Re: The Apple ][ was cool!

[Andy Cadley <ac@sys.uea.ac.uk>]

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Jon-paul wrote:

> But it was a bit of a gold rush in those days, dozens and dozens of
> companies all trying to cash in on the boom of people wanting computers. A
> look through a computer magazine from 1980-84 you could see dozens of
> machines getting marketed, built and plugged. Flawed hopefuls like the Oric,
> apparent cash ins like the Aquarius , hype like the konix system or the
> Enterprise that if they ever arrived at all arrived too late. I find it
> interesting that Of the post 1983 developments only the Amstrad/schnider
> systems broke into the market in any meaningful way. By that time the
> inertia of the market had created a select group of big boys.

One thing that Amstrad really did right with the launch of the CPC was to
put it's weight behind the machine. Setting up Amsoft to ensure that there
was a strong software base at launch gave it a much better grounding than
many of the other machines which were launched with little or nothing to
run on them.

They also seemed to have a much clearer idea of the market sector they
were aiming at, things like bundling a monitor and CP/M support ment that
it was much easier to persuade the more serious user into buying one than
a C64/Speccy. And since a lot of buyers were parents wanting a machine for
their kids to do schoolwork on...

AndyC