There is no chance that the average person can fly or control anything other than a balloon without being a menace to themself; other fliers; and people, property, and livestock on the ground.
OK. So in my zeal to prove you wrong, I have misread the graph. So dial down the insults a bit. I also suffered the "keep repeating it, and it will become apparent" syndrome. Now that my Slashdot insanity has died down, I figure we should probably end this thread with some sanity.
Yeah, I got swept up in zeal myself, mostly in reaction to what I saw as simple stubbornness on your part. I enjoy a vigorous Slashdot argument now and again, no matter how pointless, but that doesn't excuse rudeness. So I apologize to you for that. It's certainly not behavior I like to have on my 'permanent record' here.:)
...
Anyway, Apple did not enjoy a majority of the personal computer hardware market which is impossible with the number of manufacturers of small systems back then (shows how much things have changed). However Apple did have the plurality of the market (A substantial lead ahead of its soon to show its full potential IBM PC platform).
Look again at the numbers on Reimer's chart. You will see that there is no year in which the Apple II box or Mac box, or the sum of the two, holds the largest number of units on the row. Hardly a plurality!
I did find that Apple had a commanding lead in the software market, which created a demand for the Apple clones. It's the software arena that the Apple platform had no equal (as researched by IDC), thus the origin of my humorous comment that created this thread.
See, you're still trying to wiggle out of your original claim by pretending you were really talking about software. I already quoted back to you your exact words, but it looks like I'll have to do it again: "I remember when over 90% of the home/education was an Apple ][ or clone." You pulled out every rhetorical trick in the book to backpedal on that one. You're still trying to find a way to be right. -Sigh-
Now seeing as everybody else here has long since abandoned this thread, I think it's time to hang up my shoes. Thanks for the interesting links and challenging debate.
You have shown no such thing. All you've shown is that you can't read a graph.
"In 1981 the company sold 210,000 units, leaving the PET in the dust and nearly equaling the TRS-80's numbers."... The chart does not accurately represent what was presented in the text of the article (eg. Why does the text mention that the Apple II nearly equaled the sales of the TRS-80, yet still show Apple's portion smaller than TRS-80s in the chart?).
If you look at the chart for 1981, you will see that the portions for Apple and Tandy are roughly equal. The dark gray area which is unlabeled in this graph is a continuation of the Tandy numbers from the previous graph. Apple almost held its own against Tandy in 1981, but it didn't beat Tandy - let alone Tandy plus the other manufacturers.
The chart doesn't reflect the number of Atari 800s sold with at least a disk drive. Many Ataris were sold as a cartridge based game system. Should this case be included in the desktop market? Does the fact that the Atari 800 has a keyboard automatically make it a desktop computer?
Absolutely. If you recall, the Apple game market was huge - at least as large as the Atari game market. Atari was no more a 'game machine' than the Apple II was.
You cherry pick small portions of my comments and don't even attempt to offer any rebuttal to the issues that I presented. Hell, you didn't even know about the Apple II clones. You conveniently ignore the "other" category.
I ignored the insiginificant portions of your comments. The issues you presented don't help your case. The Apple II clone market was not large enough to help your case - even if 100% of the 'others' were Apple II clones. That's my point. I didn't ignore the 'other' category, I just pointed out that it can't save your bogus claim.
Besides the obvious fact that the Atari was designed for games, why does the text describe a peak in 1982, yet the graph still shows exponential growth through 1984?
You really can't read graphs, can you? The graph clearly shows Atari's largest share in 1982, and a decrease through 1984.
The ordering of the categories do create a disadvantage to the bottom category. Basically, this type of chart is not entirely useful to this thread topic (other than to show the increasing number of personal computers).
No, unless you consider visually lower categories to be at a 'disadvantage' simply because they are lower - in other words, you don't know how to read a stacked graph.
The chart may use cumulative totals, NONE of the brands show any decline despite the text stating otherwise (eg. Why would Tandy kill the TRS-80 Model 1 if the chart shows it as a success?).
The chart clearly shows year-to-year sales totals, which is why the dark gray Tandy stripe disappears completely in 1984, when TRS-80 sales shrank to nothing. How can you not see this?
If the statistics presented are cumulative
They aren't. These are sales figures, not ownership figures.
it assumes that once that brand is purchased it is always used. How many Model 1's were replaced by an Apple II?
