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The Commodore 64 vs. the iPhone 3G S
Harry writes "The unfortunate news about Apple rejecting a Commodore 64 emulator from the iPhone App Store inspired me to compare the C64 to the new iPhone 3G S, in more detail than any rational person is likely to compare them, ever again. If nothing else, it's a snapshot of just how far technology has come since the C64's release in August of 1982."
Then it's settled. I'm getting a Commodore instead.
It's quite clear what Apple approved was selling individual C64 games or apps individually that used an emulator underneath. Not a full fledged emulator that would let you program your own games, or play whatever C64 software you have.
Apple probably read their website and realized their goal was quite different then what they were told earlier.
It's quite clear that an emulator is OK as long as it can only run the app sold with it, and not arbitrary code.
Good overview of the two technologies.
One point of correction the iPhone has successful run Apache so it can be used as a web server (for what it's worth). Here's a related article -
http://www.modmyi.com/forums/native-iphone-ipod-touch-app-launches/2665-apache-iphone-how-cool.html
I just got all warm and fuzzy remembering Lode Runner. Oh those were the days. We used to install CTR+ALT+Delete hardwired switches into friends C64 for $50. I still have two working and a whole bunch of games. My kids love them, almost as much as playing on my iPhone.
Number of owners who arent fanbois (C64 has more)
Number of games (C64 has more)
Number of useful apps (C64 has more)
Multitasking (No for both?)
MOS Technology VIC-II; no 3D capability
True, but at the time, 2D hardware features were as much a bullet-point as 3D acceleration today, and the C64 had some quite impressive 2D tricks up its sleeve.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
It used a 6510, which is a modified version of the 6502 with an extra IO port.
Of course, the AT&T contract was only required in the USA; in parts of the rest of the world dial-up access was available without a contract from a phone company in the '80s. The price comparison doesn't include the contract for the iPhone. Comparing it to one on a pre-pay contract would be more fair, which brings the C-64 a lot closer (until you account for inflation).
The iPhone wins on portability, although the C-64 could drive an external display including a large TV (no HD support though).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The iPhone 3G S has 4,000 times the RAM (256MB) for one-third the price (with an AT&T contract)
Your price comparison is not really good. You should compare an uncontracted iphone price (500 or 600) to that of a c64. The contract lock is worth money - especially considering how much you buy to maintain your service. THen again you get more from the contract (phone service, access to the internet, etc). So a better comparison is the straight phone price to the c64 price.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
At least this time Apple rejected something that was actually forbidden by the app store's rules.
The iPhone might have hardware 3D graphics, but only the C64 had hardware sprites.
This Flash C64 emulator is pretty nifty. It still needs some work though. I guess the iPhone doesn't support flash, but other phones might be able to run it.
If you want to run a little C64 basic on that emulator, be aware that the key for the double quote character is SHIFT-2. (I can't believe I remembered that!)
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10
RUN
Lazy bastard!
Commodore C64 Physical Specifications.
Weight of machine:1820g.
Physical dimensions:404 mm * 216mm * 75mm
http://www.retrocomputermuseum.co.uk/display_system.php?display=25
[Cause if it's on the net, it has to be true]
I don't know about you guys, but I'd take joysticks ports and RS232 over Bluetooth any day. :)
They forgot to include FREEDOM. You were free on the C64, no one could stop you from making applications, running them and distributing them freely to friends, who in turn, without big brother watching, could distribute your creations as well. You're not even allowed ot run a python interpreter on the iphone.
And don't tell me about jailbreaking, jailbreaking is a DMCA violation and if AT&T catches you, you will be kicked off their network. You don't have control of your device, with the C64 you did.
The only comparison that matters is you could write and run your own code on the C64 and you cannot on the iPhone.
...can they run Linux?
Instead of Ms. Pac Man, I would suggest Lode Runner or Jumpman.
Some other items to compare:
DRM-Free SID file compatibility?
Soothing knocking sounds from removable media (i.e. 1541 floppy drive)
Game DRM ease of circumvention (i.e. resistor on parallel port for Links)
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
I must say I was surprised to see that the C64 won all the benchmark tests.
> 300-bps, initially
> 7.2mbps, if AT&T ever supports it nationwide
Well... 300 bits per second is indeed more than 7.2 millibits per second. I guess the Commodore wins.
Why am I nitting on this? Because typical unit failure tends to make software people look bad when interfacing with engineers/physicists, etc. Please, "nerds", make an attempt to understand units.
can I have my click back?
I think you have to buy the development key ($99) to deploy to a physical phone, but you can write whatever you like and deploy it to your phone. You can deploy to as many as 50 different phones without going through the app store or buying a site license.
I don't remember for sure - you might even be able to deploy to a phone that's physically connected to your Mac without paying anything.
I agree that you're nowhere near as free on the iPhone as we were on the C64, but it's just wrong to say that we can't run any code we like on our phone.
I think it's also worth pointing out that there are huge potential exploits on a phone that weren't there on a C64. E.g. I could distribute a free app that eventually calls a 1-900 number I own, with no modem sticking out the back for you to disconnect.
