The IBM PC's slavish devotion to the Apple II

[great_hierophant@hotmail.com (Great Hierophant)]

The state of the industry in 1980-81 was primitive but it showed that
the Apple II was clearly the best home computer for serious and varied
use at the time.  The other popular home computers, the TRS-80, the
Commmodore PET, and the Atari 400/800, were not suited for
real/business use.  The TRS-80 was mainly a hobbyist's machine.  The
Commodore PET looked like a glorified calculator or cash register. 
The Atari machines were great for games but not for much else.  So
when IBM decided it was a time to take a share of the office and home
computing pie, what should it look to but to the Apple II/II+?  The
Apple II had established itself as a versatile machine, one of the
first computers where word processing, database entry, and spreadsheet
creation was a viability, as well as many other types of programs. 
So, I believe that IBM took the Apple II and tried to make their
computer competitive or just a little better in all respects.

The Apple II uses a 1.02 MHz 6502 8/16bit processor.  The IBM PC uses
a 4.77 MHz 8088 8/16bit processor.  No need to rock the performance
boat with a 16bit data bus or a 24bit addressing bus.  The Intel 8088
uses more machine cycles to execute instructions than a 6502, so their
effective speeds are very close to each other.   The Apple II+ comes
with 48KB of RAM standard, so the PC will come with 64KB of RAM
standard.  The Apple II requires a separate card for 80 column text,
so the IBM PC will have 80 column text as a standard on its display
card, and it does not use composite video.  The Apple II's diskettes
can hold 140KB per side, so the IBM PC's will hold 160KB per side (at
first.)  The Apple II produces sound through a tweeter, so will the
IBM PC, with its own timer.  The Apple II's 54-key keyboard cannot
compare to the IBM PC's 83-key keyboard, with no need for a shift mod
to use lowercase letters.   The Apple II only uses 16KB of ROM and
includes BASIC, while the IMB PC uses 40KB and also includes BASIC. 
The Apple II+ uses DOS 3.3, while the IBM PC uses PC-DOS 1.0, and
neither can use a hard disk drive yet.  A 300kbps tape port exists on
both machines.  The josytick controller interface on the PC adds
support for one more fire button compared with the Apple II's.  While
the Apple II has 7 expansion slots, the IBM PC only has 5, but this
can be deceiving.  First, Apple II slot 0 is primarily for memory
expansion, and each disk drive controller needs its own slot.  An IBM
PC's disk drive controller only needs one ISA slot for three drives,
and has its own sockets for memory upgrades.  Also, the monochrome
display adapter has a parallel port for printers, so no separate card
is needed.  The motherboard has room for an optional 8087 floating
point co-processor.  As for color graphics, the CGA card is on the
way.  While the Apple II can produce 6 colors at 140x192, the CGA card
can produce all 16 of its colors at 160x200 with a composite monitor.

I don't think it could be any clearer that IBM, when idesigning its
home computing machine, tried to out Apple Apple.  But toppling the
king would not come easily as the Apple II already had a large and
established user base, hundreds of software titles, mature tools, a
much lower price, and much life left in its line.  The IBM PC would
not remain king of the performance hill for very long, and PC
compatibles would struggle for a decade to achieve dominance, but even
today there still exists the Apple II influence.

GH