knudsen@ihnss.UUCP (08/29/83)
I have often wondered why the Apple caught on and held so well. Don't own one, but I suspect the reasons are: 1) Expandability--the mother board construction costs a lot but lets you add things relatively cheap. A lot of little companies make music synthesizers and etc etc to plug in here. More important, you can plug in a Z80 or 6809 board and run a REAL operating system. 2) Marketing: the Apple was plugged right from the start as a useful business machine, ALSO a serious scientific/technical calculator with all those hi-res color graphics, AND of course those graphics and joysticks could be used after-hours for fun-and-you-know-what. Consequently several sectors of the user population went after Apples. Compare this to Radio SShack's unfortunate marketing of the Coco as a game-player that might also balance your check book and let you learn BASIC. 3) Third-party hardware (aluded to above) and software support, ABETTED and ENCOURAGED by Apple, Inc. I'll bet less than 10% of the software running on Apples is from Apple. (Here's another area where Radio Shack blew it, till recently). As far as the Apple's intrinsic merits, I'm amazed that anyone today would pay $1500 bucks for that vintage '77 hardware and Apple-DOS. Amazed, until i remember the vast bulk of item (3) above. In fact, (3) helps me understand why anyone would deliberately program a Z80 or use CP/M ... mike k