Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market
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Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market
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Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market
#2Just thinking how, shall we say "svelte" Woz looked in the first photo, compared with the "portly" (but cheerful and brilliant) look of later years.
Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market
#3Great article.
It’s wild to look back at 1977/1978 and realize how suddenly the personal computer era exploded into the mainstream. The PET, TRS-80, and Apple II all hit the market within months of each other, and while hobbyists had already been tinkering with machines like the Altair, IMSAI, KIM-1, and Apple I, this was the moment computers truly became “consumer” products.
From a technical perspective, the timing made sense—there was a foundation of microprocessor-based systems and a growing community of enthusiasts. But for the general public, it felt like computers went from obscure to omnipresent overnight. They were suddenly on TV, in magazines, featured in books, and even depicted in movies and shows. That cultural shift was massive. For many of us, it marked the beginning of having computers in our homes—something that’s never changed since.
I appreciated the article’s attention to detail too. The bit about the TRS-80 monitor being repurposed from an existing product (with a "Mercedes Silver" color to boot), and the PET’s sheet metal casing being a practical choice rather than a design one—those are the kinds of behind-the-scenes decisions that rarely get spotlighted but say a lot about how fast things were moving back then.
Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market
#4It’s truly remarkable to me that in the late 70s/early 80s it was considered that programming your own computer in basic was not something that required special skills or technical ability.
It just goes to show how far out expectations have dropped, with basic human ingenuity and capability for expression having been crippled by reliance on increasingly advanced automation with increasingly simple interfaces.
Humanity is not going to fare well in the world of pervasive synthetic intelligence with simple language interfaces. I fear we will see an unprecedented dumbing down of the population, a new “dark age” perhaps.
Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market
#5Just thinking how, shall we say "svelte" Woz looked in the first photo, compared with the "portly" (but cheerful and brilliant) look of later years.
Silly remark, but talking about "Svelte", I can't parse the picture with Mike Markkula: the Apple II in the front is not exactly a small computer: it is a full size keyboard with several inches of space between the keyboard and the edges so either I don't understand the basics of perspective or this is a scaled down model, no ?
Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market
#6> “ Three factors were required to join this holy ensemble: the technical expertise to design a capable and reliable microcomputer, a nose for the larger business opportunity latent in the hobby computer market…”
I think the same opportunity exists now in the hobby robot market.
Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market
#7It’s truly remarkable to me that in the late 70s/early 80s it was considered that programming your own computer in basic was not something that required special skills or technical ability. It just goes to show how far out expectations have dropped, with basic human ingenuity and capability for expression having been crippled by reliance on increasingly advanced automation with increasingly simple interfaces. Humanit…
> It just goes to show how far out expectations have dropped
Those computers were vastly simpler, and many weren't connected to any kind of external network (or the networks were, again, vastly simpler). It's like the difference between a Model T era car (many people possess the technical ability to maintain them, even today) versus a modern car.
It's not that we expect less of people today, we've just produced something much more complex so what it even means to understand or use a computer has changed, because it's not the same thing as 40-50 years ago. If I threw an Apple II level computer at someone today, I'd expect as much from them as throwing the same computer at someone in 1980 (actually more, they'd have more foundational knowledge than a random person in 1980 would have).
Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market
#8> “ Three factors were required to join this holy ensemble: the technical expertise to design a capable and reliable microcomputer, a nose for the larger business opportunity latent in the hobby computer market…” I think the same opportunity exists now in the hobby robot market.
Okay, that made me chuckle. As someone[1] who has also predicted the opportunity for hobby robots based on my experience with home computers. And yet that has really never materialized. I mean there are common household robots today, things like Roombas and robot lawn mowers, but the whole "app" ecosystem, a robot that can do lots of different things, Etc. is still not in the cards. Part of that has to do with how insanely hard vision to inverse kinematics is, "fuzzy logic" was going to fix that before, now "AI" is the buzzword of choice, but realistically you need a lot of things to go right to make this work.
Back in the day we had everyone in the club set some goals for their robot, mine were simple; on voice command, have my robot go to a special refrigerator, get out a cold Diet Dr. Pepper, replace it with one from stock, then bring the cold one to me, where ever I was in the house.
Even allowing for a lot of customized environment to support the robot that is a really high bar today (much less in 1998 when I was thinking I'd have it working by the early 2000's)
End effectors, vision, custom fridge that an open electonically on demand with structured storage to hold beverages in pre-specified places, etc etc. I could probably get a lot closer.
Of course my eldest child could do that at 3 years old without any programming at all and no custom engineering of the appliances. So some things seem effortless for people are really challenging for computers.
[1] I was President of the Home Brew Robotics Club (hbrc.org) for 10 years around the turn of the century (after Dick Prather had been President for 10 years and before Wayne Gramlich became President for 10 years :-)
Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market
#9It’s truly remarkable to me that in the late 70s/early 80s it was considered that programming your own computer in basic was not something that required special skills or technical ability. It just goes to show how far out expectations have dropped, with basic human ingenuity and capability for expression having been crippled by reliance on increasingly advanced automation with increasingly simple interfaces. Humanit…
I was little little during this time and the percent of adults that owned computers was tiny and the percent who could program them was even tinier. I think its very easy to fall for "le wrong generation" narratives because they are so ego pleasing to think things only got this way recently. That people are somehow magically 'dumbed down' now.
When instead its always been like this. That certain types of people do certain things and others are highly disinterested in it, and this sort of modern 80s or 90s renaissance never occurred. It was the same tiny community of people doing the highly technical work, just like today.
Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market
#10I never used or even seen those computers, yet from pure curiosity I picked up 6502 CPU(Apple 2, Commodore 64, NES) assembly as a hobby project.
Its surprisingly easy, even for dumb person like me.
Great learning tool if you dream of building your own CPU architecture:)
Try it!