In honour of Steve Jobs - first Apple experience/hardware? Was it great?

[MaV]

CGA got a text mode with attributed letters...
you could change the background colours... therefore get 16 colours on the screen, techically...

But ok it is a text mode... not a graphic mode, until Ascii art comes into equation.

Ah, ok. I hoped for a graphical mode with colour attributes that nobody knew existed.

A colour attribute mode on the CPC would only make sense with a text mode. And would it not be nice to print whole characters in text mode like on a PC (size 4000 bytes)?

[Gryzor]

bizness and industry adopted it.

That's not the reason, that's the result

Economies of scale I guess. It's bitter irony that Amstrad more or less created the market of affordable PCs for the masses, only to get muscled out of that market.

Yeah, but you're talking about different makes of PCs. I'm talking about PCs versus other platforms... and PCs were sufficiently expensive to prohibit any scales of economy. I'm still baffled about why they were a success.
Also, the ST might have had an ugly (??!) GUI, but the PC had, erm, no GUI.

Talking about early gfx standards, I'm currently reading The Guide to Classic Adventure Games (great read! I so love looking at those pixels!), and I was thinking that those early Sierra games could possibly have been released on the CPC easily... but that's another thread (hint, hint!)

[TotO]

PC have succes because it is license free and got professional software and retro-compatibility.
Then programs take care about new hardware features and not to do for old computers again and again.
So many companies built PCs and price drop fast in the time.

[Gryzor]

So you needed a license to use an ST or an Amiga or an Apple?

I guess you mean that other companies copied the standard, but this ignores the point about price and capabilities. And let's not forget that the IBM PC was a huge marketing turn for IBM to reply to Apple...

Other platforms of the time were also backwards-compatible. Though at that early time I don't think people were worried about that too much.

[TotO]

You misunderstand.

[Morn]

Yeah, but you're talking about different makes of PCs. I'm talking about PCs versus other platforms... and PCs were sufficiently expensive to prohibit any scales of economy. I'm still baffled about why they were a success.

I think it's partly because PCs used cases that could easily be opened and have components replaced. Sort of like the Amiga 2000 I guess. So there was a lot of incentive to provide better video and sound cards, faster CPUs, cheaper disk drives, and so on. Of course it still took until the late 90s for PC prices to really come down to a point where everybody could afford them, but all in all PCs were better suited to gradual upgrades. This also made them feel a safer buy than a platform without an upgrade path.

OTOH I've never bothered to upgrade my Amiga 2000 in any way, although it replaced my earlier Amiga 500 specifically because of its easier upgrade-ability. Components were still too expensive, so in the end it was a better deal to replace the Amiga with a Pentium PC.

Also, the ST might have had an ugly (??!) GUI, but the PC had, erm, no GUI.

There were some DOS GUIs like DeskMate, but I don't think it used a mouse, just keyboard commands. But then again it was not clear at the time that the mouse would "win" the GUI input device war, so this is not that surprising.

But even the C64 had a prettier GUI than GEM, namely GEOS. Only OS/2 looked even shittier than GEM. 

[steve]

There are two reasons why the PC came to dominate the market.

1. The Corporate Sheep were mesmerised by the letters IBM and too ignorant to know or care that the PC was technically inferior to some of the alternative systems, there was a quote often printed in articles of the time "nobody got fired for buying IBM".

2. Before the PC, the commercial sector was dominated by S100 systems running CP/M and costing thousands of whatever currency the buyer was using, the simpler PC's were cheaper to manufacture and buy, also CP/M suffered from not having a standard disk format, making it difficult to steal software and spread viruses, microsoft changed that with ms-dos.