I have written and distributed an iPhone app (and written C64 apps), so I'm not just spouting BS.
isn't the C64 emulator a sandbox?
ActionScript and Java run in a sandbox, but they're rejected too.
Nice stroll down memory lane... heh
Hope is the currency of fools
I just realized yesterday that my phone (Motorola i776) has as much memory as the computer at work which they refuse to upgrade. The first computer I had that would run DOS was a used IBM-XT, with 1/5 the drive space my phone has memory (unless I'm screwing up the math, I think I'm getting heat stroke from foolishly going outside). The XT had 175k IIRC.
I just read TFA, what are the respective clock speeds? The XP was 4 mz, I have no idea how fast my phone's (or the iPhone's) processor is.
Free Martian Whores!
Well, I cannot say I didn't see that coming!
The article compares the current price of the iPhone with the introductory price of the C=64. A few years in (circa 1984), you could buy a C=64 from K-mart at $90.00 USD. This was convenience, since the cheap power supply tended to burn up and die, and it was sometimes easier and cheaper to just buy a replacement machine. I went through three of the things back then!
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
What kinda chip you got in there, a Dorito?
Bow-ties are cool.
Can you create your own app store, and cut Apple's 30% (what is their cut of every app sold?) out of the equation? Don't assume because an app is free, download and popularity data isn't worthless.
If yes, reject app. If no, move to some other random criteria.
The emulator clause is clearly spelled out in the developer agreement.
I'm trying to image a C64 developer proudly crowing, "We're allowed to sell 50 copies!"
Hence my comment "I agree that you're nowhere near as free on the iPhone as we were on the C64".
I was correcting misinformation, not disagreeing with the sentiment. And I also don't see in this conversation where selling an app was brought up - this thread is about running code on your device that you wrote.
Well, the Atari 8-bit machines had sprites in hardware too, and had it before the C-64 came out.
The first machine with sprites was the TI-99. Hardware sprites were the master's thesis project of Danny Hillis.
I don't remember for sure - you might even be able to deploy to a phone that's physically connected to your Mac without paying anything.
You can, but only if you jailbreak. Build the app in Xcode without code signing, scp it to /Applications on the iPhone, then run ldid (available in Cydia) to give it a fake signature that will allow it to run. Yes, this is very stupid.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Lets look as far into the future as the past.
I'll use my perspective as having been an experienced computer engineer back in 1982 (same age as Steve J).
Some aspects will evolve at Moore's Law. Some aspects may reach saturation where new features dont make design or engineering sense (e.g. stagnant pocket calculators). And the things that much slower than Moore's, e.g energy sources.
First, will the pocket-to-palm size video screen form factor still make sense? Yes it feels natural. Perhaps thinner so it feels more like a credit card.
The pixel resolution may double. Much more than that and the human eye really cant see the detail. Color and contrast had a long way to go. The superior experimental monitors at SIGGRAPH have such resolution, contrast and color that its hard to tell whether you are looking through a window or at a computer screen. Nd you'll have full phot-realistic 3D too. That already exists, but need miniaturization.
Alternative video technologies might abandon a video screen altogether in favor of projecting on a flat surface, the eyeball, or into a 3D volume. Scanning -projectors could be as small as keychain or a bump in your eyeglasses. But I still think theres a usability advantage to a palm-size rigid screen.
Storage will probably grow as fast in near decades as it has in recent decades. Ten gigbytes of flash would become a 100 petabytes in that period.
Communication bandwidths will increase too. I expect several oscillations of client versus server storage wars as we have had recently. Will all that storage be used for personal video libraries in your pocket, or will you store in a mass central location.
Device power will continue to be a problem. Both auto manufacturers and portable computer engineers know electric energy sources havent progessed that much in a century - maybe an order of magnitude over that time.
Some version or descendent of UNIX will drive the product. In my perspective software has been more conservative than hardware over the decades. You dont have to dig too deeply into Linus or Windows to find pieces from the 1970s or earlier.
However, the other end of software- the end application- is much harder to predict. With every new computer form factor there is an explosion of application creativity. And we are at the early end of the curve for pocket computers. Part of this creativity is fueled by the variety of sensors all in one small box- camera, voice, touch, orientation, position, etc. Perhaps more sensors will be added to sense the biological state of the hand or person holding it.
I wonder if an emulator for the apple 2 series would be approved?
Wow, this would have gotten me to buy an iPhone! I didn't think anything could. Thanks for turning me away, Apple.
"Total applications available 10,000"
Nonsense. I have around 17000 C64 games in my collection, and at least 7000 demos. I don't how many applications there are in total, but I bet two sacks of gold it's at least 100.000.
And what's that about "Major Hollywood releases available for download same date as DVD"? No, but a lot of titles hit the shops the same day as the movie they were based on premiered at the cinema.
On the one hand it's nice to see stuff about the C64 on Slashdot, but it's kinda silly when it's because of some stupid blogpost that hasn't been researched for more than 2 minutes.
How about compare boot times. It would be hard to beat a C64 1 or 2 second boot up.
on the iPhone?
