color e-readers are coming.

**steve.ledger** · 29 January 2010, 07:03 AM

iPad Released - Steve Wozniak's Opinion

**covoxer** · 29 January 2010, 11:01 AM

Originally Posted by sledger

iPad Released - Steve Wozniak's Opinion

He's the Apple shareholder, isn't he?

**Soquili** · 29 January 2010, 12:40 PM

John I agree about the two Steve's.

About the Apple ][ the biggest selling point for that machine was the CP/M card. If not for that card there would not have been many of the machines sold. Even the illegal Asian knock off models would not have sold without the CP/M card. Every "Peach" sold in Japan in the late 1970s through the 1980s was sold with a CP/M card. Not that I would have bought a "Peach"

**covoxer** · 29 January 2010, 03:21 PM

The CP/M card was obviously a valuable add-on since there was a lot of CP/M software available for some time. Though it was not a reason but a consequence of the Apple's success and capabilities. Otherwise everyone would buy CP/M machines instead.

**Soquili** · 29 January 2010, 03:48 PM

Actually it was a means of promoting failing sales. No software was available for the Apple in the 1970s and there were many applications available for CP/M. To have a program that would run in the native Apple ][ mode you needed to write your own using Apple Soft (written by Micro Soft

. Later there was Apple Pascal (also written by Micro Soft).

For CP/M there were many existing applications and there were many programming languages to choose from. The most popular for many hobbiest was MBASIC (Micro Soft again

. There were C compilers, Tiny C compilers, compilers for Forth, Lisp, Pascal, and many other languages.

This information is all from my own personal experience, having owned an Apple //e and //c. Unfortunately the //c was not configurable to run CP/M. I was a member of several Apple user groups on Air Forces Bases around the world into the 1980s when the Apple //x became extinct

. All of us relied mostly on the CP/M environment for usability. Although I and some others did create programs for the native mode.

**ankhor** · 29 January 2010, 04:35 PM

No message about hijacking a thread ?

**Soquili** · 29 January 2010, 04:37 PM

Sorry Denis.

**RTK** · 29 January 2010, 06:55 PM

Originally Posted by ankhor

No message about hijacking a thread ?

Back on-topic... From my first post: "Well, the soon to be available iPad will be doing those things too, and more. What am I missing?"

I don't understand what Liquavista Color does... or does better, or differently than for instance iPad or Kindle?

Cheers.

Risto

**covoxer** · 29 January 2010, 05:30 PM

So was it the chicken or the egg?

But tell me, why did you buy Apple and not the native CP/M machine? The answer will be the actual reason of the Apple success.

SoftCard was a Microsoft product. Rumors are that it was released to expand the market for the Microsoft Basic. I doubt it was conceived by Apple to improve sales. Though I may be wrong here.

There was a lot of software for the CP/M of course, and not much commercial software for the Apple at that time except maybe for the VisiCalc. But there were no graphic or color games in CP/M, and this was important for home users. Though maybe not for you.

Neither Sierra On-Line nor Electronic Arts started in CP/M.

I think you are slightly overrating the availability of the high level programming languages. Back than, if you were not writing your program in Assembly, you could as well write it in integer basic. And use SWEET to save some memory. Well, almost.

Anyway, all the demanding software was written in asm and most of the rest was in BASIC. This stands true for the CP/M too. And having the same Microsoft roots, AppleSoft was not worse than MBASIC. If I recall correctly, it ran faster on 6502 than MBASIC on Z-80. And it had graphics?

And then you somehow upgraded to //c with no CM/P. Why? In 1984 there was a wide choice of declining CM/P machines.

Finally, Apple II lived well into 90s, with //e discontinued in 93, and was profitable through the entire production life.
CP/M had died quickly after MS-DOS offensive in the business PC market. Apple II survived much longer finally ending up with a wider choice of the native software than CP/M ever had.

No CP/M machine, nor even the CP/M system as a whole, was successful for such a long period of time as Apple II was. So it can't be the reason.