Irrelevant, because the total number of Apple II's sold between 1977-1982 (about 600,000) is half the total number of TRS-80 models sold in the same period (about 1.2 million). After that, Apple was outsold by Atari, Commodore and IBM, so Apple could not possibly have had a majority.
Yes, it's broken because in the place where the highly useful maximise button should be they put a largely useless zoom button.
Who says there 'should be' a maximize button there? Microsoft? Apple did theirs first, so why should they change to be like Windows? I'm not saying maximize buttons aren't useful - but why would you expect an older OS to behave like a different company's OS?
Nobody wants to toggle between a 'user' size and some arbitrarily determined 'standard size'.
Speak for yourself. Anyway, the issue only came up because users need to resize windows. The question then becomes, the next time the window is opened, should it have the location and size that the application thinks is best, or with the size and location the way the user left it last time? The zoom button is supposed to allow both.
Your comment about it not looking like a toggle button is a red herring.
Well, if you mean in regards to its function, then yes, it's irrelevant to that. It's still broken because it doesn't look or act like a toggle.
That's why we have applications with individual windows, because we don't always want to work on the whole screen. The Maximize/Zoom button is for when we want to break that model.
Nope, that's what maximize buttons are for, but not zoom buttons.
Over the years, the guys at Apple have done amazing things with the user interface producing strokes of genius one after another. But unfortunately, success breeds an unwillingness to look at one's mistakes.
This is true. Apple still suffers from NIH Syndrome, and they seem to have a hard time acknowledging that someone else's way might be better. Just look at contextual menus - they added them to the OS, but made the user CTRL-click to get to them because a two-button mouse is "too confusing." WTF?
Maximize is broken on Macs and you haven't given a single reason why Apple couldn't make maximize work. You did give a whole lot of historical waffle that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that right at this moment now I'd like to press that little green button and have the paper I'm reading fill the screen. But I can't. It's completely broken and Apple have deliberately made it so.
Maximize is not 'broken' just because it doesn't expand the window to fill the screen. In fact, it's not a 'maximize' button at all - it's called the zoom button.
Seriously, take a look at Apple's interface guidelines. It's supposed to toggle between the 'standard state' and the 'user state.' The reason it's inconsistent is because Apple leaves it up to the developer how to handle the behavior. The real reason it's broken is because it's a toggle button, but doesn't look or act like a toggle.
Thanks for that link, I didn't realize there were so many! I thought there were 3 or 4.
You realize that splitting the pie into more pieces doesn't make Apple's slice bigger?
For example, if you wanted to compare against each individual model of machine, saying that the Apple II Plus sold twice as many units as the TRS-80 Model III, that still wouldn't put an Apple on a majority of desktops. FYI.
Anyway, didn't mean to frustrate you. Just wanted a little depth to the conversation... are we good?
Well, I'll put it this way - you're an excellent dancer. I don't know how good of a boxer you are, because you haven't thrown any punches yet.:)
Am I the only one who remembers and actually purchased heathkit, or the $99 sinclair that originally came out as a kit?
Oh, I surely remember all those "others," but your problem is, even if you exclude them it doesn't give Apple the majority.
All I said is that since back in the 70's and early 80's there were systems sold as kits, or from specialty electronic stores. Since these systems are in the "other" category in the arstech chart (well how do we really know, it only says "other") we should include simular devices today.
Forget what we should include today. I'm not arguing whether Microsoft truly has 90% market share on the desktop today. Let me say for the record that I am talking about operating systems running on the desktop, which is what the OP meant by "90% of desktops." He certainly wasn't implying that Microsoft was selling hardware, but in the pre-PC days you mentioned, if you bought Apple, Radio Shack or Commodore, you got the operating system by buying the computer. Unit sales corresponded to desktop OS installations.
So, forget Microsoft - I only took issue with your words:
* I remember when over 90% of the home/education was an Apple ][ or clone.
* So, Apple did in fact own the home computer market once.
You just asserted without any proof that Apple held that kind of market share. I was skeptical, so I looked it up. Just so you understand the burden of proof on you, you'd have to show either that Apple outsold all the others, or that a mere 10% or less of the other machines were not used in homes (to give Apple 90% of the home market), and so far you have completely failed to do so.
You also said:
In fact, the Apple II proved that a home computer market existed and paved the way for both the Atari and Commodore machines..
The Atari 400/800 (former 800 owner here) actually was a response to the success that Apple was having.
