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PC World "Apple II Greatest PC of All Time"


deadmeow

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The Commodore 64 prices were slashed so low, I remember them selling them at Walgreens, and they were giving away Texas Instruments.

 

Commodore killed the TI computer line and hurt competition in general. Just think if we had the choices today, that we had 20 years ago.

 

Imagine being able to choose from IBM/APPLE/COMMODORE/ATARI today?

 

We have 3 major gaming consoles, just imagine if we had 3 major computer companies or more? If you want to play games on a PC and run the most popular programs, you are stuck with one type of computer and one operating system. That stinks.

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I actually love the Apple 2. One thing they did that Commodore didn't.. was be available outside of the states! I'm guessing I would have liked Commodore.... if I had ever even seen one to purchase. But they were phantom hardware as far as I was concerned.

 

Now Apple though, those Apple 2's you could find in Bangalore I'm sure :lol: So it gets my nod as THE computer system of my youth :)

 

I believe that was a joke, or sarcasm or something, due to the fact that the Commadore was HUGE in europe, and it lasted there far longer than it did in the US, ans as long as it was out here (for a computer, it was about an eternity) that's saying something.

 

But WTF? Commadore Amega is listed, but no C64? WTF is that? Amega was a great line, but the C64 was still one of the best gameing computers of all time, and lets face it, as kids, we didn't give a damn about spreadsheets, check balancing, or any of that crap (not that the 64 couldn't do it, but some reason people have that impression)

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Back in the 80's there were dedicated video game systems, people wanted more than video games. Video games were a bonus to general computing.

 

I probably spent more time calling BBS's and downloading games in 1984-1989, than actually playing games. As word processors, computers were/are invaluble.

 

Just think, if it wasn't for computers, people would still be using typewriters! You young people are lucky! I remember in highschool in the late 80's we still had typing class! (I don't know why?!)

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C64 wasn't doing 3 voice music in 1981 when the PC was released, or 1977 when the Apple was released, because it wasn't released until 1982.

 

The VIC-20 and Atari 800 were both doing multi-voice music well before the PC was doing anything. Still, I do not fault IBM for not giving the PC better sound capabilities. It can generate tones without CPU overhead, something the Apple cannot, and unless one has enough memory to accommodate digitized audio there really isn't much point in having anyhting better than PC sound in a business computer.

 

Incidentally, back in the day I wrote a number of programs to do 2-4 voice music on the PC. I think my favorite in some ways was probably a 3-voice version that allowed three volume levels on each voice. The sound was less "fuzzy" than my four-voice one on 286-era machines, and avoided the warbling that occurred on 386 and later machines as a result of inconsistent instruction execution times.

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It must be noted that the great injustice of creaky Apple II sound, was corrected in the Apple IIgs. The Apple IIgs had a sound chip capable of 15 voices and 32 channels.

 

KEGS emulator for Windows seems to play back the IIgs sound back very well.

Yeah, but even Apple didn't want the 2GS. :P
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The Apple IIgs is still the most powerful Apple II, and it was the first Apple to have a color desktop GUI based OS.

Indeed. And I think Apple should've thrown some support behind it instead of actively attempting to sabotage it. If they had, they might've remained a dominant market force instead of just surviving when the IBM clones ran through(which still isn't too shabby, given everyone else bailed out or died).

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