Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: redrumloa on December 12, 2007, 03:26:18 AM
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HERE (http://www.news.com/8301-13772_3-9832182-52.html?tag=nefd.top)
I got to spend a little time talking with Tramiel and I first asked him what was different about people who bought C64s and those who ponied up for the Apple IIe.
"The only difference was the price," Tramiel said. "Because it seems that in this country, if you sell something cheaper, it couldn't be as good. If it's more expensive, and it's the same product, that must be a better product. That didn't stop me. I still wanted to sell it for a low price. If a person pays three times as much for a computer, he has to be proud of it, because he paid for it."
Fair enough. But does he agree that there was a culture war, maybe even one akin to today's Mac/Windows split?
Not really, Tramiel suggested. In fact, how could there be a culture war when one platform has 95 percent of the users, he asked. Never mind that Mac users are probably infinitely more passionate about their machines than Windows users.
So, since Tramiel didn't buy my premise, I decided to give Wozniak a try.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was on hand at the Computer History Museum to help celebrate the Commodore 64's 25th anniversary.
Woz didn't seem to buy it either. In fact, his position was that, secretly, most C64 users really fancied themselves Apple IIe users.
"I talked to young people," Woz said, "and a lot of Commodore 64 users (told me they) would have gotten an Apple II if they could afford it."
He added that users felt they could learn more from the Apple's open system, while the C64's closed architecture offered only a cheaper price.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that these two didn't acknowledge the culture war the way I did. After all, they were unabashed partisans. But if you read between the lines of their comments, you can see that I'm right. Tramiel bashed the price of the Apple; Wozniak said everybody really wanted an Apple.
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Too bad Jack left the company -- he might not have steered the Amiga in the right direction, but he was a good business man -- at least Commodore had direction under him.
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sdyates wrote:
Too bad Jack left the company -- he might not have steered the Amiga in the right direction, but he was a good business man -- at least Commodore had direction under him.
Yeah...
To Quote Irving Gould, Commodore made the most money selling cheap calculators.
I believe the 1000 would of shipped with 128Kb, at $100 less, and there would of been no AGA, but 3rd. party display cards would of done very well.....
Anyway!
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For what it's worth...
I was an Apple-head back then, and my reviled brother was a C64 user. We had platform wars all the time. But in the end, he was right. I have a couple of C64s now and I like them *much* more than the Apple.
I like the Apple's physical build quality, and the DOS. I also liked the use of the proportional joystick in some games. And the built-in machine language monitor and disassembler.
Other than that, the C64 RuLeZ in every respect! :) And I like the people and culture of the C64 much better, too. I don't even get along with Apple-heads now.
Of course I've been an Amiga user for >20 years, and my first computer experiences were with the PET, so maybe I was Commodorian all along and the Apple thing was an aberration.
I used to respect Woz a lot more before he claimed to have invented the personal computer. Can't say I ever liked Jack, but he was Jack. I wish Gould hadn't ousted him.
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sdyates wrote:
Too bad Jack left the company -- he might not have steered the Amiga in the right direction, but he was a good business man -- at least Commodore had direction under him.
So, true... :-(
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Jack and Steve what a team they would have been. We would have had a computer than runs on solar, chips and wires everywhere and a prompt to type on......No fancy Bloat....no miscalculating floating points.
Problem would be you would have code everything by hand, because storage is for shirts. Real engineers do it in in MC/ Assembler. ;)
My first code was on a Pet 2001 too :)
My Next was on C64
My Third was on Amiga
My Fourth was a XT
My End was on 486....and the OOPS revolution, Top Down just wasn't the in thing anymore :(....GOTO was banished and so was my kind of programmer.
Now Im an Admin..... Still Can't get my head round Objects...."What you don't need to know what the Object does!" Phah!