Make that "the success that Apple and Radio Shack and Commodore were having" and you would be correct. The TRS-80 sold more units in its first month than Apple sold in all of 1978.
Are you going to say that Microsoft and Apple are the only two games in town? Are you going to say that PowerPC and Intel are the only two CPUs in existance on a desktop machine? Just because the media tend to focus only on the largest players (with advertising revenue) doesn't mean they are the only two players. If we include a "other" category in today's statistics, would microsoft have 90%? How should we count game consoles? How should we count PDAs? Does all IBM-PCs automatically mean Microsoft?
All of this is irrelevant to your claim, which you have still not been able to defend.
Well? You have quoted only one stat that not only not cover 1977 (which was the premise of my original humorous comment)
Oh yes, 1977, when Apple sold 600 machines? Clearly they were king of the hill that year.:)
But that one stat source has no references.
True enough. And you have no references which call it into doubt, so you're holding an empty hand.
Techinically, you have an opinion that Apple never enjoyed 90% market share which countered my original comment.
No, that's not opinion. It's either a true fact or it's not. My opinion would be something like whether the fact is reliable, or relevant, or interesting, or whether the criteria are valid. Apple didn't have 90% by any criteria you've suggested.
My intent was not to "shift the goalpost" rather to give a comparable measure to the statistics that you presented. The systems available in the late 1970s through early 1980s, are directly comparable to the embedded systems and hobbyist kits available today (BTW these would fall in the same "Other" category in the stats your referenced).
Perhaps they are comparable in some ways, but including non-desktop devices in an argument over desktop computer market share is indeed shifting the goalpost. It's cherry-picking on the level equivalent to saying that x percent of MS installs are on laptops (which didn't exist in the 1970s) and therefore are not part of the "desktop" market.
BTW, what does the result of Microsoft's monopolistic practices today, have anything to do with 70's and 80's? Microsoft wasn't a contender until 1984ish.
You tell me! You're the one who claimed Apple had already been where Microsoft now is, on 90% of desktops.
Apple never was.
That may be your opinion, but you still haven't proved your assertion.
It's not my opinion. This is a factual question. And I didn't make an assertion, I refuted your assertion that Apple held at least 90% of the desktop computer market once upon a time. The figures are clear - Apple never had more than 15%, let alone a majority 50% (outselling all competitors put together). When refuted by the sales numbers, you shifted the goalpost, saying you were talking about just the home market. True, the Apple II didn't become a useful office machine until VisiCalc came out, but even then Atari and TRS-80 were still both outselling it! Home market, business market, or combined, Apple was never the top seller by units sold.
And since this is a pointless Slashdot argument that has no bearing on anything, it's basically about Who's Right. You have provided no evidence at all to rebut the numbers in the Ars Technica article, just the anecdotal evidence of your memory and some old computer ads.
So at this point, your options are: 1) provide some statistics contradicting Ars Technica's research, or explaining why it is incorrect, or 2) admit you were wrong and move on. I love Apple too, but facts are facts.
I think if we limited the statistics to the type of machine that most likely found itself at home, it would be an Apple.
Do you have any such statistics? As far as I know, nobody kept count of how many were used at home vs. the office, so we just don't know.
It wasn't until the Commodore 64, Atari 800, TI99/4A and TRS80 Color Computer were introduced that the home market became too multi-segmented to have a clear majority (not to mention that all the competitors had a price advantage over Apple).
As the article states, in 1977 Apple only sold 600 computers out of 150,000 - less than one percent of the market. Even in 1982, after Apple had caught up to TRS-80 sales, the Atari and Commodore VIC each sold at least twice as many units as Apple. These were definitely home machines, not office machines. I just don't see any reason to think that the Apple II was ever the most popular home computer.
Now, given that, my memory also leans toward Apple being the top contender in those days - but I think that's mostly because I saw them in school every day. I certainly didn't survey homes to see what computer they had bought, but the numbers say it probably was not an Apple. I miss the variety of the old days, too. I remember pining after the Amiga for years, and never getting one.
Nonetheless, regarding your original assertion ("90% of desktops"), it's clearly not the case. Your attempt to compare to embedded systems, appliances, etc. is just shifting the goalposts. Like it or not, Microsoft won the war. They are on almost every desktop today; Apple never was.
So, Apple did in fact own the home computer market once. In fact, the Apple II proved that a home computer market existed and paved the way for both the Atari and Commodore machines..