[Morn]

Yes, but the main question is how the PC went from dominating the corporate market in the 1980s to conquering the home computer / gaming market in the 1990s. I think nobody seriously expected that to happen in the 1980s. The PC simply sucked too much compared to the Amiga in its graphics and sound capabilities. It was only in the early 1990s that home computer users realized they could upgrade with a GUS, a VGA card, etc., which gave the PC an edge over the upgraded Amiga (Kickstart 2.x/3.x) lineup. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" on the other hand was not something the average home computer user would have considered in his purchasing decision, especially as most PCs of that era were already IBM-compatible clones.

[steve]

The ONLY reason I own a PC is to surf the net, if there had been a browser for the Amiga which supported the modern features becoming prevalent on most websites, then I would not have a PC now.

Around 1976, I started to read the advice "find the software you want to run, then buy the hardware that it runs on", that advice still applies today, most readily available software requires a PC, so people buy PC's.

There used to be a lot of easily available software for the Amstrad CPC, not anymore, so if you want to buy software your only choice is what is in the shops, so you must buy the hardware if you don't already have it.

Back to the topic, if it were not for Visicalc, the apple 2 and Apple itself might have followed all the other home computer manufacturers into oblivion.

[Morn]

The ONLY reason I own a PC is to surf the net, if there had been a browser for the Amiga which supported the modern features becoming prevalent on most websites, then I would not have a PC now.

Around 1976, I started to read the advice "find the software you want to run, then buy the hardware that it runs on", that advice still applies today, most readily available software requires a PC, so people buy PC's.

I don't think it was so much the greatness of PC software as the fact that many users had been burnt in the 80s by betting on dying platforms such as the CPC and Amiga. So the PC seemed a much safer choice. It was not because Windows 3.1 or any of its applications were so much better than what the Amiga had to offer. Neither were PC games that impressive at the time. But not having to watch your platform of choice slowly wither away like the CPC and Amiga did might have played a role. People just liked to be on the winning side for once.

There used to be a lot of easily available software for the Amstrad CPC, not anymore, so if you want to buy software your only choice is what is in the shops, so you must buy the hardware if you don't already have it.

Back to the topic, if it were not for Visicalc, the apple 2 and Apple itself might have followed all the other home computer manufacturers into oblivion.

Apple also had the educational market cornered in the US, i.e. classroom computers. Playing Oregon Trail on the classroom Apple II is something many people seem to remember who were going to school in the early (or even late) 1980s. Apple was probably the first computer company to get that the kind of fanatical loyalty from their customers because people fondly remembered the brand from childhood. This made Apple the Disney of computer brands and probably helped to keep them afloat in the early 1990s when their products were a bad joke compared to PCs.

Of course ultimately the crappiness of their products scared away even their most hardcore fans, so by 1997 fanboyism no longer made a difference. But without the educational market advantage they might have collapsed a lot sooner and nobody would have cared.

[Gryzor]

My original question was about the domination of PCs in general, not just in the home market. But some good arguments and points in the last few posts.

Slightly back on topic, this afternoon I read how Jobs exploited a legal loophole to drive a car without a license plate...ugh.

[Morn]

Slightly back on topic, this afternoon I read how Jobs exploited a legal loophole to drive a car without a license plate...ugh.

As far as I know, it's not really a loophole (you have to pay a fine), however the fine is fairly low so Steve let out his rebellious, counter-culture side a bit there.  It's strange that the same man would advocate the app store which is so restrictive in terms of users' freedoms. Preach water, drink wine I guess...

[Gryzor]

What I read what that the loophole says that when you get a new car you can drive it for six months (!!! wtf? In civilised countries you CAN'T get on the road without a plate I would guess...), so he'd lease (?) a new one every six months...

Either that or him paying the fines is the same thing - how rich people show contempt for the law, even in such basic things...

[Morn]

Either that or him paying the fines is the same thing - how rich people show contempt for the law, even in such basic things...

Actually, if you ride your car in the US non-commercially (i.e., you don't make money from your riding), then you don't have to get license plates at all! Nor do you even need to obtain a driver's license. That's how it used to be and that's how it still is, except few people seem to realize it.

