[Coco] The COCO vs The Apple II

[Nick Marentes]

On 11/01/2015 8:08 AM, James C. Hrubik wrote:
> I picked up my first CoCo in Edmonton in 1985; it was CDN$295 whereas a MacPlus with a HD was nearly CDN$3000 at the time.  I bought it because (1) I just wanted to do some simple word processing and filing (Color Scripsit and Color File were sufficient for a month or two) and (2) it didn’t _need_ a disk drive (those were more expensive than the computer) — I could use my cassette tape recorder.  But then I started to play with BASIC, and the ads in some of the computer magazines mentioned “DynaCalc”.  So I sprang for the disk drive and discovered OS-9 Level 1.  (I built my first OS-9 system from the DynaCalc boot file, and bought the Level 1 system disks later.)  To say that the CoCo had no real business programs is not correct.  You just needed to step up to the real power under the hood.

I think A CoCo and an Apple II would be a more equal comparison. The Mac 
was beyond being a "home computer". It was also a 16bit system and as 
you said, had a hardrive.

I didn't say there was no business software for the CoCo.  There was 
just nothing "industry standard". History tells us that in the 
spreadsheet world it all started with Visicalc and then Lotus brought 
out Lotus 1,2,3 and it went on from there.

Dynacalc was a Visicalc clone for OS-9 and no-one outside of the 
CoCo/OS-9 world used it or had heard of it.

If someone were to ask you back in 1982 what spreadsheet was available 
for the CoCo and Apple II, Visicalc held a much higher profile as a 
business spreadsheet than Dynacalc. (Even the TRS-80 Model 1/2/3/4 got 
Visicalc).

I can recall myself in that very position. Dynacalc just didn't do it 
for me, I think I ended up using VIP Calc at the time on my CoCo 
(faster, easier and quicker to boot I recall).

Nick