Hard disks are absolutely, with no qualification, nanotechnology.
Except of course, when you qualify the term "nanotechnology" or when you consider that the first hard drives held about 2k per square inch. It's a bit less 'absolute' then.
This article is yet another example of how the term has been watered down to mean any technology, no matter how it's fabricated, that can be measured in nanometers. Everything can be measured in nanometers if it has length, width, or depth. Even chemical engineering, which deals with synthesis of molecules at the nanometer scale, is not nanotechnology because it's done on a bulk scale, not atom-by-atom.
Drawing on Wikipedia's article, "the term 'nanotechnology' was defined by Tokyo Science University Professor Norio Taniguchi in a 1974 paper... as follows: 'Nano-technology mainly consists of the processing of, separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or by one molecule.'"
Now you and I both know that hard drives are not fabricated or tooled one molecule at a time. The surface of a platter is fabricated at a macro level, and is more or less uniform - there are no nano-scale features on the surface, only nano-scale manipulation of magnetic fields, so I have a hard time calling them "nanotechnology" in the sense used by Drexler, et al.
Sorry for the nitpicking, but I think it is important to brush past the hype and sort the true nanotech breakthroughs from these incremental refinements of macro-scale technology.
"Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet.
Since your Yahoo profile doesn't mention it, I'll assume that you're not a lawyer. (Neither am I, but I defer to lawyers in questions regarding the law.)
Nope, not a lawyer... and I forgot I even *had* a Yahoo profile linked!:)
That depends entirely on the terms of the sales agreement. If there's nothing in writing to the contrary, I take ownership of the goods as soon as you deliver them to me (or to my shipping company), and I then need to pay you, either in cash or some other form of payment that you find acceptable.
Sort of, but "ownership" in such a case is a bit nebulous. If you don't pay, I'm within my rights to repo the goods - because I am still the owner.
Anyway, the standard retail arrangement is that you don't get the goods until you pay. Anything else (credit, layaway, purchase orders, invoicing) typically requires some other agreement in writing, and only then is there any kind of debt.
I know of one system that plays back records using a video camera in place of the needle. The groves are imaged via a micoscope and then sent to a computer. Yes very expensive but the point was so that old 78 RPM records that are broken can be recovered.
That's fantastic! Now maybe they'll market my dream CD player: it reads the data on the disc as it slides into the drive, and buffers it in 700MB of RAM - no spindle, no nothing.:)
I am not aware of any case law on it, but in my previous searches, the results I found indicated that no debt exists on a simple exchange like this one, where the goods/services are delivered after or simultaneously with payment.
Debt is incurred when the seller extends credit to the buyer, which doesn't happen in this case because payment is expected before the goods/services are delivered.
There's no "registry" BS. Most applications will run from anywhere they happen to be. Moving them to a different folder or drive is simply a matter of dragging them over there and dropping them. They'll work fine.
Most applications, sure - but try moving the iApps out of the Applications folder, or moving the Utilities folder out of the Applications folder, and you're in for a world of hurt the next time you run Software Update.
Compared to the Classic Mac OS, which let you keep any app anywhere you wanted, this is not "sane," it's a step backward.
While that's very interesting, it has nothing to do with the issue of the government forcing a business to make a sale on terms they don't agree to. As far as I know, it's completely at the business's discretion whom they want to sell to and on what terms.
Being a consummate skeptic, I would sure like to see some evidence that this event took place. A news story, a court docket number... something more than hearsay.
For all those who are saying it's illegal to refuse cash, please put up or shut up. Name the law that requires it. I have yet to see anyone do this.
* Name the section of code
* State the jurisdiction
* State the class to whom the law applies
* State the penalties for breaking this law
It would also be great to see the text of the Legal Tender Act of 1862, I can't seem to find it online. From what I have found, however, it appears that all the act did was give the Federal government the power to issue a currency, something it had previously not been able to do. Only banks issued currencies before that. In this context "legal tender" only means "these pieces of paper are not just pieces of paper, they are currency."
Some guy tried to pay for a brand new car with a bag of cash at a local dealership. The dealer REFUSED to accept it, because he thought it was stolen money. They potential buyer showed a bank slip and everything, saying he withdrew it from his account that morning. The dealer refused to sell, so the buyer deposited the money back in his bank and called the Secret Service [I guess they take care of money-related stuff like this]. $10k fine for the dealer; the guy proved it was HIS money, so there was nothing even remotely fishy about it.
