Great story from Lisa Loop! I had no idea about the reliability issues. I think that helps explain a story I read that when the Apple II came out, Apple offered a trade-in program to all Apple I owners, where they could turn in their Apple I's for a discount on Apple II's. Most Apple I owners took them up on it, which is why Apple I's are more rare than they otherwise would be.
@mmille10
2 жыл бұрын
Re. what David Murray said, it got me thinking about the first time I saw an Apple I in action, which was several years ago. I found a video from a computer collector on KZitem who had one that he got in working order. It was an underwhelming experience. I had heard about the Apple I ever since I was a teenager, in the early 1980s. It had a legendary status among us computer nerds: The first Apple computer, before the Apple II, II+, etc. I think I heard at some point later that it was just a board, no case, etc., but it would still be about 20 years before I got to see one. I didn't know what it looked like, or what it was like. So, I watched this video, and I got the idea just from that what you could really do with it. I felt like, "Oh, that's it?..." I was still glad to see it, but it felt impossible to be excited about it afterwards. You know this already, but I thought I'd mention for others, since none of the guests did, that it was possible to program it without Woz's Basic. It booted into a machine monitor, and you could program it in hexadecimal--machine code. That way, you could take full advantage of the computer's memory. To modern programmers, that sounds like a chore, but I remember when I was a kid, it was rather common for me to see other kids programming on the Apple II+ and IIe in hex. They could break out of Basic ("CALL -151", as I recall) and go into the computer's built-in machine monitor.
@mmille10
2 жыл бұрын
Interesting re. the branding of the German Commodore "VC-20." I've probably heard a few stories about this with American companies over the years, about how when they wanted to expand internationally, they had to rebrand some of their products, because otherwise foreign customers would get the wrong idea. I remember a story about the Chevy Nova when it was marketed in Central or South America. Chevrolet called it something else there, because "Nova" sounds in Spanish like "no go."
@LizaLoop
2 жыл бұрын
@Mark. The now long and twisted history of microcomputers in classrooms is filled with seeming successes and failures. The biggest failure is formal education's unwillingness to turn students loose on the internet to discover whatever they can.
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