Re:How two bored 1970s housewives helped create the PC industry
by Animats on Wednesday July 22, 2015 @04:05PM
(#9931944)
Apple was #1 in personal computing before the IBM PC crushed the Apple II. Apple dropped below 10% market share during the PC era. It took a long time for the Macintosh to get any traction, partly because Apple was years late coming out with a good hard disk machine. (1983: IBM XT, 10MB internal hard drive standard. 1987: Macintosh SE, 20MB internal hard drive optional.) By the time Apple had caught up, the IBM PC was entrenched as the standard.
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Re:How two bored 1970s housewives helped create the PC industry
by protomyth on Wednesday July 22, 2015 @05:55PM
(#9932609)
Apple was not #1 in personal computing. Commodore and Atari had higher market share numbers than Apple at the time of the PC launch. The PC destroyed the 8-bit market, and the Macintosh did not take it back when launched 3 years later.
Re:How two bored 1970s housewives helped create the PC industry
by Animats on Friday July 24, 2015 @05:07PM
(#9945199)
Briefly, in 1981, Apple led on revenue.[1] (XLS file of sales data.) The Commodore 64 and the Atari 400 were much cheaper machines than the Apple II. Then they were all crushed by the IBM PC and clones.
[1] http://jeremyreimer.com/uploads/Computer_Smartphone_tablet_m...
Re:How two bored 1970s housewives helped create the PC industry
by protomyth on Friday July 24, 2015 @08:21PM
(#9946009)
The Commodore 64 wasn't released until August 1982 and the PC did take a while to beat it in marketshare. The VIC-20 was Commodore's monster seller before that (1st computer to hit 1 million unit sales). I did not see the VIC-20 listed on the chart, so I suspect it is in the other category. Given that is was released in 1980, I find it likely that it outsold Apple and the chart is hiding the actual Commodore number. Never mind the lack of Timex / Sinclair or TI computers in that spreadsheet. Calling Apple #1 when its market share never exceeded 16% is a bit off.