When were home computers the coolest?

[Deja Q]

Late 70s-1980s, the early era: Apple II, Atari 800, Coleco Adam, et al. Commodore 64 too, naturally. All command line based, people either figured out how to use them or hadn't a clue.

Late 1980s-mid 1990s, the mid era: Atari ST, Commodore Amiga :thumbsup:, Apple Lisa (similar to the Amiga), Apple Macintosh (cheap alternative to the Lisa), IBM PCs with their graphical user interface variants. All GUI based, people either figured out how to use them or hadn't a clue. Whether or not they knew, they decided on the IBM brand because "IBM" stood for computers. (no, it stood for MARKETING. If IBM had made condoms, they would have overtaken that market too, even though the condom would be shoddily built using substandard obselete-for-the-time parts, and be prone to failure because of a crap processor type.)

Late 1990s-now (today): IBM clones everywhere with suitably useable processors that work well, with Macintosh crying in the shadows despite coming up with the superior G5 processor. Apple keeps forgetting how American business works: It ain't quality or even a pretty chassis that counts, it's bottom line. Nothing more. Despite having a faster CPU, a dual-P4-based $3000 IBM clone is going to get you more goodies for your money than a $3000 dual-G5 Mac for most intents and purposes... Modern PCs of any brand use better GUIs. People either figured out how to use them or STILL haven't a clue.

Sigh. Some things never change. :cry: But that's why Dell makes TV advertisements showing white American men and women who can speak fluent English manning helpdesk phones while, in reality, exploiting a bunch of men in another country who we all get mad at because we can't understand a single word they say (and also aren't white). (Uh, can't Dell speak the truth on their outsourcing and anti-American-infrastructuralism that will not bode well for the economy in the long one, the same economy that economists in other countries are now seriously worrid about because of *'s needless and wasteful spending combined with needless and wasteful tax cuts?) Well, other people get mad at. I know how to use and fix these damn things; an increasingly useless trade thanks to this outsourcing shit and I know I can't even get a job in retail, the fastest growing aspect of this bunghole economy...

Sorry to politicize. Globalization is the devil's handiwork and it's not out of altruism that corporations are sending away good jobs to foreign lands. (At a savings of 80% or more, take a guess as to the motivation for the mass outsourcing...) It's for their profit, long term economic effects and Americans be damned in the process. x( How much will their billions truly be worth when the dollar collapses, let's get real here? And by then, the Americans they betrated won't be too happy...

[LoZoccolo]

1. Now.

You can just do more.

To get off-topic but not really because you mention it in your post, does anyone know the extent of Apple's offshoring? I heard that newer LCD iMacs are being manufactured overseas to make them more affordable because sales weren't what they expected, but haven't heard anything else. I'm considering getting an iBook laptop for my next machine because of this (plus MS offshores too).

[regnaD kciN]

11. Yes, you can do more now. But that wasn't the question...

...which was "When were computers the coolest?" Now, even the most loaded PC is a commodity, like a microwave oven. Microwaves can do a lot more now, but they will never be as "cool" as when the first models came out in the late 60s and you could show off how you could heat a pastrami sandwich in a few seconds and still have the plate it was sitting on be cool to the touch (an actual "demo" experience from my youth).

I don't think computers can ever be as "cool" as they were in the past. Back then, there was a real belief (see Steven Levy's Hackers for a book that captures this sensation) that computers were going to be world-changing; that they would help usher in a new utopia. Now, we know that computers have been world-changing in that they allowed people to accomplish things they would never have been able to do, but there's no illusion that computers will allow us to do much more in the future -- they certainly won't fundamentally change society for the better in ways we can only dream of.

The only question for me would be whether the "coolest" period was when I first had an Atari 400 (and it was fun just running simple BASIC programs using the TV as a display), or whether it was the mid-80's period when the Amiga was first giving a glimpse of what could be done with what we now call "multimedia." For me, the coolest year without a doubt was 1985 -- which started, literally, with me plugging a modem into my Commodore 64 and discovering the "cyberworld" of BBSs, and ended with a group of us (most of whom had first met on those very BBSs) hanging out at the local Amiga dealer, playing with the software on their demo machine, and waiting expectantly for when we would have enough money saved up to buy one of our own. A cold, clear January night to a cold, foggy December night, during which time a whole new world opened up for me. Nothing could be "cooler."

