I had a C128 as a kid, but I almost exclusively booted into C64 mode to play games. I did have a CP/M floppy, but I only booted it once or twice, had no clue what to do with it, and forgot about it quickly.
Same here. I had this vague notion that CP/M was something that grownups would use to do SeriousBusiness, but I had no idea what kind of applications it could be used for. Booted it once or twice and didn't see anything interesting. My C128 usage was about 80% games 20% learning how to program, so if they had built in some kind of programming language to their CP/M ecosystem I would have probably gotten more into it.
Same. My dad bought our C128 second-hand from a guy at work and it came with a box of disks. Most were cracked games the previous owner had likely downloaded from BBSes or otherwise copied from other users (incidentally, how I discovered the demoscene, though I had no idea why so many of these programs and games had such awesome intro screens with great music and weird names in scrolling credits).
It's how I got to play a bunch of Infocom games and some other interesting stuff. But CP/M was boring and I only ever saw dad use it for word processing a few times. Most of my time was spent messing with games, getting S.A.M. to swear, and digging through the C128 BASIC manual to figure out how write programs to make pictures and play music.
edit: also use The Print Shop to create banners and use up all our printer paper, much to the chagrin of the aforementioned father.
>I had a C128 as a kid, but I almost exclusively booted into C64 mode to play games.
95% of C128s spent 95% of their time in C64 mode.
>I did have a CP/M floppy, but I only booted it once or twice, had no clue what to do with it, and forgot about it quickly.
If 1% of C128 users ever used the bundled CP/M disk for more than what you did—boot it to see what it's like—I'd be surprised. 1985 was just too late to expect people to buy a new computer to run CP/M.