Re: The apple 2, the PC, and the clones

[John <tgbpoi29@SDF.LONESTAR.ORG>]

On 3 Jul 2002, Supertimer wrote:

> >
> >FWIW, in my mind CP/M was the business OS, the Apple 2 was more for home
> >and hobby, TRS-80 for home (cheaper and lesser than the Apple 2).
> >
> >CP/M had Wordstar, Supercalc, dbase, and others.
>
> I do agree that CP/M was widely considered the business OS before
> MS-DOS and the PC.
>
> However, there were business software for the Apple II.  SuperCalc 3a
> was available for the Apple II as was WordPerfect and others.
>
> After the Apple IIe/IIc and the advent of extended memory (typically
> 1MB) Apple software far exceeded CP/M software in capabilities.
>
> That said, I still believe that the ultimate success of the PC was in
> the home market, not the business market.  There were really in
> fact two revolutions.  The first was the PC in business in the 80s.
> Then in the late 90's, there was a greater revolution and a much
> more significant one.  The great untapped reservoir of potential home
> users that Apple could have tapped was finally tapped by the PC.

Hmm. I guess my perception of the PC was very different since I used the
early  PC for business mostly. It was all about the available software.
123, Wordpefect, dbase. That was all I needed or wanted.

As far as extended memory on the Apple 2, it would have exceeded the
memory cpacity of 64k CP/M machines, for sure. The timing of that may have
been too late to have a significant effect during the window of
opportunity (if any) before the rise of the PC.

To me the PC was cheap enough, the software was great (123 wordperfect
dbase), etc. The quality of the software was generally light years ahead
of what I was using (TRS80 Model One stuff - but some was good, like
LDOS, LeScript).

Don't know about Apple and the home user so much. To me the Apple II was
for home users. Also, it was expensive for mass consumption. This is still
my complaint with current Apple stuff. I like it, but it's priced for the
upper edge user. I love OS10, but XP is pretty slick too (MS antics are a
great concern for me however).