So no Apple //, Mac OS 9-, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Atari 400/800, or even TRS-80 and MS-DOS emulators on the iPhone?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Time to load Slashdot 2.0: [still waiting] [still waiting]
Though there's a 50-50 chance the C64 would render it better.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I wonder how many folks will still have, much less use, their iPhone in 27 years...
http://www.gamebase64.com/ This database has 20000 games. Those are just the ones they've found and it doesn't even include actual applications, only games. The total number of programs for the C-64 is probably far more than 50000.
Apple rejects anything they think will turn them away from the phone's operation or make changes to it.
PUT IT ON ANDROID and WM. You Won't be rejected there.
No Flash
No competitive Browsers
No File Exploring
No downloading to the phone
and people say I should get an iPhone, there's a couple of reasons NOT to.
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
I saved and saved to get my C64. Way better than that stupid VIC 20.
I have hundreds games for it. About a dozen or so game that I enjoy so much I keep my C64 around and 'load' it up so I can play them. A emulator for the Iphone/touch would be something I would love to have and pay for it - provided it had the games I love to play.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
USB is the new whore-port. I'm at Firewire 1394 kind of guy, because it's faster than USB; so I have a USB bridge to Firewire and wouldn't let anything USB touch the bus directly. I even went so far as pay a technician to desolder every USB component on the motherboard, and the Son of God was praised for it!
I'ld rather have a motherboard with GPIB and ISA/VLB than USB. USB is a component of itself and doesn't deserve to touch the BUS directly.
My rackmount kit has a Magma PCI plane, and an ISA plane underneath, then a nice GPIB rack, followed by a SCSI array and then next-heaviest a APC UPS base that would give 1 week of power retention for this portable datacenter.
Obviously, Apple want their users to get everything through their checkout machine (the app store).
No Java,
No Flash,
No emulators,
They control everything you get... ...Hmmmmm
The fact that jailbreaking is non-trivial and that there is still anything which requires it is proof that no, you can't. You can write applications against a published SDK running on a specific operating system, but you can't affect the underlying system in any meaningful way without jailbreaking. You can run any code you like on your phone - except a program to patch out the inhibition against *actually* running any code you want (OK, there are lots of other things you can't do, but that's the point). I'm sure the 3G S will be jailbroken soon enough, but until then you're still limited to the development tools and toys that Apple lets you play with.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I think it's the first time I've typed that title in at least 24 years, but it's still true! ... dammit!
Wow, it's been like 26 years since I've made a title like that, but it's still true!
http://www.kyon.pl/swf/12286.html (a bit British-centric, but still...)
One that hath name thou can not otter
It's quite clear that an emulator is OK as long as it can only run the app sold with it, and not arbitrary code.
This sounds like the perfect scenario for a practical application of the Underhand C Code Contest ideas :->
Please, "nerds", make an attempt to understand units.
It's quite easy, just follow this: http://xkcd.com/394/
I agree that you're nowhere near as free on the iPhone as we were on the C64, but it's just wrong to say that we can't run any code we like on our phone
No, it’s just true.
In order to make any use of the iPhone SDK, you must accept its license agreements, which greatly limits the code you can write for your phone without breaking the law.
So you can’t “run any code you like” on your phone, not more than you can grab as much money as you like from your bank if you’re bold enough.
I think it's also worth pointing out that there are huge potential exploits on a phone that weren't there on a C64. E.g. I could distribute a free app that eventually calls a 1-900 number I own, with no modem sticking out the back for you to disconnect.
This is FUD. The vast majority of the smartphones sold worldwide have the same potential exploits, yet their manufacturers do not enforce any limit on the freedom of their developers. Applications simply popup a warning asking the user to confirm the use of potentially problematic features. And remember that applications are digitally signed, so the authors of rogue applications would be promptly spotted.
Apple’s restrictions on the iPhone offer security as a side effect, but what they really are about is control.
Oh? That's exactly what it looks like for me (Opera 9.64). The funny buttons only seem to appear once per page, so I don't really mind.
I also sometimes get the random buttons appearing in Firefox but it seemed to me that they tended to occur if I stopped scrolling and then started again .
Who've got the best keyboard, huh?
No there isn't! Bite it, apple. I just bought a Nokia so I can play Frodo!
iPhones have a serial port, USB 2.0 OTG port, video out, stereo_audio_line_out, and stereo_audio_line_in all on the interface connector, as well as a 3V ADC input (used for device/power detection)
BlueTooth provides support for HID, audio I/O and bulk data transfer.
Theoretically, you could plug your iPhone into a TV and use a WiiMote to control a game.
The iPhone is more like a handheld version of a high-end 1998-2000 desktop computer than a bleeding edge 1980's game-console cum desktop computer.
If you want to compare it to any 80's hardware, an Amiga would be a much fairer comparison. The Amiga actually had hardware accelerated video AND provisions for video capture.... which the iPhone 3Gs can also do via the Camera....
Interestingly the iPhone 3Gs would easily outperform any laptop with a build date before circa 2001 in a computational benchmark, and any laptop build before 1998 in terms of available memory, and available storage.
Yeah... Commodore was planning to kill Apple like 30 years ago: http://eatliver.com/i.php?n=4407
... how screen resolution didn't changed over those years))