The legal trick is that the state calls your car a "vehicle" in the registration papers and you a "driver" (i.e., someone whose occupation it is to drive) in your driver's license, which makes your driving of a commercial nature and therefore you need to get license plates and pay a registration fee. That's the real loophole and I think an increasing number of people know about it. Stev-o apparently did not.

[Gryzor]

Have people tested this in courts?

First definition on Google for 'vehicle':
A thing used for transporting people or goods, esp. on land, such as a car, truck, or cart.. So no commercial.

Also, for driver:
A person who drives a vehicle.. *Definitely* nothing to do with 'occupation'. No person in his mind would ever think otherwise.

[Bryce]

The problem, like many laws in England and Ireland too, is that they were written long ago and interpreted differently. Back then a Driver really was someone who drove for a living. If the law refers to an occupational driver and has never been amended, then that could be the case. I know many similar crazy laws in Ireland and England.

Bryce.

[AMSDOS]

I think the former (now deceased) founder for Apple was simply around at the right place at the right time when they built the Apple I around 1976 which allowed them to proceed with the Apple ][ (in 1977)  and the rest is sort of history.
 
Bill Gates is merely the other bod which was around at the right place and the right time and can thank Gary Kildall's Wife for allowing that to happen.
 
And basically everything sort of went right for Apple and Microsoft and anything which went onto the backburner went to Digital Research, Inc. That doesn't mean what happened was correct and even Apple lost battles to Microsoft when they sued Microsoft for their Windows! Though everyone knows DOS was a rip-off of CP/M, It didn't stop CP/M from evolving which exists under a number of systems, it's dominance was simply more evident in 8bit systems, DRs GUI GEM (v1.2 I think from memory) is actually quite a nice GUI to use, however later versions suffered because Apple put the clamps on GEM (through a lawsuit in the mid-80s) on the PC because it was so simular to Apple GUI. Apple tried the same stunt with Microsoft though failed cause Microsoft were careful not to make it like a MacOS.
 
Though put all that aside, I've been using Apples since I was at Primary School (probably the next machine I was using after the CPC464), which I think was an Apple ][e. They also had a Mac Plus which was probably the first GUI I came to use. In them early days for me I was mainly using Apple ][e's though, did some Word Processing and played around with some Graphics program (one which had all these Garfield figurines in it which was interactive) and also played a game where you had to travel around the world trying to catch a crim and follow the flags and clues along the way to catch them!
 
But I've also used an Apple ][c from 1984 which is a nice compact machine with the Disk Drive built into the computer and has a small green screen monitor. I think that machine had 128k and early ][e's had 64k. And going through School I thought we were using Mac Classic's which had the Greyscale screens (looks a bit like a Mac SE). A few years ago I brought myself a Mac book Pro which I've been fairly happy with, though still using the PC with WinXP.

[steve]

I think both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have shown the ruthless streak that made their companies successful.

[MacDeath]

They weren't only mundane guys at the right place...

They were also ambitious "long-teeth" from golden families breed to success.


Bill gates now pass for a kool guy, but at the time his teeth were so long they scratched the underground's floor while he was standing on the roof.

Ok he did a working Basic for the Altair8800...

But he basically stole CP/M to get his MsDos.

Then he stole MacOs (which was also stealing a lot on other stuffs) to get his Window...

My original question was about the domination of PCs in general

IBM was defacto the Norm maker.
But as they actually got screwed by Microsoft... the IBM PC & compatible became MS-Dos computer...


Every body was stealing on IBM PC and Microsoft encouraged this too.

Why developp a new non compatible machine ?
Some did but many manufacturer simply couldn't pay for such development, nor pay to get a proper brand new specific OS.

[AMSDOS]

Ok he did a working Basic for the Altair8800...

Probably a hack of the Original Dartmouth BASIC! 

