

How Apple and IBM Marketed the First Personal Computers - ForHackernews
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/06/clear-the-kitchen-table-how-apple-and-ibm-marketed-the-first-personal-computers/396047/?single_page=true

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empressplay
I can't help but think this article is practicing a bit of revisionist
history. Apple had positioned itself solidly into education, and priced its
products too high for the reach of most consumers; ditto with IBM and
business. They aren't the two names I think of first when I think "personal
computer revolution".

When it came to true "personal computers" (ie, something you would buy to do,
well, personal stuff), Commodore, Atari and Tandy / Radio Shack (Sinclair and
Acorn in the UK) were the true trailblazers. Arcade conversions got kids
interested in using them, parents had word processing and spreadsheets. And
unlike the PC and the Apple II, these computers were _cheap_: Tandy's MC-10
was a colour computer for $100, the VIC-20 had more software for $200. The
Commodore 64 sold more than anything else.

I have a lot of nostalgic love for the Apple II -- but in the home space it
was just one of many, many contenders.

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chiph
In my town, I had choices of the Apple ][+, the TRS-80 Model 1 (with expansion
chassis), and the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. The Apple was a few hundred more
than the others, but had the 8 card slots and looked good, so that's what we
bought. The Tandy just had too many pieces and the casing was too robot-
looking. The TI didn't have much software for it.

Later, I looked at the 512K Mac, and at $2400 (even with the military exchange
discount), it just wasn't a good value, so I went without a computer for a
number of years, until I could buy an Atari 1040ST.

