The Importance of the Apple II

[Great Hierophant]

Now we come to my favorite topic, computer games. Computer games tended to be written with three things in mind. First were keyboards. Second were magnetic media (tapes and especially floppy disks), which could had 10x the storage space of cartridge based software. Third, lots of RAM to play with. All this gave rise to games of increasing size and complexity.

 

The microcomputer revolution began with the Apple II, the Commodore PET and the TRS-80 machines, all released circa 1977. These computers were the first mass produced machines that offered a modicum of user-friendliness and comsumer/small business appealing prices. The earlier machines, like the Altair and the IMSAI 8080 were controlled entirely by switches, had no monitor, keyboard or permanent memory that came with the system. The above three machines came with keyboards and (the Apple II and the TRS-80) connected to TV screens through RF adapters, while the PET came with a screen. But the Apple II had three very important advantages over its competitors. First, it could produce bitmapped graphics while its competitors were limited to text modes with non-redefinable characters. Second, it could display 16 colors in a low resolution graphics mode and 6 colors in its high resolution graphics mode. Third, it had no less than eight expansion slots with access to the bus for nearly everything under the sun. Very soon, a fouth was added in a floppy disk drive and controller that became standard with the system. Perhaps a fifth could be the Microsoft BASIC called Applesoft BASIC, which was very robust for its time and many programmers cut their teeth on it. Sixth was you could expand the system from 16KB to 48KB and even 64KB. Seventh it had a joystick connector for two analog joysticks/four paddles and three fire buttons.

 

By the time this computer had entered the public consciousness, Atari was shipping its first 400s and 800s. The Atari 800 had the same processor running faster, a very advanced graphics subsystem, a true sound chip and an equal amount of RAM. It soon had a disk drive with disks almost as large as the Apple IIs. But it was not enough to stop the Apple II juggernaut. Schools especially saw no value in a game of Space Invaders but could see the value of an SSI wargame. (I remember my middle school had copies of The Oregon Trail, Lemonade Stand, Karateka and Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny!)

 

The Apple II, while not on its own introduced gamers to new kinds of games. Games that took time, could not beaten by hand-to-eye coordination and quick reflexes. Games that required people to think and engage in problem solving. Games that required the player to master a complex set of rules. Games that required a lot of storage space and typing. Text (with or without graphics) based adventures, the role playing game and turn based strategy had come to the masses. They did not require flashy graphics or polyphonic sounds, they required a lot of RAM, a reliable disk drive and a decent keyboard. (Simulators I do not include here because the Apple II rather lacked the power for real-time geographical modeling.)

 

It is to the Apple II that we owe our uniquely computer game heritage. While not all the games in the above mentioned genres can claim an Apple II original, many can. Now, the Apple II is not the only machine that had a reliable keyboard and lots of RAM. It popularized the disk drive, without which we would have been shackled to loading off tapes for the next decade. The Europeans found disk drives to be very expensive until the days of the ST and the Amiga, so they had to put up with loads. Most disk based games over there were US imports. I have often thought that a normal man with some decent porn could shoot his load off by the time a tape game finished loading. Can you imagine how annoying it would be to have a disk seeking every time you entered a town in Ultima? I have no idea how the original Zork must have played off a TRS-80 tape and I don't imagine that it would be tolerable for later Infocom games.

 

Many people have called computer games "thinking men's games", games were not in the arcades and weren't trying to compete with them. I credit the Apple II with introducing the idea that computer games can be more than mere repositories of endless arcade ports and wanabees.

[Clint Thompson]

mmm'k

[cimerians]

Apple II was king early on up until around 84' or 85'. Most computer games were made for the Apple II up till that point and even afterwards.

 

BUT, the Commodore 64 was the god of thunder after that crash.

 

Atari XL computers were also not far behind but by 1989 the Commodore was going downhill (except maybe the UK)

 

NES was now king and we would soon enter the realm of SEGA and the SegaNintendo wars.

 

You didn't mention the first MAC! Commodore's own Amiga was also a nice machine.

[Rob Mitchell]

Yeah .. I remember the WOW factor of walking into a computer store in 1977 and seeing the Apple II with keyboard and color graphics on the screen. It was high tech and home based compared to the mini computer that the school had at the time. But for the money .. we got the Atari VCS:2600 instead.

 

Your school allowed you to play games on the Apple II. I remember seeing the computer lab at my school in 1983 .. full of unused Apple IIs .. no games allowed!

 

Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

[spacecadet]

Now, the Apple II is not the only machine that had a reliable keyboard and lots of RAM.  It popularized the disk drive, without which we would have been shackled to loading off tapes for the next decade.  

 

Er, I dunno about that. The Apple II was my first computer so it's not like I'm anti-Apple II or anything, but there were plenty of computers out around the same time with disk drives, including the IBM PC, which I would argue did more for popularizing the disk drive than the Apple II did (corporations needed disk storage a lot more than home users did). But the TRS-80, C64, and Atari XL line all used disk drives in the home arena too.

 

I wanted an Apple II at the time in part because it had the most games available, but it was not really the best gaming computer. The C64 and Atari line had better graphics and sound, and eventually the C64's game library was about equal to the Apple II's. The C64's popularity for gaming made it, I think, about as important to computer gaming as the Apple II was.

