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Interview with 6502 engineer Bill Mensch - Page 3 — Parallax Forums

Interview with 6502 engineer Bill Mensch

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Comments

  • See how that system was migrating.
  • The Proto is big bucks to collectors. It might sell.

    Yeah, the XL look was sharp, IMHO
  • Heater. wrote: »
    rod1963,

    That's not how I remember it. Correct me if I am wrong...

    Woz was the man for the 8 bit Apple machines. There was no Xerox PARC stuff in there when Apple took off.

    Of course not, Jobs and company were inspired by the Xerox Alto when they paid the company a visit. They just took the ideas and ran with it.

    IMS Apple had to hire guys to design the Lisa and Mac.

    Then came the Motorola 68000 based Apple Lisa, with its PARC inspired GUI. I'm not sure if The Woz had any input on that. I'd love to know.

    The Lisa was not targeted at ordinary people or schools. It cost more than my first years salary as an engineer at the time!

    Yes it was very overpriced and buggy if I remember the complains at the time correctly. IMS I saw one at Boeing military in the mid-80's,(we had all sorts of odd ball systems at the facility including four Xerox Alto's).
    Then came the Mac. A cut down Lisa. Again not targeted at ordinary people or schools, it was still terrible expensive.

    In fact, my experience is than only rich yuppies and professionals bought Macs. Maybe it was different over in the USA.

    Same here, Going rate for a Lisa in the mid 80's was $10,000. The Macs were also horrendously overpriced, a closed box and basically wealthy snobs and artist types bought them.Their users were always the butt of jokes. Even at that time the Apple II's were badly overpriced as well, but then they weren't selling to the average American but to the public school systems and the kids weened on them.

    Which is why the IBM PC and Windows took over the world, ordinary people and schools could at least hope to afford that.

    Indeed. The IBM PC(especially after the clones took off) were quite affordable and open compared to the proprietary and expensive stuff Apple was peddling which never came down in price. It seems with Apple gouging the customer was part of the Apple experience.

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