[Coco] The COCO vs The Apple II

[Zippster]

I was a teenager in the early ‘80s, and remember our family shopping for computers
when they were a pretty new thing to most people.  The perception was definitely
that machines like the Apple II and IBM PC were the more serious, “real” computers.

Computers like the Color Computer, Commodores, and Ataris were budget computers,
bought by people who couldn’t afford or didn’t want to spend the money on an Apple or IBM.

An Apple //e with 2 floppy drives and a color monitor was around $2,000 in 1984 IIRC,
while the “budget” machines were a few hundred.  They weren’t perceived as being in
the same class at all.

- Ed

> On Jan 10, 2015, at 6:03 AM, didier derny <didier at aida.org> wrote:
> 
> I discovered the coco recently but I think these are machines are in the same "line"
> 
> I guess that programs working on a coco1 are mostly working on the coco2 and coco3
> 
> But the Apple II (I should the apples II) are very different
> 
> - Many version more or less incompatible...  (incompatibility between versions)
> - Incompatibly between the board  (finally everybody has a unique Apple II) [depending on the set of board]
> - programming an apple is often hell, check the problem of the 80 cols text screen
>  Or the complexity of the hires graphic 
> 
> I dreamt with the apple II in 1979, but the dream did not last very long
> 
> Frankly from the 3 companies,  Apple / Commodore / Tandy
> 
> I prefer the machines in this  order  Commodore then Tandy and then Apple  (apple very far)
> 
> The coco is nicely designed, mostly easy to repair, and easy to use
> The 6809 is a really great processor
> And OS9 a great addition to this machine
> 
> The only thing I regret is the lack of 40 cols screens on the coco1/coco2
> 
> I don’t care on how many chip are in a machine and how many chip it would be possible to remove...
> I care about the ease of use and program, and on this point I think the coco is just really great
> 
> --
> Didier
> 
> 
> 
> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] De la part de Tony Cappellini
> Envoyé : samedi 10 janvier 2015 09:12
> À : CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> Objet : [Coco] The COCO vs The Apple II
> 
> I've spent the last week or so learning 6502 Assembly language, just for the sake of nostalgia ( retrocomputing).
> 
> I never used Apples back in the day, so I'm learning absolutely everything from scratch. I'm talking about booting the machine, loading & running files, saving files, copying files, etc.
> 
> I should also mention that i"m doing this on an emulated Apple II running on OSX (I will say this- this Apple II emulator is extremely well written, and complete)
> 
> I am just dismayed at how primitive the Basic & DOS are compared to the Coco's.
> I had to run a binary program from disk just to copy files between floppies. This sounds like CP/M.
> 
> To make a floppy bootable, a bunch of stuff must be written to it, using up most of the space.
> 
> We have everything in ROM on the coco. Don't need to boot DOS from a disk!!
> All of the commands are just there waiting to be invoked.
> 
> I was trying to setup a loop using by decrementing a 2-Byte number in a
> 6502 register. It wasn't working. The 6502 has only 3 (general purpose) 8-Bit registers, compared to the 6809's 5, 16-Bit registers. (I'm not counting PC, Stack ptr,and flags because I don't consider them to be general purpose, even though they can be used by the user for esoteric
> things) WTH!!
> 
> I'm having fun though, learning all of this, but it begs the question..
> 
> How did the Apple II being having such a primitive basic, DOS, & CPU outsell and be so much more popular than the Coco? The Apple II was approximately
> 3-4 times the cost of the Coco.
> 
> There tons more programs, books, games for the Apple II than what I've seen for the Coco.
> 
> One place the coco has it hands down is with OS9 & NitrOS9. I haven't been involved with the Apple II that long, but I haven't heard about any "real"
> OS's for the Apple II. I think the closes thing is the OS that runs on the IIGS. (It looks & feels a bit like the toaster Mac OS)
> 
> Tandy really messed up, but at least they got 3 coco models out there before they cancelled the program.
> 
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