the 150 in 1 from here - http://musepat.club.fr/sfair.htm ) An Apple II would be a nice modern equivalent....
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
call -151
]RUN
<beep>
?SYNTAX ERROR IN 10
]
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
...circuitry, 80GB IDE hard drive interface and emulation software it's possible.
I never had an Apple II or access to one but was told that the manual had a bit about the tapes and noted that if you could understand the noises they held when played on a normal HiFi deck 'you were a mutant and would go far in life'. True?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Is that between 1975 and 1979 (just 4 short years) we went from the Altair kit and its switches and LEDs to the Atari 800 with multimode graphics, sprites, extensible OS and 4 channel sound. In the middle was the Apple II, affordable mass storage on floppies etc.
Interesting info here including several machines I'd never heard of:
http://www.blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Not only was the references supplied by Apple good, I think it was also the beginning of the advanced "hacker's" manuals available from 3rd parties. I remember a book titled "Inside the Apple][." It documented every memory call in the ROM and the basic interperator. (Remember PEEKing and POKEing?)
Beagle Bros. software also had a collection of Hack tools and subroutines that could be freely (If I remember correctly) incorperated into user programs. All fully documented. I remember trapping Ctrl-C inputs with ONERR and redirecting CTRL-OPENAPPLE-RESET back to the beginning of program execution. FUN STUFF!
I know one thing that has changed. Tight, efficient code was a must on that machine, unlike the bloatware we see today 30 years later.
You have 5 Moderator Points! Use 'em or lose 'em! They will expire before any good stories are posted.
That little beep taught me more though...
Having originally learned Applesoft BASIC, Integer seemed really hostile. For one thing, many commands you took for granted in Applesoft ("HOME" to clear the screen for example) had to be done with system calls. To me, Integer was just an inconvenience I had to load to in order to watch Applevision or play some Star Trek game I had.
But it was blazing fast, even did syntax checks as you entered lines. By the time I noticed this and wanted to try learning it, my programming mojo was already waning.
CALL -151
;)
F666G
BRUN
PEEK (-16336)
PEEK (-16384)
CALL 768
PR#3
PDL(0)
POKE -16302,0
CALL 62454
CHR$(13)CHR$(4)
CHUGGA CHUGGA
If disk swapping was your thing, Knights of Legend is right up your alley. I think just checking your inventory took something like 3 swaps on a 2-drive system.
I learned BASIC on a TRS-80 model IV at school and a Timex Sinclair 1000 at home. I remember drooling over my uncle's VIC-20 and playing moon lander. Luckily, my piano teacher's boyfriend kept his Apple ][+ at her house, and I got to use while my sister practiced. Later, we had a //c at home. The ][ series were great _learning_ machines--taught me the fundamentals of the DOS and disk storage, 6502 assembly, and more. Didn't see too many people doing that with the 64's or early macs. Still, _any_ computer was cool back then... Amiga, TI-94/A, old PETs at school, Tandy's PC Jr clone... I wasn't particular in those days. I recall the //c with 12" monochrome monitor and Epson fx-80 printer came to about $1600, which is probably around $3500 in 2007 dollars. Personal computing power has gotten CHEAP. I swore off Apple products after the ]['s were abandoned. I returned when the OS went 'nix.
Brings back good memories :)
I hate to sound like a troll here, but isnt that like saying The Model T at 90.
It was an innovative computer but do we need to constantly go back these Apple II's and Tandy's and Commodore 64 references all the time to feel the nastalgia?
- DenialX
Interesting footnote - one of the writers of the Red Book - Chris Espinosa - still works for Apple.
http://www.xgamestation.com/
This is a small single board system that is intended to teach electronics and video game programming. The system is designed to be simple enough that a learner can deeply understand every chip and function of the system yet fast and powerful enough to do interesting things. Capability wise this machine seems to act most like a highly overclocked Apple IIGS with a really good framebuffer.
And you probably never will.
Wow. My high school was really behind the times. I remember starting a BASIC programming language class on an Apple II when it was a young whipper snapper of 17 back in 1994. I say starting a class, because in actuality, all we ever did was play Oregon Trail. I still haven't made it to Oregon. :(
I run Ubuntu skinned to look like a Mac on a PC. Go figure.
According to TFA, the Apple II "offered a system monitoring utility that allowed users to dissemble code on the spot". Does that mean it printed out 6502 code as Z80 assembly or something? Mine didn't have that-- must have only been in the early revs.
Seriously, why can't they find someone who actually knows what they're talking about to write these retrospectives? Surely we haven't all died yet?
I just picked up an old Apple //c and started going thru our library of old programs. It still does some amazing things. I have two students who are enthralled with this thing. They know more about how memory and disk basics after two weeks of this thing than they ever knew. Synapses 10 years dormant are snapping back into action... PEEKing POKEing. Where's my hole puncher - I need to make double sided disks!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Apple might be 30 years old, so in 6 more years we can revisit the C=64 / ][e wars .. I'm still betting on C=64.. the SID chip was the pwn.
/me pines for the days when not everything supported ANSI..
I'll give my props to the Apple duece because it was a pioneer..
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
The Apple ][ is responsible for the computer revolution, so I'm glad folks remember and celebrate it.
