As Apple fans like to say, being first isn’t always important is it? The Apple 2 may have been first, but the Commodore 64 was both more affordable, and more widely adopted.
Apple computers weren’t Personal Computers because precious few people owned them at Home, they were time share systems you got to use at school labs or the office.
What impact did Commodore have? An entire generation of engineers who went on to work on graphics software and hardware you use today were hacking C64s and Amigas as kids.
Do you think Linus Torvalds got started on Commodore hardware or Apple? You can directly trace a lot of the modern hacker ethos of the internet to the kids who grew up in the 80s on non-Apple hardware.
If you want to credit long lasting inventions that are part of software and hardware today, you can look at Alan Kay, and thank him for Smalltalk (which Brad Cox based Objective-C on)
Or you can look at Kerrigan/Richie/Pike.
Much of what makes modern PCs and smartphones what they are is invisible. There would be no iPhone without them no matter how important and revolutionary you think capacitive touch interfaces are, they stand at the top of a deep deep pyramid of inventions and innovations that did not come from Apple, and annoyingly, often isn’t credited by the historical retelling and hagiography.
Apple computers weren’t Personal Computers because precious few people owned them at Home, they were time share systems you got to use at school labs or the office.
What impact did Commodore have? An entire generation of engineers who went on to work on graphics software and hardware you use today were hacking C64s and Amigas as kids.
Do you think Linus Torvalds got started on Commodore hardware or Apple? You can directly trace a lot of the modern hacker ethos of the internet to the kids who grew up in the 80s on non-Apple hardware.
If you want to credit long lasting inventions that are part of software and hardware today, you can look at Alan Kay, and thank him for Smalltalk (which Brad Cox based Objective-C on)
Or you can look at Kerrigan/Richie/Pike.
Much of what makes modern PCs and smartphones what they are is invisible. There would be no iPhone without them no matter how important and revolutionary you think capacitive touch interfaces are, they stand at the top of a deep deep pyramid of inventions and innovations that did not come from Apple, and annoyingly, often isn’t credited by the historical retelling and hagiography.