🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 22:46:36 -0500, Charles Richmond
<nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:

>On 3/24/2018 3:31 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>> On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 1:51:12 AM UTC-4, Charles Richmond wrote:
>> 
>>>> On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 1:43:54 AM UTC-4, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Also the "personal computer" boom started in the 80s.
>>>>>
>>>>>        Mid '70s.
>>>>>
>>>>>        IBM joined in after the market had been established.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> IMHO, the personal computer market was a niche specialty field
>>>> with _relatively_ few units sold until the IBM PC hit the streets
>>>> _and_ was accepted by the business community.
>> 
>> 
>>> IMHO your HO is not worth much.  Apple sold quite a good number of
>>> computers *before* the IBM PC.  Radio Shack did so well selling their
>>> computers that they were opening Radio Shack Computer stores.  In May of
>>> 1980, I bought a Radio Shack Color Computer at one of these computer
>>> stores. The Color Computer had a Motorola 6809 processor in it.
>> 
>> I still maintain that before the IBM PC, personal computers were
>> still a specialty niche market.  Yes, there were Radio Shack
>> and Apple computers out there.  But in _relative_ terms, the
>> number of users was still very small.
>> 
>
>What you should say is... widespread use of microcomputers in the 
>*business* sector did 8not* occur until the IBM PC.  It even took thw 
>slow-witted business managers *years* to realize they could ge much 
>better computers for less money... by purchasing IBM PC clones.
>
>That said, the "killer app" for the Apple II was Visicalc... it caused 
>many to buy the Apple II just to run Visicalc.  Visicalc does *not* 
>sound like a hobby program to me.  :-)

While it was very capable, on the screen it _looked_ like a hobby
program and the number of rows and columns it could address were very
limiting.

One would have expected actuaries to love it, but they didn't start
moving away from APL until well into the 32-bit Excel era.