On: Atari took on Apple in the 1980s home PC wars

[protomyth]

> Did Atari outsell Apple? In which years? Ultimately, the Apple II line sold 5.5 million units while the Atari line sold 3.5 million.

Atari outsold Apple worldwide from 1979 to 1983 (two years after the IBM PC). The PC outsold everyone in 1983 except Commodore. Strangely, no ones talks about the TRS-80 outselling Apple from 1977-1982.

Steve Jobs has demos for NeXT about how good the graphics were (his drag showing the windows contents). They also built the NeXT Dimension which was supposed to support video and graphics. I seem to remember there was something that prevented its full utilization.

[timbit42 → protomyth]

That makes sense. The Apple IIe was very popular when it came out in 1983 and it's also when the Atari began to lose sales to the Commodore 64.

[protomyth → timbit42]

Commodore actually had a good selling machine (PET) and a hit in the VIC-20. The VIC-20 was the first personal computer to sell over 1 million units.

[timbit42 → protomyth]

I'm aware. The VIC-20 was my first computer, but it didn't really compete against the Apple II or Atari 800, or even the Atari 400.