[Coco] The COCO vs The Apple II

[J Arcane]

Yes. It cannot be underestimated how big a deal Apple's relationship with
education was, clear up to the iMac days (they've mostly distanced
themselves from it since, with corresponding drop off).

Apple computers, thanks to competitive pricing and quality eduware makers
like MECC, were pretty much in every last school in America well into the
mid-to-late '90s.

And yeah, I think part of the other problem is that the original CoCo was
frankly kinda rubbish compared to its peers. By the time the CoCo 1 hit the
market, the Apple II and the PET (another early favorite in education that
even had an improved version out the same year as the CoCo) had already
been available for three years, the Atari 800 had just come out the year
before, and even Tandy's own TRS-80 series probably seemed better for
serious work than the 32-column, 4kb CoCo1.

Things got better with successive models, ROMs, and upgrades, but the
original release wasn't that great and by then the market had already been
lost. By the time the CoCo3 came along with a serious competitor, the 8-bit
market was already on it's way out; even Tandy was starting to sell the
Model 1000s ...

On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 1:25 PM, Aaron Wolfe <aawolfe at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 10, 2015 4:26 AM, "Nick Marentes" <nickma2 at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> >
> > On 10/01/2015 6:11 PM, Tony Cappellini wrote:
> >>
> >> 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.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > The Apple targeted a more "mature" market. It looked more like a "real"
> computer (it had a real keyboard and connected to a monitor) and hardware
> folks loved the 6 expansion slots, all internal to the machine yet hidden
> inside to preserve the professional looks.
> >
>
> Also Apple made a massive effort to get their computers into elementary
> schools, at least in the US.  At a time when home computers were new to
> parents they often just bought what the school had.  I remember handouts
> from my school actually recommending the purchase of specific Apple IIc
> systems.  Very effective advertising at the time.
>
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