Re: Commodore 64 kills APPLE II

["Marc Walters" <ddmw@hunterlink.net.au>]

"Yves McDonald" <""yves.mcdonald\"@NO SPAM sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:Vy6ba.2558$4q6.294510@news20.bellglobal.com...
[snip]
> business-oriented.  I played games on my Apple thanks to an army of
> clever 6502 programers who produced high-speed graphics routines and
> precise timing loops.

The A2 coders managed to do some pretty clever things, and more than a few
games that appeared on both machines were better on the A2 even though the
C64 had more hardware goodies for the programmers to exploit. I've mentioned
some examples elsewhere in this thread.

> Where there any hard disks or successful business apps made for the

Yes to both. There were a number of HD solutions but none were as good as
the CMD models which are still being manufactured:
http://www.cmdrkey.com/cbm/prodinfo/cmdhd.html

In the mid-'80s the C64 was often used in business. Not so much in the UK
where disk drives were rare, but everywhere else it served well. For
example, in the early to mid part of that decade it was the computer used
most in small to medium businesses in New Zealand. Here in Australia it was
also widely used in business. In both countries there were software packages
developed such as accounting, inventory etc, and more specific functions
such as farm management, automobile sales, customer management, and so on.
There were quite a few good applications developed, including Microsoft's
Multiplan (spreadsheet), Superbase and Magpie (programmable databases). The
40 column screen was a hindrance, though, as was the speed of the stock disk
drive. By the time the C128 was released most developers of business
software seemed to have moved on to the 16-bit machines.

> Younger friends had C-64's to play games, not to
> type letters, do spreadsheets or manage databases.

Of course they did. Children generally have no need or desire to use serious
applications when games are available.

Marc Walters