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Apple dominated the microcomputer market with the Apple ][ before IBM joined in with the IBM PC in 1981.

Apple targeted the business market with high-priced machines including the Apple III and the Lisa. That's where it lost out to IBM. The PC took over the business market, and Apple was reduced to the education and hobbyist markets. (Exception: after the Mac was launched in 1984, Apple also picked up a big share of the graphics market.)

Commodore went into the home computer business with the Vic-20 and C=64 at console-type prices (a couple of hundred dollars rather than $1,500-$3,000).

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> Apple dominated the microcomputer market with the Apple ][ before IBM joined in with the IBM PC in 1981.

In 1981, the Commodore VIC-20 (announced in Jan) dominated the market being the first computer to sell over 1 million units. It picked up from the Commodore PET and was succeeded in 1982 by the Commodore 64 which sold 17 million systems. Atari sold more computers in 1981 than Apple. Apple did profit not market domination.

TIME magazine cover story 1982: America's Risk Takers "Steven Jobs, 26, the co-founder of five-year-old Apple Computer, practically singlehanded created the personal computer industry. This college dropout is now worth $149 million." From: "Striking It Rich, Feb. 15, 1982"

The VIC-20 was a mediocre computer, but it succeeded as a cheap toy.

I think he was fired a little over 2 years later, seems the hype was better than the reality[1].

> The VIC-20 was a mediocre computer, but it succeeded as a cheap toy.

That "cheap toy" delivered the ability to learn to program to more kids than Apple's BMW priced computers did. It also dominated the market. Saying Apple dominated the market in 1981 is about as true as saying Apple invented the personal computer.

1) I did love my NeXTSTEP 3.3 on Intel machine, though

Jobs was shown the door because the Mac flopped. It had nothing to do with the ][, which was keeping Apple afloat....

> That "cheap toy" delivered the ability to learn to program to more kids than Apple's BMW priced computers did.

Arguable since only a tiny percentage of Vic-20 owners ever wrote more than two lines of code, while vast numbers of kids use the Apple ][ in schools....

Incidentally, Sinclair Spectrum/Timex owners make the same claim as Vic-20 owners and it's just as specious ;-)

> Arguable since only a tiny percentage of Vic-20 owners ever wrote more than two lines of code, while vast numbers of kids use the Apple ][ in schools..

I don't know about your school, but at mine folks were playing Oregon Trail and simple math word problems on Apple ]['s and that was about it. "Coding" didn't happen until maybe 11th or 12th grade - as an elective choice.

Prior to that time, on my C64 I was copying programs (painfully) out of the back of magazines in my free time after school. Point is, just because there were computers in schools did not somehow create a legion of CS majors. Heck, more than half the folks in the programming class I took (late 80s) all had 'cheap' computers at home. They only the class because they perceived it to be an easy A or B.

> Jobs was shown the door because the Mac flopped. It had nothing to do with the ][, which was keeping Apple afloat....

and the Apple II was losing market share to competitors including Commodore and the IBM PC. Thus the need for the Mac to be a runaway seller. Maybe Apple should of thought of this instead of selling an 8-bit computer less capable than the better selling Atari 800 for more money.

> Arguable since only a tiny percentage of Vic-20 owners ever wrote more than two lines of code, while vast numbers of kids use the Apple ][ in schools....

I doubt this. Like erickhill when we finally got some Apple IIs they were used for Oregon Trail, math, and typing.

Atari and Commodore had magazines (Antic for one) that contained about 40% of their content as code. I cannot imagine that those magazines lasted that long if people were not using that content.

Your statement also assumes either the school or the individual could afford the Apple II. Even with the propaganda Apple put out about their deep educational discounts, it just wasn't so for a large number of schools. They didn't have the budget for Apple II's and could buy Radio Shack, TI, Atari, and, especially Commodore. Apple dealers were not evenly distributed and Commodore had better offers. Rural schools ended up with what we got.

We didn't get Apple IIs (the IIe to be specific) until 1986 when the PC was already an educational seller and Apple was flushing the inventory. When we finally got them, they were too valuable to use for anything but educational software.

Never mind our ability to buy any Macintoshes.

Beyond that, the competitors had some better capabilities. Atari was much better at graphics and both the Atari and Commodore had joystick / paddle ports that could be used in sensor experiments (e.g. photocell connected to the paddle pins on the 9-pin port). TI had a nice speech synthesizer that was easy to program. Heck, the Atari Logo was the same as Apple's and came on a cartridge.

Apple was for rich schools and students, Commodore was for the rest of us.

> Incidentally, Sinclair Spectrum/Timex owners make the same claim as Vic-20 owners and it's just as specious ;-)

You can put the smiley face on that but it is no less crass and just as untrue. They too had magazines that consisted mostly of programming.

Jeremy Reimer has a great article collecting sales numbers for personal computers: http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137

In 1981 the Apple II sold less than both the TRS-80 and the Atari 800. Also remember that the Apple II was almost exclusively sold in the US.

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