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Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

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Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#21

Post by sehugg »

gnfargbl wrote: post #6
fortran77 wrote: post #3

I don’t understand why this post is so negative on Franklin. They seemed great.

> Apparently, when Steve Wozniak first got his hands on an ACE 1000-series machine, “he felt that Franklin had even copied the circuit-board layout, right down to how the chips were arranged.” Reviewers were even able to pull cards out of an Apple ][ motherboard, plug them into an ACE machine, and they’d work without any other modifications. And while I couldn’t verify this claim anywhere else, one retro hardware for…

I'm guessing Apple had stopped putting board schematics and ROM listings in their reference manuals by the time the ACE came out, or perhaps soon afterwards.

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#22

Post by titzer »

msla wrote: post #10

> But Franklin Computer Corporation’s hardware, software, and ad concepts were stolen intellectual property, which, I think, qualifies as “bad.” "Intellectual property" is doing a lot of work in this sentence, in that it's a legal-sounding blanket term which somehow fails to mention which actual law Franklin broke. It's implying something is illegal without actually making the case. The cancerous growth of the vague…

Read the article. He copied the BIOS code straight up, including the copyright notice itself. That's blatant copyright infringement.

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#23

Post by [deleted] »

titzer wrote: post #22
msla wrote: post #10

> But Franklin Computer Corporation’s hardware, software, and ad concepts were stolen intellectual property, which, I think, qualifies as “bad.” "Intellectual property" is doing a lot of work in this sentence, in that it's a legal-sounding blanket term which somehow fails to mention which actual law Franklin broke. It's implying something is illegal without actually making the case. The cancerous growth of the vague…

Read the article. He copied the BIOS code straight up, including the copyright notice itself. That's blatant copyright infringement.

[deleted]

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#24

Post by bjord »

titzer wrote: post #22
msla wrote: post #10

> But Franklin Computer Corporation’s hardware, software, and ad concepts were stolen intellectual property, which, I think, qualifies as “bad.” "Intellectual property" is doing a lot of work in this sentence, in that it's a legal-sounding blanket term which somehow fails to mention which actual law Franklin broke. It's implying something is illegal without actually making the case. The cancerous growth of the vague…

Read the article. He copied the BIOS code straight up, including the copyright notice itself. That's blatant copyright infringement.

who, benjamin franklin?

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#25

Post by drzaiusx11 »

Projectiboga wrote: post #18
drzaiusx11 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what I was thinking when reading the article. The author implies "the nerve of them", when they're simply providing exactly what they advertise: a 100% compatible machine.

I had one, I believe they never delivered on the color compatibility. Mine came with an easy on the eyes amber crt. Here it is the Ace 1000 was greyscale only but was 80 column. Wohlscheid - Computer Ads from the Past Unfortunately, the Franklin didn't copy the Apple's ability to display color graphics. It was limited to “shades of grey and black and white”. https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/franklins-ace…

To be fair, the way Woz did color on the ][ was pretty wild, but unfortunate they weren't able to properly copy that as well...

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#26

Post by titzer »

bjord wrote: post #24
titzer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the article. He copied the BIOS code straight up, including the copyright notice itself. That's blatant copyright infringement.

who, benjamin franklin?

Sorry, they--i.e. Franklin computer.

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#27

Post by the_af »

mentos wrote: post #5
ForHackernews wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Cloning proprietary hardware is doing God's work. We should all hope someone in the modern era can knock off NVidia and Apple silicon. Competition is great for everyone except Apple shareholders.

Yea I feel like if even one kid was introduced to the world of computing through a Franklin it justifies their existence.

That's how I feel about clones in general. Ok, I owned a real Commodore 64, but all my PCs during my formative years were clones.

Actually, this wasn't such a good example since I believe PC clones were legal. Let me change it to something more controversial:

I feel the same way about software piracy. All my games and software growing up were pirated. I didn't even understand this, because you got software by going to a store and buying it, e.g. C64 games... but it was all warez. Same with DOS or Windows (which one usually got from someone else). All of my early programming languages were pirated too: QuickBasic, GW Basic, Turbo C, Turbo Pascal, etc.

And this is how people got acquainted with computers, and then got into programming (games, systems, business software) as a job. So piracy was a net win.

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#28

Post by shinjitsu »

dwgumby wrote: post #7
fortran77 wrote: post #3

I don’t understand why this post is so negative on Franklin. They seemed great.

I worked at Franklin and was one an early hire. Using the Apple ROM code was an explicit choice. There was no real defined API so a lot of apps called random routines in ROM or referenced arbitrary ROM data and if it wasn’t there the app broke. Franklin’s argument was that the ROM was the API and if you wanted to be compatible it had to be identical. Court didn’t agree, probably rightfully so. But Franklin was a fun…

How big was the Franklin back then? My uncle worked there in the 1980s, but I was a kid and have no concept of if it was a scappy startup or a midsized company.

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#29

Post by the_af »

fortran77 wrote: post #3

I don’t understand why this post is so negative on Franklin. They seemed great.

> I don’t understand why this post is so negative on Franklin. They seemed great.

The whole article is a framed as some kind of denunciation, but when I read it, it just seemed like a charming piece of computer history.

Bob Applegate's blog is also charming, but a bit difficult to navigate to find the good bits.

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#30

Post by Projectiboga »

drzaiusx11 wrote: post #25
Projectiboga wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had one, I believe they never delivered on the color compatibility. Mine came with an easy on the eyes amber crt. Here it is the Ace 1000 was greyscale only but was 80 column. Wohlscheid - Computer Ads from the Past Unfortunately, the Franklin didn't copy the Apple's ability to display color graphics. It was limited to “shades of grey and black and white”. https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/franklins-ace…

To be fair, the way Woz did color on the ][ was pretty wild, but unfortunate they weren't able to properly copy that as well...

They were able to get color working on the subsequent 1200 model. And I believe color was accessable via an expansion card, I didnt want to be staring at a tv at short distances so I was content to game in monochrome.
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