The Apple II Turns 35 Today 173
harrymcc writes "35 years ago this week, at San Francisco's first West Coast Computer Faire, a tiny startup named Apple demonstrated its new personal computer, the Apple II. It was the company's first blockbuster product — the most important PC of its time, and, just maybe, the most important PC ever released, period."
Re:"News" for nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lemme guess. You are in the 18-24 demo?
Time to boot Oregon Trail (Score:5, Insightful)
Toast to evenings once upon with that soft green monochrome glow... and me dying of dysentery.
Re:One Of The Most Expensive As Well (Score:3, Insightful)
Although not strictly the Apple II, the IIe was the first real computer brought into my house growing up. Now that I'm a professional working adult, looking back on that box with the green monitor, the one floppy drive, and other details I wondered how in the world my parents were able to justify and afford the thing! As the article correctly points out, at $1200~ 1980 dollars that is around $5000 today! That was probably the most expensive piece of technology in the house at the time and I never realized it at the time where instead I was simply happy to mess around with Applesoft Basic and various games.
A couple of years ago people were spending more than that on big screen TVs. They've come down in price since. It all depends on whether you have a disposable income. TVs can be educational but are usually used to watch junk and a bigger TV adds nothing to the quality of the content (though bigger may impact learning/attention for younger children). Your parents through wisdom or accident chose to spend money on something that contributed to your education and your ability to compete. Then and now there are luddite parents and educators who believe if you introduce a child to a computer you can't also teach them to do math in their head or have them memorise times tables, and who are proud of their ability to restrict their children's access to technology. Be thankful your parents weren't idiots.
Re:Hooray! (Score:3, Insightful)
35 years ago one could play games on their Apple computer, like Wizardry, Bard's Tale, Dragon Wars, Wasteland, among others.
Today Apple distributes the first and third most popular single Unix distributions in the world.
Re:"News" for nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not fair. I'm still in the 18-24 demo and this is great to read. It helps me to learn more about the experiences of computer evolution. I still go on and on about the NES to the kids and they can't figure out the excitement I have. This puts it into perspective I suppose.
Re:marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
While i'm an Atari guy, i admit we lost and they won. Marketing is what made the difference.
Steve Wozniak's hardware, Steve Wozniak's software and Steve Jobs vision made the difference.