On Jul 10, 11:15=A0pm, pau...{at}saaf.se (Paul Schlyter) wrote:

> Dunno about that either - both PET and TRS-80 had floppy disk storage
> too, as well as a number of CP/M computers from that time. =A0CP/M even
> *required* disk storage of some kind. =A0No, what put the Apple ][ ahead =
in
> the competition was its open architecture, which created a third party
> market which soon made lots of hardware and software available for the ][=
.
> And the entry of Apple ][ into the business market was due to one single
> software package: =A0VisiCalc ....

But really, the Disk ][ was fast, simple, and therefore cheap. The
controller was not only industry changing, but a work of art.

> Apple DOS didn't even have a decent command line! =A0Only a very restrict=
ed
> syntax of the command line was allowed by Apple DOS - other needed input
> parameters had to be obtained though a user dialogue by the application
> itself, or perhaps through some data (text) file. =A0Compare this with th=
e
> very flexible command line interface of CP/M (which was directly inherite=
d
> by MS-DOS): after the name of the executable file you could type almost
> anything you wanted. =A0CP/M and MS-DOS didn't object, it simply passed i=
t on
> to the application and then it was up to the application to try to make s=
ense
> of the command line, and to determine whether it was legal or illegal.

It's a shame this was never fixed - 10 years later the Apple II
'prompt' had much the same limitations.

Matt
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