[Coco] The COCO vs The Apple II

[Bill Loguidice]

I have a similar anecdote. I had a very nice Commodore 64 setup as a kid in
the 80s, and had just finished converting Avalon Hill's Computer Football
Strategy to speak using SAM, and for some reason my dad wanted me to show
it to a friend of his. Later, my dad pulled me aside and said his friend
said that it's time he got me a "real" computer, by which he meant an Apple
II. I of course protested as any good kid would do who was brand loyal/a
fanboy (thank goodness I grew out of that), but it is a fascinating
psychological thing that at the time something with weak audio-visuals and
a super high price would have the perception of being "better." Sure, most
computers could be said to be better in *some* way versus its competitors,
but the decent ones all did more or less the same things in the end.
Nevertheless, it's important to remember that even in the mid-80s, we were
barely beyond the stage where it seemed almost every book or article
started with the explanation of "Why you need a computer." These were still
early days.

-Bill

===================================================
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade, Inc.
<http://www.armchairarcade.com>
===================================================
Authored Books
<http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Loguidice/e/B001U7W3YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1> and
Film <http://www.armchairarcade.com/film>; About me and other ways to get
in touch <http://about.me/billloguidice>
===================================================

On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 9:24 AM, Zippster <zippster278 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>