Re: apple ii lineage?

["Paul R. Santa-Maria" <paulrsm@buckeye-express.com>]

Mad Scientist Jr wrote:
> Thanks for the reply... I have another question - what colors did the
> IIe support? I visited apple2history.org and was suprised to learn the
> II only could display green, violet, black & white?? Even the Atari
> 2600 had better color support than that. And why would Woz choose such
> an off color as violet?! I would think they might pick some basics, you
> know like red, blue, yellow. I had heard about 4-color apple games, and
> seen some in emulators (yecch), but all the IIs i had had exposure to
> growing up had green screens, so i never knew. Having had a C=64 myself
> (16 colors) I guess I was a bit spoiled. When was the Apple II finally
> (if ever) capable of displaying red?? (PS Im not getting down on Apple,
> it's just suprising)

You have to keep a historical perspective.

The Apple II was released in August 1977.

The Commordore 64 was introduced around August
1982, FIVE YEARS LATER.  Plus, Commodore was
a chip manufacturer, so it could make the
special sound and graphics chips the C64 had.
It would only have been suprising if the C64
did NOT have better sound and graphics than
the Apple II.

The Pet 2001 is the Commodore computer that
you can fairly compare against the Apple II
since the Apple II and the Pet were introduced
in the same year.  Otherwise, I am going to
have to compare the C64 against the Apple IIgs
which was introduce four years after the C64.

The Atari 2600 was introduced in 1977, the
same year as the Apple II.  But the 2600 was
a dedicated game machine, not a general
purpose computer, with 128 bytes of RAM and
no keyboard.  Thats like comparing an Apple
IIgs with a Super Nintendo.  Again, because
of the custom chips, the game machine has
better sound and graphics than the computer
even though both have the same CPU.

--
Paul R. Santa-Maria
Monroe, Michigan USA