this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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How much would you pay for a PC with 128KB RAM, and no hard disk?

In today's money (inflation adjusted)

This an ad from Personal Computer World (UK) from 1985

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Interestingly mac is the only one with a mouse.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not very surprising considering their inspiration from xerox parc. I bought a mouse in 86 for my dads pc - a 3 button Genius. On PC mouse would not take off until windows was launched - gui was not needed for real business use according to IBM

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That mouse was so uncomfortable. It was built like a box, probably designed for a robot hand.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yep - but it was the only one available in my area of Norway at the time (I got mine for under 500 NOK because the supplier did wrong. As I was just a kid he let it slide and I got to keep it. There was some painting software supplied as well. That guy went on to be one of Norways biggest producers of pc’s - REC computers

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apple was a very different company back then. If they had followed the philosophy they have today, Apple would have been the last company to to introduce a mouse. The idea is that if a new feature becoms industry standard, they won’t apply it until like 5 years later, but make it somehow better than anyone else.

In this context, it would have probably meant not including a keyboard or display at this point. They could have skipped the black+green stage and go straight for color displays while increasing the resolution, size and refresh rate or something.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Waiting 5 years wasn't really an option back in those days. PCs moved so fast that if you waited 5 years you'd be missing whole use cases.

Now if you wait 5 years, there's hardly a difference.