Re: The Apple ][ was cool!

[Jason <tmr@c64.org>]

Jon-paul:
> I understand part of the problem was the designers fears over errors
> and quality control of the hard ware. Like Atari they underestamated
> the rapid development of reletivly high quality, and inexpensive
> (reletivly) data transfer. so were doubley cautious with the dos and
> disk controlers, sacraficing speed for reliability. Maybe they errored
> too much on the side of caution.

Commodore were always over cautious on the baud rates, stupidly so.
That's why they cranked down the speed on the Novaload they used to use
on their later tape-based stuff.

Rassilon only knows what the Atari designers' excuse was for *their*
tape speeds. =-)

> Initaly over here the ST was the machine of choice, certainly amongst
> people i knew. Then somehow Atari seemed to loose its way and in the
> early 90's it most definatly switched over to the Amiga.

The ST had a major head start that Commodore (who also had their can't-
market-for-toffee PR people "helping") had a big fight to win over, the
majority of sales was due to local shops like the one I used to work for
demonstrating what the Amiga was capable of.  (In other words, boot up
Shadow of the Beast on an A2000 with a decent amp on it and watch their
faces! =-)

> Then commodore lost the plot in its own accounts department. :o(

The worse case but not the first time, C= were pretty lousy on that
front...

> I have heard the figure of 28 million in all forms world wide. Not to
> be sniffed at. Definatly worlds prefered 8 bitter. it only seemed to
> loose the no 1 position in the UK (which had a cheeper rival with a
> known name and a 10 month head start in sales) and some fickle markets
> like Japan.

It still did reasonably well in the UK though, Commodore UK were only
short of pennies when things like the Plus/4 and C16 refused to fly.
-- 
Jason  =-)
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