You don't have to read these threads, you know.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Indeed. At the very least, those gifs should be scaled down to 8-color or even monochrome. There is simply no need for an excessive 256-color palette for a system that was pre-VGA. A simple freeware DOS utility, like PictView would do the trick quite nicely. That would save tons of space and bandwidth.
...but the Apple ][ didn't run linux and wasn't open source...
Heathen! The True Names are ][, ][+, //e[1], //c, IIgs, and IIc+.
[1] The later Platinum version of the e may have been IIe; I don't know.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
IIc or IIe, that is the question!
pr#6
In high school, Beneath Apple DOS was the Bible for myself and my hacker friends.
Haha. The Apple ][ always brings back such fond memories.... I always had so much fun (in 3rd/4th) grade when I would copy the BASIC programs out of the 3-2-1 contact magazines at the school library. And those late nights up with my egomaniacal friend who would force me to write horrible text based games, "Less than Mortal Kombat" being our crowing achievement (years later)! It got 200 downloads on AOL! (lol)
Apple IIe, my first screensaver:
5] TEXT
10] HOME
15] PRINT "BASIC NOSTALGIA FTW!";
20] GOTO 15
RUN
I think times has changed a lot since then.
Games are usually what motivates kids (just like porn motivates adult, but that's a different subject).
Yes, when our generation started programming, we had a BASIC interpreter that started immediatly when you turned on the computer, and you could instantly start type some very primitive code, with the help of manuals.
But the difference, is the goal we - as average kids - could set for our selves.
When some of the most critically aclaimed games of our generations - specially interactive fiction like Zork - used simple text interface and seldom used graphics, it was easy to build fun mockups trying to emulates those games with a couple of BASIC's INPUTs and PRINTs thrown in a loop.
When the games at the local arcade had huge blobs of pixels as sprite that you had to use your imagination to make something of them, the average kid with no artistic talent at all wasn't afraid of making a soup of LINEs CIRCLEs (or POKEs depending on your local flavor of BASIC) and call the amorphous pile of rectangle "The Hero of My Wonderful Game".
Today, turn on any last-gen home console : you're submerged with photo-realistic 3D real-time graphics. You have tools with which you can learn basic-level programming to your kids. Either with a vintage Apple or Comodore, OR by using an easy modern language like Python and easy to use binding. But interactive textual session, or animating blobs of pixel made under paint won't feel the same. The kid could learn to code a Tetris, but unless his correctly motivated by his parent-programming-tutor, he'll find the result boring and won't see how this will learn him to create his own variant of "Solid Snake" or whatever.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I loved my Apple II. My previous home cmputer was an Intercept Junior one board PDP-8 emulator (had to key in programs I wrote in Octal - yuck!)
I did 3 fun things with my Apple II:
1. wrote a very simple Basic Chess program that Apple gave away on the early demo program cassette tape
2. played with Bill Budge's 3D graphics library with the Lisa assembly language IDE
3. later, using UCSD Pascal, I wrote the world's first commercial Go playing program (Honninbo Warrior)
For me, my Apple II opened the door to what owning your own computer is all about: freedom to do what you want. This might be difficult to understand for some people, now that almost everyone has the freedom of owning their own computer.
I wouldn't be surprised if the original design was predicated on using chips that actually met their published spec (QC wasn't as tight a QC ago...). That design was pretty spare, I'll bet it didn't have a lot of timing tolerance. One way to "fix" such problems is to add some more gates (= more gate delay), which flew in the face of Woz's design goal of minimizing the overall chip count.
There also could have been some problems that cropped up when (if) they had to redesign the board layout for production. Doesn't mean the design was bad, just that it wasn't tested in the final configuration. Fixing those kinds of problems is a production engineer's job, and blaming it on R&D's "poor design" is a cop-out.
Just junk food for thought...
20 beep
:)
.. best!
30 goto 20
Apple ][+
I had a IIgs back in the day, and one of the things that had always impressed me about it was how it held up to much "faster" computers running Win3.1.
The Finder was faster and more responsive. The applications more polished and less buggy. The whole thing was both more reliable and more configurable. The only downside was the lack of true multi-tasking and the need to reboot when you changed from GS/OS to ProDOS or DOS 3.3. There were, however, some great DeskAccessories that pretty much filled the gap considering what 3.1 was able to do.
This was, of course, before Windows 95. I would contend there wasn't any serious usability comparison to be made between Windows and anything else until then, and Windows didn't seriously multi-task until then either.
Afterward is a whole other ball of wax, and one I don't feel like arguing.
But I would still rather fire up AppleWorksGS or BeagleWrite then try to do any work on a Windows 3.1 machine. There's just light-years of difference.
I love my computer -- You make me feel alright (Bad Religion)
with dual floppy drives, a copy of AppleWriter II, and a 172k RAM board I used to load programs from the first floppy into memory in, letting them execute at about 1000 times faster speeds than if I read them from floppy.
...
Good times
I think the floppies are all goo by now, mind you.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
http://www.virtualapple.org/
That's really all you need to know.
Well, at the trade show where both the PET and the Apple II were anounced, what do you think got the most attention? A dull grey box that showed random data on the screen when turned on and then just a blinking prompt and had no functioning BASIC, or a futuristic nice-looking box with built-in monitor and tape-drive and a working BASIC that you could work with immediatly?
How on earth did this troll get modded informative?
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.