[Coco] The COCO vs The Apple II

[Bill Loguidice]

There were many factors that went into getting into a school system. As was
stated, Apple had one of the first comprehensive programs to get their
systems into schools (wisely), including aggressive sales programs (and
giveaways) and specialized hardware (initially the Bell & Howell stuff). It
wasn't until the CoCo 2 that Tandy even offered a CoCo (which for some
reason they never sold in stores) with a composite monitor output, which
would have been essential to getting into many school systems (most
wouldn't be carting in TV's). It also helped of course that Apple was
easily the leader in educational software, followed by Commodore with the
Commodore 64 in a fairly distant second. All other viable machines picked
up the scraps.

I remember in my school system in particular, while they had the usual
smattering of Apple II's (usually one for every three classrooms), they
actually standardized on Model III's and 4's for the programming classes,
which makes sense if you consider their all-in-one natures, which saved on
desk space, in addition to the convenience and overall durability (it's
part of the reason Commodore created the Educator 64). These were
eventually replaced by Tandy 1000s, so there was definitely some type of
contract in place, at least in my school system (Sayreville, NJ).

It's clear that being in US school systems helped Apple sales-wise, but
it's important to remember that even with that, they ultimately only moved
about 6 million units from the original Apple II through to the IIGS/IIe
Platinum (1977 - 1993). As was stated in the book, we can't really be sure
what the CoCo series sold (maybe a few million at best), but it was likely
more or less in line with what the Atari 8-bit and other popular computer
series sold, and often needing more models to do so. Compare all of those
to the Commodore 64, which by itself sold a minimum of 12 million units
(and, by some estimates, closer to 20 million), and you can see that there
were clearly other factors (price, availability in mass market stores,
software, etc.) to whether or not something sold in the home.

===================================================
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 7:03 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
>