[michael_dorfman]

The mythmaking around the early history of computing is fascinating (and maddening) to watch. In the rush to create compelling narratives around a few selected heroes, the complexities and the contributions of the many are too often shunted aside.

[vidarh]

You keep finding this mythmaking pretty much up to present-day, and permeating through other parts of the computing industry as well. It'll take a long time to untangle this and separate the myths from reality.

My "favorite" example is the hyped up reverence for Apple's role in the early days of the home computer, and the "cult of Woz", when they weren't first by a long shot, and largely priced themselves out of the race for many years, with sales a distant third after Radio Shack and Commodore.

Meanwhile a bunch of early guys at Commodore who directly influenced a lot more people are pretty much ignored, not least Chuck Peddle (the father of the 6502 at MOS Technology without which most of the 70's and 80's home computers would've looked very different, and of the KIM and Commodore PET computers, the latter which outsold Apple in the beginning, until replaced by the VIC 20)

To an extent it is down to who writes history - in this case Apple is the only survivor of the home computer wars, combined with being the only one of the larger players who were a predominantly Silicon Valley company (Commodore had offices there, but moved East, and never did as well in the US as elsewhere).

But as an old Commodore / Amiga user who's very aware of how short-changed Commodore has been by modern day mythmaking around the home computers, I wonder how much else of early computing history is twisted or forgotten that shouldn't have been...

[crusso]

But what are the rules of this "mythmaking" game you speak of? Seems like a pretty subjective game to get excited about in terms of right or wrong.

To play Devil's Advocate: Apple has been extraordinarily successful at inventing or popularizing multiple industries within the technology space. They're still around and doing very well financially and in the eyes of the consuming public.

Commodore/Amiga were neat in ways, but never could produce the "whole package" experience and business model they needed to last for the long haul. Surely they deserve some footnotes for their efforts, but their relative popularity/myth within the computer industry is just about where it should be.

[pyre]

It's more of a "Apple created the home computer all by themselves at a time when absolutely no one else was creating home computers. They invented the home computer from scratch," myth. In a decade or so, we're likely to see the same thing about Apple regarding the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Apple's 'marketing buzz' spiraling out of control within the general public until the statement becomes something akin to, "Apple invented everything that they've ever used from scratch... even their office furniture."

[crusso]

Yeah, I don't really know how to deal with your hyperbole. Who is passing along this myth that Apple invented the personal computer from scratch? Maybe you should add in that Woz invented electricity while you're spinning a tale?

[vidarh]

Perhaps that was hyperbole, but read this article for example, and you can see the impression it leaves about relative historical importance:

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa121598.htm

Yet, at the time, nobody really cared about Apple. The two big sellers where the TRS-80 and the Commodore PET. Apple was a distant third who most people thought was too expensive. It was relevant only because it was the only third place contender.

TRS-80 and PET were both pre-ordered in higher volumes than what Apple sold per year in the first couple of years.

But they get the vast majority of the article, including a lot of attention for the (for the purpose of that article) irrelevant Apple I (it was sold as a kit, sold in the low hundreds, and had plenty of competition which the article ignores).

The worst outright error in the article is to claim the 6502 was designed by Rockwell - of course it was designed by Chuck Peddle, Bill Mensch and a few others at MOS Technologies (Bill Mensch incidentally still produce new models of it). Peddle was the person who personally got the 6502 off the ground and was responsible for the low price point - without Peddle, the Apple computers would've looked a whole lot different...

And the PET entry gets an incorrect NOTE about Commodore's start of the PET project which really only serves to diminish it's role (in reality, Commodore had bought MOS long before, and it was Chuck Peddle who had the responsibility to do a new computer and wanted to talk to Apple as an option before they decided whether to go ahead and do their own machine - the note doesn't match what either Chuck Peddle or Woz says about it, though Peddle and Woz have very different accounts of the discussions). It also makes it seem like Commodore had nothing, but Peddle had designed numerous boards around the 6502, including the KIM computer.

If you're going to insert notes like that, why's there no note about how Commodore bid for a deal with Radio Shack to be their computer supplier, but Roach at Radio Shack opted to have his team develop his own instead? It's a similar story, yet somehow it's important only when it involves Apple.

This is pretty par for the course for coverage of the start of the home computer era. There are few outright errors in that article, but it's biased in a way that contributes to making Apple seem far more important.

If you want to get a better idea of the mythmaking around Apple, I suggest Brian Bagnalls "Commodore: A company on the edge", which contrasts a lot of the coverage about Apple with contemporary sources and eyewitness accounts.

[epo]

Citation(s) needed. Who said this? When? Where?

[vidarh]

The myth I'm referring to is that if you speak to geeks about the inception of the home computer, people often claim Apple and/or specifically Woz created either the first one, or the first mass market one.

To give a concrete example: Movies such as Pirates of Silicon Valley which presented the first West Coast Computer Fayre as some sort of triumph for Apple where people where flocking to their stand, when contemporary accounts, including press accounts, makes it clear that the big attention was around Commodore at the time, and attention for Apple was lackluster at best.

That Apple deserved credit for making it big later is not in dispute, but we're talking about history here.

And they receive far too much credit for their purported impact in the early years, when they were selling an over-priced (for the market at the time) product in tiny quantities while other people and other companies were laying the groundwork for the home computer market.

[blasterford]

People don't want complicated history. They want "The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell". Even if it's factually incorrect or obscures the real story.

[slowpoke]

There are some things where you should never give the people what they want. False history is one of these things.

[blasterford]

  Elphaba, Where I Come From, We Believe All Sorts Of Things
  That Aren't True. We Call It History.

  A Man's Called A Traitor
  Or Liberator. A Rich Man's A Thief
  Or Philanthropist. Is One A Crusader
  or ruthless invader? It's all in which label
  is able to persist.

  There Are Precious Few At Ease
  With Moral Ambiguities, So We Act As Though They Don't Exist.