So the Secret Service is now in the business of making sure you can buy things, whether the seller wants to sell it to you or not? Sounds fishy to me. I don't know any place in the country where you can be forced to sell something, without it involving Eminent Domain laws.
So in NYS, cash MUST be accepted, and since cash is federal property and federally regulated, I'd say its the law in every state.
That doesn't make any sense - why would state laws have anything to do with a thing that's federally regulated?
Slashdot Mirror
Holy shit! That gives me a fantastic idea...
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: The Flying Car!
Yeah, I got swept up in zeal myself, mostly in reaction to what I saw as simple stubbornness on your part. I enjoy a vigorous Slashdot argument now and again, no matter how pointless, but that doesn't excuse rudeness. So I apologize to you for that. It's certainly not behavior I like to have on my 'permanent record' here. :)
Look again at the numbers on Reimer's chart. You will see that there is no year in which the Apple II box or Mac box, or the sum of the two, holds the largest number of units on the row. Hardly a plurality!
See, you're still trying to wiggle out of your original claim by pretending you were really talking about software. I already quoted back to you your exact words, but it looks like I'll have to do it again: "I remember when over 90% of the home/education was an Apple ][ or clone." You pulled out every rhetorical trick in the book to backpedal on that one. You're still trying to find a way to be right. -Sigh-
Now seeing as everybody else here has long since abandoned this thread, I think it's time to hang up my shoes. Thanks for the interesting links and challenging debate.
You have shown no such thing. All you've shown is that you can't read a graph.
If you look at the chart for 1981, you will see that the portions for Apple and Tandy are roughly equal. The dark gray area which is unlabeled in this graph is a continuation of the Tandy numbers from the previous graph. Apple almost held its own against Tandy in 1981, but it didn't beat Tandy - let alone Tandy plus the other manufacturers.
Absolutely. If you recall, the Apple game market was huge - at least as large as the Atari game market. Atari was no more a 'game machine' than the Apple II was.
I ignored the insiginificant portions of your comments. The issues you presented don't help your case. The Apple II clone market was not large enough to help your case - even if 100% of the 'others' were Apple II clones. That's my point. I didn't ignore the 'other' category, I just pointed out that it can't save your bogus claim.
You really can't read graphs, can you? The graph clearly shows Atari's largest share in 1982, and a decrease through 1984.
No, unless you consider visually lower categories to be at a 'disadvantage' simply because they are lower - in other words, you don't know how to read a stacked graph.
The chart clearly shows year-to-year sales totals, which is why the dark gray Tandy stripe disappears completely in 1984, when TRS-80 sales shrank to nothing. How can you not see this?
They aren't. These are sales figures, not ownership figures.
Irrelevant, because the total number of Apple II's sold between 1977-1982 (about 600,000) is half the total number of TRS-80 models sold in the same period (about 1.2 million). After that, Apple was outsold by Atari, Commodore and IBM, so Apple could not possibly have had a majority.
Who says there 'should be' a maximize button there? Microsoft? Apple did theirs first, so why should they change to be like Windows? I'm not saying maximize buttons aren't useful - but why would you expect an older OS to behave like a different company's OS?
Speak for yourself. Anyway, the issue only came up because users need to resize windows. The question then becomes, the next time the window is opened, should it have the location and size that the application thinks is best, or with the size and location the way the user left it last time? The zoom button is supposed to allow both.
Well, if you mean in regards to its function, then yes, it's irrelevant to that. It's still broken because it doesn't look or act like a toggle.
Nope, that's what maximize buttons are for, but not zoom buttons.
This is true. Apple still suffers from NIH Syndrome, and they seem to have a hard time acknowledging that someone else's way might be better. Just look at contextual menus - they added them to the OS, but made the user CTRL-click to get to them because a two-button mouse is "too confusing." WTF?
Maximize is not 'broken' just because it doesn't expand the window to fill the screen. In fact, it's not a 'maximize' button at all - it's called the zoom button.
Seriously, take a look at Apple's interface guidelines. It's supposed to toggle between the 'standard state' and the 'user state.' The reason it's inconsistent is because Apple leaves it up to the developer how to handle the behavior. The real reason it's broken is because it's a toggle button, but doesn't look or act like a toggle.
Oh, for Pete's sake. WHERE on the graph or in the stats do you find Apple with anything near 50%?
If you're actually an engineer working on orbital devices, I'm surprised they're not falling out of the sky due to your inability to grasp numbers.
