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Re: The Woz being inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame
In article <39498D6F.2C0AF09B@dallas.net>,
Charles Richmond <richmond@dallas.net> wrote:
> Greg Buchner wrote:
>
>> Just read the following on Macintouch <http://www.macintouch.com/>
>>
>> Personal computer pioneer and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is among
>> seven inventors who will be inducted later this year into the National
>> Inventors Hall of Fame for bringing about "advances in a broad range of
>> technologies, including computers, medicine, manufacturing and
>> communications." Specifically, Wozniak was honored for the "Apple II
>> personal computer, which brought together the central processing unit
>> (CPU), keyboard and disk drive in an affordable unit."
>
> Affordable is a matter of opinion...the Apple ]['s in the 1970's were
> *very* expensive from my perspective. In 1978, my dad bought us a
> 6800 system for around $400 (an APF Imagination Machine). Although
> it did *not* have the programs available or the sophistication of the
> Apple ][, it was a nice machine to hack around with (it had a
> rudamentary machine language monitor). As I recall, an Apple ][ in
> the same time frame sold for over $2000. I could *not* afford that...
As you just said, affordable is a matter of opinion. Unless you
really were poor at that time, you couldn't "afford" the Apple II
because you preferred to spend your $2000 on other stuff (A car?
Entertainment? Travelling?). So it's really a matter of priorities.
Affordable is also a matter of comparison. Perhaps $2000 was a lot
to you for a computer back then, but it was certainly less than you
would have had to pay to assemble an equivalent system on, say, the
Altair or the IMSAI 8080 ($4000 or $5000 ?). Not to mention what
you'd have to pay to buy a mini-computer with similar capabilities a
few years earlier ($20000 and up...)
--
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