- The Apple II was introduced in 1977, three years before the CoCo. When it came out alongside the PET and TRS-80, the Apple II was the only one with any graphics or sound, and the graphics were very impressive. Programmers learned how to exploit the system's capabilities, giving it a big headstart on machines that didn't come until later, like the C64 and Atari 8-bit systems.
- The Apple II's documentation was exceptional, and what the official docs didn't cover, the company was content to let third parties expose even more. This was a programmer's dream.
- Disk drive, as you mentioned; the Apple II was one of the first systems with a relatively low-cost drive. Diskettes made possible larger, more sophisticated games than what you could fit onto cassettes, and of course they delivered better performance and convenience than any tape drive.
IMO, the Apple II and CoCo aren't really comparable - they're different classes of computers. The CoCo was a "home computer" whereas the Apple II was much more general purpose: it was all over the place in small businesses, laboratories (scientists loved its expansion slots), and of course schools. The development community for the Apple II was enormous and gaming was one of the first pieces of that (due to the graphics advantage). This resulted in the Apple II having a gigantic software library compared to systems that actually sold more units such as the C64 and TRS-80. Many computer games of the early '80s were written first on the Apple II and then ported to other systems.
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Apple ][ versus CoCo
in EricBall's Tech Projects
A blog by EricBall
Posted
It was a combination of things.
- The Apple II was introduced in 1977, three years before the CoCo. When it came out alongside the PET and TRS-80, the Apple II was the only one with any graphics or sound, and the graphics were very impressive. Programmers learned how to exploit the system's capabilities, giving it a big headstart on machines that didn't come until later, like the C64 and Atari 8-bit systems.
- The Apple II's documentation was exceptional, and what the official docs didn't cover, the company was content to let third parties expose even more. This was a programmer's dream.
- Disk drive, as you mentioned; the Apple II was one of the first systems with a relatively low-cost drive. Diskettes made possible larger, more sophisticated games than what you could fit onto cassettes, and of course they delivered better performance and convenience than any tape drive.
IMO, the Apple II and CoCo aren't really comparable - they're different classes of computers. The CoCo was a "home computer" whereas the Apple II was much more general purpose: it was all over the place in small businesses, laboratories (scientists loved its expansion slots), and of course schools. The development community for the Apple II was enormous and gaming was one of the first pieces of that (due to the graphics advantage). This resulted in the Apple II having a gigantic software library compared to systems that actually sold more units such as the C64 and TRS-80. Many computer games of the early '80s were written first on the Apple II and then ported to other systems.