Thanks for that link, I didn't realize there were so many! I thought there were 3 or 4.
You realize that splitting the pie into more pieces doesn't make Apple's slice bigger?
For example, if you wanted to compare against each individual model of machine, saying that the Apple II Plus sold twice as many units as the TRS-80 Model III, that still wouldn't put an Apple on a majority of desktops. FYI.
Well, I'll put it this way - you're an excellent dancer. I don't know how good of a boxer you are, because you haven't thrown any punches yet. :)
Oh, I surely remember all those "others," but your problem is, even if you exclude them it doesn't give Apple the majority.
Forget what we should include today. I'm not arguing whether Microsoft truly has 90% market share on the desktop today. Let me say for the record that I am talking about operating systems running on the desktop, which is what the OP meant by "90% of desktops." He certainly wasn't implying that Microsoft was selling hardware, but in the pre-PC days you mentioned, if you bought Apple, Radio Shack or Commodore, you got the operating system by buying the computer. Unit sales corresponded to desktop OS installations.
So, forget Microsoft - I only took issue with your words:
* I remember when over 90% of the home/education was an Apple ][ or clone.
* So, Apple did in fact own the home computer market once.
You just asserted without any proof that Apple held that kind of market share. I was skeptical, so I looked it up. Just so you understand the burden of proof on you, you'd have to show either that Apple outsold all the others, or that a mere 10% or less of the other machines were not used in homes (to give Apple 90% of the home market), and so far you have completely failed to do so.
You also said:
Make that "the success that Apple and Radio Shack and Commodore were having" and you would be correct. The TRS-80 sold more units in its first month than Apple sold in all of 1978.
All of this is irrelevant to your claim, which you have still not been able to defend.
Oh yes, 1977, when Apple sold 600 machines? Clearly they were king of the hill that year. :)
True enough. And you have no references which call it into doubt, so you're holding an empty hand.
No, that's not opinion. It's either a true fact or it's not. My opinion would be something like whether the fact is reliable, or relevant, or interesting, or whether the criteria are valid. Apple didn't have 90% by any criteria you've suggested.
Perhaps they are comparable in some ways, but including non-desktop devices in an argument over desktop computer market share is indeed shifting the goalpost. It's cherry-picking on the level equivalent to saying that x percent of MS installs are on laptops (which didn't exist in the 1970s) and therefore are not part of the "desktop" market.
You tell me! You're the one who claimed Apple had already been where Microsoft now is, on 90% of desktops.
It's not my opinion. This is a factual question. And I didn't make an assertion, I refuted your assertion that Apple held at least 90% of the desktop computer market once upon a time. The figures are clear - Apple never had more than 15%, let alone a majority 50% (outselling all competitors put together). When refuted by the sales numbers, you shifted the goalpost, saying you were talking about just the home market. True, the Apple II didn't become a useful office machine until VisiCalc came out, but even then Atari and TRS-80 were still both outselling it! Home market, business market, or combined, Apple was never the top seller by units sold.
And since this is a pointless Slashdot argument that has no bearing on anything, it's basically about Who's Right. You have provided no evidence at all to rebut the numbers in the Ars Technica article, just the anecdotal evidence of your memory and some old computer ads.
So at this point, your options are: 1) provide some statistics contradicting Ars Technica's research, or explaining why it is incorrect, or 2) admit you were wrong and move on. I love Apple too, but facts are facts.
Do you have any such statistics? As far as I know, nobody kept count of how many were used at home vs. the office, so we just don't know.
As the article states, in 1977 Apple only sold 600 computers out of 150,000 - less than one percent of the market. Even in 1982, after Apple had caught up to TRS-80 sales, the Atari and Commodore VIC each sold at least twice as many units as Apple. These were definitely home machines, not office machines. I just don't see any reason to think that the Apple II was ever the most popular home computer.
Now, given that, my memory also leans toward Apple being the top contender in those days - but I think that's mostly because I saw them in school every day. I certainly didn't survey homes to see what computer they had bought, but the numbers say it probably was not an Apple. I miss the variety of the old days, too. I remember pining after the Amiga for years, and never getting one.
Nonetheless, regarding your original assertion ("90% of desktops"), it's clearly not the case. Your attempt to compare to embedded systems, appliances, etc. is just shifting the goalposts. Like it or not, Microsoft won the war. They are on almost every desktop today; Apple never was.