[AMSDOS]

Sorry I don't have any references, though my understanding is IBM based PCs became a dominant machine because the Schematics somehow became freely available to other manufacturers to produce their versions of the machine. Apple based computers are only made by Apple which became a bit of a setback for Apple, though perhaps good in other ways.
Back in the early 80s there were other 68000 based systems, Hewlett-Packard had a machine, though I think while they shared the same processor, they were different machines, much like comparing an Amstrad to an Spectrum or Jupiter Ace. There were also other computers with 8088 processors which were different from the original IBM PC even if there were some similarities.

[Gryzor]

@Bryce: yes, every country has crazy laws that have been outdated for decades. But in this particular case, I'll be damned if any court would interpret it so narrowly and allow the argument...

@MacDeath: actually IBM had lost a tremendous market share to competitors who offered similar or more powerful products at a fraction of IBM's price, so at the time they turned their attention to self-contained workstations (precisely as a response to their inability to compete) they were not viewed as the standard setters so much...

[MacDeath]

actually IBM had lost a tremendous market share to competitors who offered similar or more powerful products at a fraction of IBM's price, so at the time they turned their attention to self-contained workstations (precisely as a response to their inability to compete) they were not viewed as the standard setters so much...

of course but the original IBM PC was the norm maker at first... then Microsoft became the norm maker...

MsDos was designed to run on IBM PCs...
Then competitors designed PC to run MSDos...

Then Microsoft designed windows to run on such various machines successors, then those various successor machines were designed to run Windows and so on.

On the other hands, many independeent manufacturers had a lot of interest into getting their various peripheral products (video and sound cards, CPU...) to run on a maximum number of machines.

How convenient was it, and all this because Bill Gates managed to screw deeply IBM while the CP/M creator wanted no deal and was actually quite a bizness amateur.

But the main point is that if IBM did a better job on the CGA (then EGA) specifications and gave a little bit if sound to its machine (hell even a simple AY would have been good to start with, be it optionnal) the IBM PC spec could have be a far better game platform from the very start and compare very well with AtariST.

seriously the history of 80's homecomputers could have changed a lot.

[AMSDOS]

MsDos was designed to run on IBM PCs...

Well sort of. There's PC-DOS which is more specific for IBM PCs, though MS-DOS is a more generic version of that which could run on other 8088 systems at the time which weren't IBM Compatable. To check out if your system was IBM Compatable or not, you could run Microsoft Flight Simulator which required a IBM or Compatable for it to work.

 

How convenient was it, and all this because Bill Gates managed to screw deeply IBM while the CP/M creator wanted no deal and was actually quite a bizness amateur.

It was actally Gary Kildall's Wife which screwed up an important meeting they wanted to have about Gary writing an Operating System for their IBM system!  :'(

But the main point is that if IBM did a better job on the CGA (then EGA) specifications and gave a little bit if sound to its machine (hell even a simple AY would have been good to start with, be it optionnal) the IBM PC spec could have be a far better game platform from the very start and compare very well with AtariST.

The original IBM PC was built with Business in mind - not a home computer. IBM followed this up with the IBM PC Jnr which was targeted more for the home and games. It still only had CGA, though I think this particular machine allowed for the 160x100x16 colour mode, which isn't a mode normally supported in IBMs & Compatables in general. PC Jnr's main drawback I believe was the cost of the machine which was released around 1983/4, 16 bit technologies were still a costly business in them days (having lots of RAM in them too wouldn't be cheap), a TI 99/4a computer might of been more affordable computer though given TI made their own processors for that line of machines.

seriously the history of 80's homecomputers could have changed a lot.

Well I think the technologies were there as well as those systems I mentioned, though cost and where those machines were marketed and the success of them probably just meant they were too expensive, even Apple released their Lisa around 1983 which was far too expensive for the features (like the Mac's which shortly followed it) it had a small monochrome screen, someone thought it would be funny to put 1 Megabyte in the machine! 

[Gryzor]

Apple was granted a patent for... the sliding lock on mobile devices! I guess this makes my Android device illegal.

Read the full hilarious story here.