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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."
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
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.
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.
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*
Zork, not Zonk. I'm assuming that's a braino, since the 'N' key is nowhere near the 'R' key.
... the graphics in your head.
All those text-only Infocom games had the best graphics
SLM
main() {1;}
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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