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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

In those years, there was no Apple in Europe, only ZX Spectrums dominating in Portugal, Spain and UK, with Commodore taking the rest of the continent, followed by Amiga and Atari, then PC took it all during the mid-1990's.

The first time I saw a Macintosh for real, it was when I got into the university, where there was a tiny department with a couple of LC models, and our department had a few additional ones. However they also had enough money to buy a couple of NeXT Cubes.

Outside the university there was no one with them, and until the raise from the ashes, the only place you could get them was at one single store in Lisbon that served the whole country.

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Yes, I never saw any Apple in Europe either (specifically UK). On the educational side BBC was king in the UK, so parents who were teachers would prefer the BBC, which had a great version of Elite too and a lot of the text adventures, but not so many action games.

From my memory of getting a Vic 20 then a ZX Spectrum +3 there was a pretty even split of Commodore and Spectrum machines among my friends. There were LOTS of other machines too, Atari, Oric, Amstrad, Tandy (Radio Shack) in the early days.

Although I had a mouse and a drawing program for the Spectrum the computers for creatives in the UK didn't really take off until the Amiga and Atari ST with their awesome sound and graphics packages.

Computer Shopper alternative platforms section was my only way to get to know Archimedes, pity I never got to actually use one.

There were Macintoshes here and there at least in Finland where I live. Saw first Mac in 1989 or 90 and did see them here and there but they were not common household items.

C64 was kind of a national computer for the 80s but there were others as well and Macs were used in the DTP and graphics circles a lot and sometimes one could find them in schools as well but as I said, they were quite high end and adult/work oriented compared to the inexpensive home computers like Commodores, Ataris and sometimes even PCs.

Funnily in Finland there were home computer magazines which basically ignored the existence of Macs for most of the time except there was one, seprate Mac magazine. Probably because the advertising segment was targeted to DTP professionals etc.

My dad bought an Apple ][ in Germany around 83, they were spendy but readily available and there was a huge fanbase. C64s were more popular with gamers and considered the high end of the toy range, inexplicably, since the HW was ahead of the Apple in a lot of ways.

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