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Comment by dsr_ | Hacker News Reader

Ah, I know the answer.

At the time, a CP/M machine was a business machine, because it could run a word processor, a spreadsheet, and dBase. (Literally the name of the database program from Ashton-Tate.) So you could buy a "serious" CP/M machine, but not an Apple II, which was an educational/hobbyist machine.

But if you bought an Apple II with the CP/M card, it was a business machine again.

The ways of people and accountants are strange.

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The first spreadsheet, VisiCalc, was developed and first released on the Apple II (and apparently accounted for lots of its sales) - native CP/M spreadsheets, which came along later, were frankly a bit crap.

But I agree, there was more business software on CP/M.

Exactly. I still have a //e on my desk and learned how to use VisiCalc because a high school friend's dad was an exec at Symbolics and we would swap back and forth between playing games and trying to figure out cool things to do with spreadsheets.

I swore I would never leave my Apple //e, at least until Borland released Turbo Prolog, and then I absolutely had to have a PC.

> but not an Apple II, which was an educational/hobbyist machine

Which makes it doubly interesting that the AppleⅡ eventually shared the same fate to allow Macintosh LC systems to run old edusoft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe_Card

It was just that way — a hardware version of dual-booting your tower into Linux for work and Windows for games.

Perfectly in sync with hairstyle of the day - the mullet. (Business up the front - party at the back)

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