Over at Hoopty Rides, Mr. Jalopy writes about wonderful design of the Apple II.
Before my Apple II, I had a TI 99/4a and then an Atari 400 but though the specs were impressive, they didn’t inspire like the open architecture of the Apple II. The Atari had sprite graphics and four joystick ports but BASIC came on a cartridge. And the TI was a 16-bit machine, but it was screwed shut and if you wanted an interface bus, you had to buy an external box. Apple did it all first and Atari still didn’t get it. TI was even worse.
Woz got it. Thirty seconds after unwrapping an Apple II, you were opening the lid and connecting ribbon cables. It was respect.
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The Apple II became a platform for invention. A modem in every slot to create the first online chat? Music keyboard controllers years before MIDI? Digitizing audio through the cassette input jacks? Controlling teletypes through the joystick ports? Big Trak and Armatrons connected as $30 robots? The first time I heard Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talkin’ About Love” was through a tiny Apple II speaker. All 15 scratchy seconds of it. Where’d I get it? I downloaded it from a bulletin board.