Re: C64/128 vs. Apple2?

["Joel Koltner" <zapwireDASHgroups@yahoo.com>]

Good summary, Pheuque, but one point I'd make:

"Pheuque" <Ratteler@gmail.com> wrote in message 
15379068-b7c5-4937-83a4-80b862bf950d@i3g2000hsf.googlegroups.com">news:15379068-b7c5-4937-83a4-80b862bf950d@i3g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> If the VIC and SID had been put on an Apple II card, we probably
> wouldn't even been having this conversation.

I'm not so sure -- a lot of what sold the C-64 was the price, starting at $595 
and rapidly heading to $299 even when the Apple II was still in the ballpark 
of $1k.  If there had been a VIC/SID card for the Apple II at, say, $299, I'm 
not so sure it would have become ubiquitous with Apple owners as, say, the 
floppy disk controller card was.  At $99, though, you're probably correct.

> The greatest limitation of the C64 was its single cartridge port,

Yeah, and the poor speed or serial port peipherals (the drives and 
printers)... which of course spurred the entire "FastLoad" market, 
demonstrating that even some pretty severe hardware gaffes could be overcome 
by software. :-)

> Apple never provided a really good graphic system until the
> IIgs. At that point the age of the 65X series processor was done, and
> the IIgs didn't offer anything that the Amiga or Mac couldn't do
> better.

True enough.  The "pinnacle" of 8 bit development was either the Apple IIgs or 
Commodore 128D... Pro/DOS on an Apple was quite powerful by then, even making 
GEOS on a 128D look somewhat simplistic.

Of course, Apple and Commodore users should both be equally shocked that 
neither Macs nor Amigas ultimately "won" the home computer race and that x86 
PCs did.  (Granted, Apple does make rather nice machines today...)

---Joel