This looks like a perfect system for making chocolate-bunny-style molds of famous attractions! :)
I'm not so sure about that: http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars/3
Apple competed very well in the early days, certainly, but I don't think they ever had 90% of any market.
Exactly. Why pervert the term "nanotechnology" when we already have the perfectly good term "chemistry" ? :)
Except of course, when you qualify the term "nanotechnology" or when you consider that the first hard drives held about 2k per square inch. It's a bit less 'absolute' then.
This article is yet another example of how the term has been watered down to mean any technology, no matter how it's fabricated, that can be measured in nanometers. Everything can be measured in nanometers if it has length, width, or depth. Even chemical engineering, which deals with synthesis of molecules at the nanometer scale, is not nanotechnology because it's done on a bulk scale, not atom-by-atom.
Drawing on Wikipedia's article, "the term 'nanotechnology' was defined by Tokyo Science University Professor Norio Taniguchi in a 1974 paper ... as follows: 'Nano-technology mainly consists of the processing of, separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or by one molecule.'"
Now you and I both know that hard drives are not fabricated or tooled one molecule at a time. The surface of a platter is fabricated at a macro level, and is more or less uniform - there are no nano-scale features on the surface, only nano-scale manipulation of magnetic fields, so I have a hard time calling them "nanotechnology" in the sense used by Drexler, et al.
Sorry for the nitpicking, but I think it is important to brush past the hype and sort the true nanotech breakthroughs from these incremental refinements of macro-scale technology.
I believe there are two kinds of people in the world: population bifurcators, and NON-population bifurcators.
"Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet.
"And also, you're drunk."
- Jack Handey
Nope, not a lawyer... and I forgot I even *had* a Yahoo profile linked! :)
Sort of, but "ownership" in such a case is a bit nebulous. If you don't pay, I'm within my rights to repo the goods - because I am still the owner.
Anyway, the standard retail arrangement is that you don't get the goods until you pay. Anything else (credit, layaway, purchase orders, invoicing) typically requires some other agreement in writing, and only then is there any kind of debt.
Dude, it wasn't your discs - the Muppet Show itself was warped!
That's fantastic! Now maybe they'll market my dream CD player: it reads the data on the disc as it slides into the drive, and buffers it in 700MB of RAM - no spindle, no nothing. :)
> On several occasions, I've successfully paid for things in cash where it was "prohibited"
And what law was the seller charged with breaking...?
Out of curiosity, are you a lawyer?
I am not aware of any case law on it, but in my previous searches, the results I found indicated that no debt exists on a simple exchange like this one, where the goods/services are delivered after or simultaneously with payment.
Debt is incurred when the seller extends credit to the buyer, which doesn't happen in this case because payment is expected before the goods/services are delivered.
Just my $.2.
Most applications, sure - but try moving the iApps out of the Applications folder, or moving the Utilities folder out of the Applications folder, and you're in for a world of hurt the next time you run Software Update.
Compared to the Classic Mac OS, which let you keep any app anywhere you wanted, this is not "sane," it's a step backward.
While that's very interesting, it has nothing to do with the issue of the government forcing a business to make a sale on terms they don't agree to. As far as I know, it's completely at the business's discretion whom they want to sell to and on what terms.
Being a consummate skeptic, I would sure like to see some evidence that this event took place. A news story, a court docket number... something more than hearsay.
For all those who are saying it's illegal to refuse cash, please put up or shut up. Name the law that requires it. I have yet to see anyone do this.
* Name the section of code
* State the jurisdiction
* State the class to whom the law applies
* State the penalties for breaking this law
It would also be great to see the text of the Legal Tender Act of 1862, I can't seem to find it online. From what I have found, however, it appears that all the act did was give the Federal government the power to issue a currency, something it had previously not been able to do. Only banks issued currencies before that. In this context "legal tender" only means "these pieces of paper are not just pieces of paper, they are currency."
So the Secret Service is now in the business of making sure you can buy things, whether the seller wants to sell it to you or not? Sounds fishy to me. I don't know any place in the country where you can be forced to sell something, without it involving Eminent Domain laws.
That doesn't make any sense - why would state laws have anything to do with a thing that's federally regulated?> Posts like this are the reason we need a "-1, Wrong" moderation option. Troll or Overrated just doesn't cut it.
How about "-1, Misinformative," "-1, Uninteresting," or "-1, Not very insightful" ?