[Tempest]

The C64's popularity for gaming made it, I think, about as important to computer gaming as the Apple II was.

 

The nice thing about the Apple II was that you could use it for gaming AND productivity (which I did constantly). Yes the C-64 was a better gaming computer, but was there much productivity software for it? I don't recall ever hearing much about that end of the spectrum.

 

Tempest

[Clint Thompson]

Now that you mention it spacecadet.... I remember wanting an Apple II so badly before I even got into my Atari craze. I had asked my mom for an Apple II so badly.... I was a pest I know. I was so obsessed with computer technology though when I was younger and was craving to have it (and not even nesc. for the games) just because it was awesome (to me anyways back then.)

 

After the endless months of begging and hoping I would get one for Christmas.... I opened up a small box to be one of the toyish computers.... kinda disappointed. I guess I should have known better that my parents couldn't realy afford something like that.

 

Afterall.... they could BARELY operate the VCR, not alone hook it up (I had to do that!)

 

Oh well....

[NovaXpress]

I was lucky enough to get my hands of all of them at the time.

 

As fars as gaming goes, a few systems had a period of dominance. Atari was the early leader in gaming, replaced by the Apple II then C-64 until eventually MS-DOS won out.

 

For programming purposes, the Atari was (quite incorrectly) disrespected. There was a strong element of that with the C64 as well. The games were so good, why bother to do anything else?

 

For actually creating and doing serious PC work, the Apple II and IBM were the dominant machines the entire time.

[Dr. Van Thorp]

I think that the Apple II was important for setting the standard for a machine with color graphics and built-in BASIC.

 

But the C-64 was responsible for ultimately getting a comuter in to every home. 20 million people would never have bought the thousand-dollar Apple II.

 

The Atari 800 was a sort of transistional machine. The C-64 would probably have never been developed if the Atari machines hadn't been made, but then Commodor took most of the market. I had the C-64, and but I knew that the Atari machines had some features that the C-64 didn't.

 

It was obvious to me that both Atari 800 and C-64 were way superior to the Apple II. The Apple guys would claim that their machines were superior because they ad more internal slots and could theoretically be expanded to Cray supercomputer graphics, but this argument didn't impress me. To me, the only advantage of Apple II was more software in the early days, and the availability of a really good Apple Cat modem that could produce blue-box tones.

 

You could almost allways spot a game that had been ported from the Apple II: that background was allways black, the color and sound was usually very limted, and often (I guess just to drive the point home) there was a small apple somewhere on the screen.

[jeepnut24]

We had the Trash 80's at our school. I mean TRS 80. Used LOGO alot and then finally upgraded to apple. I mainly remember educational games and oregon trail, but that may have been later on???

[MacbthPSW]

The nice thing about the Apple II was that you could use it for gaming AND productivity (which I did constantly).  Yes the C-64 was a better gaming computer, but was there much productivity software for it?  I don't recall ever hearing much about that end of the spectrum.

There were 4 or 5 strongly supported word processors that were upgraded through many versions (Word Writer, PaperClip, and the Pocket series off the top of my head) and most of these companies also offered spreadsheets and databases that could share data with each other.

 

Then GEOS (a GUI-based OS) started being bundled with the 64 in the later 80s, and it included the word processor app free. That had very wide-spread use, and it still retains a loyal following today among those using their C64s for productivity. An upgraded GEOS, called Wheels, is still available for purchase today: http://cmdrkey.com/cbm/wheels/whshots.htm

 

The C64 didn't have the same "serious" reputation the A2 had, but there was still a lot of productivity software produced and used, and I suspect that today it's the 8-bit computer that sees the most productivity use.

[NovaXpress]

Perhaps the secret to MS-DOS's success is that it's killer app wasn't a game, but VisiCalc. This put IBMs in a lot of offices and more games were sure to follow. Meanwhile the "game computers" rose and fell as frequently as game consoles.

[else]

Perhaps the secret to MS-DOS's success is that it's killer app wasn't a game, but VisiCalc.

 

Well, if that were true Apple should be #1 today since VisiCalc first appeared on the Apple II. I believe the Apple II had it at least a couple of years before it appeared on the PC....

 

I think it has more to do with the fact that MS-DOS ran on IBM hardware. And the famous mentality back then was that "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".

[NovaXpress]

I believe the Apple II had it at least a couple of years before it appeared on the PC

No shit? I wonder why I was using such a crappy spreadsheet back then. The corporate reputation of IBM had to have been the trick.

[MacbthPSW]

Perhaps the secret to MS-DOS's success is that it's killer app wasn't a game, but VisiCalc. This put IBMs in a lot of offices and more games were sure to follow.

The killer app is certainly what allowed MS-DOS to succeed - but I think it was the hardware that allowed the killer apps to be so strong. Just a couple simple things - a processor that could (reasonably) easily access a lot more than 64k, a video card and monitor system that could display solid, easily read 80 column text (compared to the 40 column, 320x200 composite video the C64 and Apple had), and readily available hard disks (with MS-DOS providing the directory structure etc. to actually make good use of the relatively large amount of space).

 

As a kid who wanted to program, play games, and occasionally type up stuff, I was really glad to have a C64 (and then an Amiga), and not one of those stuffy MS-DOS machines. But there's a good reason those "PCs" won in the business world - and then eventually became mainstream at home too.