[LoZoccolo]

16. Same deal, I guess...

I think of around 1999, when a lot of dotcoms were coming out, and the work "geek" was becoming a compliment amongst normal people, and you just saw all these new ideas coming up, things that were kind of "social" like Yahoo! clubs and chat rooms and all. That was the year I got a digital camera and PDA too, and could take a bunch of pictures at a party, take down everyone's email address on it there, and send out the pictures - that was cool to me.

[FlashHarry]

19. Just bought an iBook G4

Do it. You won't regret it.

[REP]

20. Apple Products

are written and designed in Cupertino, CA - even the non-English language versions. As ar as I know, only manufacture is done overseas (and I'm married to an Apple software engineer).

[oldleftguy]

2. My IIe got me through grad school.

Donated it to the local grade school several years ago. Still going strong!

[soothsayer]

3. in the 70's when you had to build your own Sinclair!

and run it off cassette tapes. Too cool.

But of course, computers pretty much rock right now.

[ProudGerman]

4. its the nature of the beast

The current era will always be the coolest era for computers. Unless the industry completely collapses of course. But as technology continues its fast march towards whatever its marching towards, what's current will always be better than what isn't.

[billbuckhead]

5. Those uncool iMacs.

Who do they think they are? The BMW of computers or something?

[baldguy]

6. Next years computers

Always The Next Big Thing that you can't have - yet.

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. current day computers

though I miss the old TRS-80 I learned on, and my old Atari 800.

I still have my Atari ST1040, which I haven't plugged in in a few years.

Also miss the ol' VAX 11/780 and PDP11 we had in college with the green, and later orange, screen monitors and gigantic dot matrix industrial printers.

I remember when my college got its first laser printer - woo hoo!! And that was an engineering-only college (except for a very small program in industrial administration).

And then, when I was senior, my college got 386-based computer! Holy hell they were cool! We could run LISP on 'em!

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

8. I loved my Commodore 64...

but when I purchased my first Amiga in 1988, I was in uber-geek heaven. Damm, but Commodore was on a roll when they created that thing. Pity they couldn't make it last.

Useless trivia 'bout the Amiga: did you know that Commodore developed a modem/answering machine that would answer the phone in the Amiga's built in voice-synthesizer and save the message on the hard drive? Commodore didn't develop it to production because of "perceived lack of interest." :wtf:

[regnaD kciN]

12. Commodore and the Amiga...

Commodore was on a roll when they created that thing. Pity they couldn't make it last.

The thing is, Commodore didn't create "that thing." The original Amiga Corporation (a name chosen because it came alphabetically before Apple, and would thus be first in any directory of hardware companies) was a startup backed by a group of Florida dentists as an investment/tax shelter, and with the goal of creating the ultimate videogame system. When the videogame market collapsed (for the first time) in mid-development, the designers just reworked it a bit and turned it into a full computer. At the time, it (the machine which later became the Commodore Amiga 1000) was known as the Lorraine.

Meanwhile, at Commodore, co-founders Irving Gould and Jack Tramiel had a falling-out, with Tramiel leaving and acquiring Atari. Tramiel tried to pull off a hostile takeover of the Amiga Corporation, with Commodore jumping in at the last minute with a "white knight" offer to keep the Amiga from falling into Atari's hands.

So, the point is that the Amiga was developed apart from Commodore, a company that relied less on technical innovation as on taking what was already available and figuring out how to do the same thing for a lot cheaper, and then driving the competition into bankruptcy through price wars (Tramiel's fundamental strategy). After Tramiel's departure, Commodore was headed by Gould and Medhi Ali, two businessmen who really couldn't care what merchandise they were selling as long as they were selling it. (In fact, as they both admitted, neither of them owned a computer of their own, and they were proud of it!) Under that "leadership" -- which still was probably better than what would have happened had Atari won the bidding war, as they had said they would have merely cannibalized Amiga's research for their next-generation game console -- the Amiga, predictably, struggled, despite its superior technology. Still, as many of the original team left, and were not replaced, it was a long decline (although one that lasted a lot longer than most people expected, as the Amiga was in production for nine years).

[msu2ba]

14. Their "management team" sucked!

I still have a functioning Amiga 500 and 1200, and, in some respects, I enjoy working with them more than my current PC. I know they crash a lot less.....Thanks, Bill!

