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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."
...Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds again. Same thing, just a few years earlier.
Some Apple II Crack Screens from days gone by:
http://artscene.textfiles.com/intros/APPLEII/
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.
8, actually; they were numbered 0-7
It lead to my purchase of a Laser 386SX [I couldn't afford the extra $300 for the DX (math processor)
You're thinking of the 486SX/DX. The 386SX had a 16-bit bus while the 386DX was 32-bit. Neither had a math coprocessor (the 387DX).
Macs have always been PC's. They are computers, and they are personal (except for the servers, and even then, the recent ones could be used as a workstation). They are not and never will be "IBM PC Compatible", though right now is the closest they've ever been.
Just to remind you... the IBM PC lived and died by its BIOS. Without a BIOS, it can't be an "IBM PC Compatible". The Mac used to live (and potentially die) by its ROM, but Apple wisely turned it into an intangible brand and got rid of that thing.
My 1981 13" Mitsubishi ColorTV came with schematics.
My 1983 JVC VCR ($500 retail) came with schematics.
My 1989 19" Panasonic Stereo TV ($700 Retail) came with schematics.
My 2001) 43" Hitachi Projection HDTV (monitor 1080i/540p) has schematics available that I used to replace the convergence chips with.
It is true that most electronics - especially the Wal*Mart disposable type - do not have schematics. I was actually shocked that my 43" TV has them available for the public.
What I find offensive is that some appliance parts (refrigerator and dishwasher) from some manufacturers are not available to the general public - at least in my experience. I've read that some specialty ICs for TVs are only available to contract holders (repair shops) for said manufacturer.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
140K, or 280K if you made it a "flippy" and used the other side. (I should still have a notcher around here someplace...not a cheap single-hole punch, either, but the gadget that made a rectangular cutout in the right place.)
My DuoDisk was able to reliably seek over 38 tracks instead of the usual 35, so I had more than a few disks formatted that way for 152K per side. IIRC, you didn't even need to patch ProDOS; you just needed a disk formatter that would go beyond 35 tracks.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
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?
Apple was good at deceptive commercials, like saying that the Apple II was the best-selling computer of all time, when both Commodore and especially Tandberg (with the TRS/80) outsold them plenty. It wasn't until VisiCalc that the Apple II became really popular, and then mainly in business. In the term of number of sold units Commodore beat everyone, first with the VIC-20 and then with the C64.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
The big problem there would be that Microsoft holds copyright on most of Applesoft Basic, which became the heart of the command line.
//c as it includes a disk drive and can be plugged into a TV for immediate use.
Apple negotiated two 10 year licenses, and their reluctance to sign a third might have been a factor in ending the Apple II line.
(This isn't a problem for the Apple I, which is why kits are available with the approval of Apple and Woz.)
Apple II emulators are readily available though (the whole machine fits in one FPGA) and so are cheap used Apple II's.
I'd recommend a
SLM
main() {1;}
The Apple II was the only of the three consumer computers that year that 1) supported color 2) had addressable pixels 3) could be programmed in machine language and 4) could be hooked up to your color TV.
Claim 3 is wrong. Claims 1, 2, and 4 amount to the same thing, and they don't make the Apple II "more advanced", they just make it different. The simple fact that the TRS-80 had a 16x64 display, a better keyboard, and a more powerful processor made it so much more useful for real-world applications.
Woz mentions in his book that he felt they were simply cheap knock offs of the Apple I which didn't bother him a whit since he had the Apple II up his sleeve
Well, of course: Apple knows how to make machines that sell well. That's not the same as making the technically most advanced machines. In fact, time and again, Apple has beaten technically superior systems.
Yes, the bit about being a mutant appeared in the Apple II Reference Manual. Other early Apple manuals had such gems (?) as "on a clear disk you can seek forever" and "EXCESS INEPT VERBIAGE DISQUALIFIES NAMES".
I'm not sure if the mutant bit appeared in the earlier manuals.
Claim 3 is wrong..
LOL. Claim is indisputably correct and the fact that you don't know this leads me to believe you weren't even born when the Apple II was released. Not only could one program the Apple II in machine language, but Woz built a debugger and disassembler into the ROM to make it easier to do so.
The TRS-80 was limited ito 4K and 8K DRAM configurations, and the Apple II could be expanded to 48K DRAM on the motherboard and even more via the expandable slots (which the TRS-80 and PET lacked).
And the only "real-world" application that mattered was VisiCalc which was only available for the Apple II.
Clearly you hate today's Apple, but don't confuse Woz's groundbreaking machine with today's company.