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Comment by CamperBob2 | Hacker News Reader

We'll have to agree to disagree. There's nothing even remotely proprietary about the original Apple II -- seriously, have you ever seen a Red Book? And IMHO, nothing that didn't ship with a keyboard and a ready-to-use video display port can be considered either a "personal computer," or a progenitor of them.

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It had an RS232 port that could be connected to a serial terminal with a keyboard. This is an emulator, but you get the idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxcFNOpnIIs

Sure looks a lot like any other early personal computer. Having a "video display port" seems like an arbitrary distinction.

Also if you want to talk about ubiquity, the TRS-80 which released a bit later in 77 than the Apple II massively outsold it.

True, the TRS-80 often gets short shrift in these arguments. What was revolutionary about it was the price, about $1K cheaper than an Apple II. It foreshadowed the day when almost everybody would be able to afford to own their own computer. I agree that the TRS-80 was an important milestone in its own right, even though it lost the race to call itself the "first recognizable PC," or whatever.

I think Apple's big win was in mindshare and getting the education market, maybe being more professional and establishing vendor relationships. You didn't see Altairs. I only knew about them from magazines. When I was in early gradeschool, all computers were Apple IIs as far as I knew.

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