Mike

[ironflange]

9. Ya know, I think I had more fun on. . .

My old XT in the mid-80's than on any other computer. Monochrome monitor, two floppies, daisy wheel printer, WordStar with Starfixer. It was a big event when I saved up enough dough to buy a hard drive: 32 MB for $389!

Wait a minute, those weren't the good old days -- the good old days are right now!

[regnaD kciN]

10. Mid-era. The Amiga rulez!...

(as we used to say at the time). Seriously, for those who don't know it, there's an Amiga Emulator (WinUAE) for WinXP. When I first installed it, I brought up Workbench in a window on the desktop, and called my wife over to show her that "finally, after all these years, they've found something worth running on a PC!"

;-)

[TheMightyFavog]

13. Going back to the days of my youth...

I remember our Amstrad 1512. 512k of RAM (Later upgraded to 640k), 2 5.25" floppy drives, no hard drive. We bought it in 1987, IIRC, and used it until the fucking thing died in 1994. We then upgraded to a Packard Bell Pentium 75. IIRC, it had a 750 MB Hard Drive, 4X CD-Rom Drive, and Windows 3.11. never gave us any trouble at all.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

15. My first puter was a Packard Bell...

And I'm sure I'd still have it if the freaking monitor hadn't went out. (It wouldn't be my regular computer, it would just be a buddy I played solitaire on occasionally for nostalgic purposes.) It was a neat puter. Although the era of the PB went out with 3.1.
Duckie

[ironflange]

17. By golly, ya young whippersnappers

When I was a kid, we had to carve our computers out of blocks of wood!

[WillParkinson]

18. <OTHER> They haven't reached that point yet!

I just KNOW that tomorrow's is going to be WAY cooler than the ones we have today!

[Buns_of_Fire]

21. REAL MEN use command lines...

Of course, REAL MANLY-MEN (and REAL WOMENLY-WOMEN, needless to say) took it back even further to the Altair (wire-wrapping, anyone?) when you built-your-own (remember Heathkit?) and spent hours toggling in a program that would result in nothing more than having all eight indicator lights light up, in sequence. B0= '0", B1 = "0", B2 = "1", and on and on and on. Hit "load." Continue to next instruction. No monitor. It was just having it DO something.

Then came the TRS-80. Listening to the speaker in the "data-recorder" squeal while it was downloading your latest masterpiece of programming (10 PRINT "HELLO" / 20 GOTO 10). I actually wrote one of the first game programs for the TRS-80 (a group of robots would try to zero in on you to eat your head, unless you maneuvered them into running into each other).

Then, my late, lamented Franklin. My first exposure to word processing and spreadsheets.

Thru XTs (with a MIDI card, even!), ATs, 386s (with online access! remember Prodigy?), 486s, Pentiums, and.....?

But nothing compares to seeing those indicator lights dance across the panel.

[HuckleB]

24. Ah, yes, the good old days!

I don't miss 'em. I'd rather be a wimp.

[Kellanved]

22. since when are home-computers cool?

I haven't learned to program a Cray for Home Computers.

[hunter]

23. Atari 800 was my favorite...

I knew these machines inside and out, and retired one of them with a 256K RAM upgrade and a 3.5 inch floppy drive.

I kept my favorite Atari, an 800XL. It is one of the earlier models with the nice keyboards that didn't feel mushy. I did a lot of programming and writing on that machine. It is very well worn, but it still works. I also used this machine on BIX, Delphi, GEnie, some early internet gateways, and a lot of BBS's. I can emulate most of my Atari stuff on my current computer, except for some of the cartridges, which I could do easily enough if I had a week or two, but I don't think my wife would understand...

My first computer was a homebrew. I used to think in solder, gates, and assembly language. If you are a similar sort of computer geek, read about the CDP1802 processor at:

http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/jbayko/cpu2.html#Sec2Part1

You could do amazing things with that processor, and quoting from that article, many people did:

"the chip is the heart of the Voyager, Viking and Galileo ... probes. One reason for this is that a version of the 1802 used silicon on sapphire (SOS) technology, which leads to radiation and static resistance, ideal for space operation."

This processor was also used in some Cold War machines that I don't like to think about.