Hacker News Reader

Comment by Max-q | Hacker News Reader

In 1981, where the article starts, Steve Jobs biggest competitor was Jack Tramiels Commodore. VIC 20 was the best selling computer at the time, and became the first computer to sell one million units. The year after the C64 came out and continued to outsell the Apple 2.

Why Commodore is left out of history is a mystery...

View on HN

Oh don't worry. I'll get to Commodore (and Tramiel) later in the article series.

I just wanted to tackle Adam first as he had a more personal relationship with Jobs.

Thanks, good to know. Looking forward to it!

Because victors write history.

And in 2024, Apple's PR budget is a lot bigger than Commodore's.

Looks like anti-monopoly regulations.

> VIC 20 was the best selling computer at the time

So subject for anti-monopoly investigation.

At that time already happen ATT case, GE case. So IBM, Intel and all other big companies tried to establish semi-rival, like AMD for Intel in 1980s, or to make things look like total freedom (IBM PC, lot of S/360 clones).

Commodore was not successful in making semi-free market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._General_Elect....

I have no idea what this is meant to have to do with anything.

> So subject for anti-monopoly investigation.

No, it wasn't.

And because of your non-understanding you minused my comment, coward?

That particular statement seemed very clear, and not true. There were no anti-trust investigations into Commodore because they were never in a remotely dominant enough position for it.

If you have a clarification, make it instead of breaking the site rules with insults.

EDIT: I see you've made the suggestion of anti-trust issues in another comment too, and there's simply absolutely no basis for that. At the time Commodore reached its highest ever revenue it wasn't even close to even half the market, much less any position where theyd be at risk of antitrust, and Atari, which you also implicated elsewhere was a near bankrupt non-entity (soon to be bought by Tramiel for a pittance), and that was the largest Commodore ever got.

Don't worry, he's just a crank with an axe to grind and not enough facts or imagination to support his argument. Don't worry, anyone who took a minute to think about what he said knows you're right. And calling some someone a 'coward' while flinging poo from behind an anon nick...chef kiss.

I'm mostly curious where this very strange misconception might have come from. As much as I was a diehard Commodore fan as a child, at no point did I labour under the misconception that they were dominant enough to be in some kind of monopoly position. After all, the entire period was defined by a vast range of different home computers, at a level not seen before or since.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com