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Apple Almost Sold Out to Commodore in 1982, Says Founder

by Alon Avdi on December 13, 2007 at 01:37 PM



If you're old enough to remember the TV show Dallas in its heyday, then you might remember Commodore, the company that was the first to sell 1,000,000 PCs. It went under in 1994, but it might not have gone bankrupt had Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs successfully convinced Commodore to sell the Apple II PC in 1982. Wozniak explained the potential even to a panel at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California:

Broke and unable to manufacture the groundbreaking Apple II on a large scale, the two men pitched their product to Commodore. Fortunately for Jobs and Wozniak, Commodore opted to run with its own Commodore 64 PC, while the Apple prodigies went on to achieve success on their own.

The panel discussion, part of festivities to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 PC, also featured Jack Tramiel, a former chairman of Commodore International. It seems that Commodore rejected the Apple makers' overture because it wanted to sell a machine "for the masses," deeming the Apple II too expensive to market to a wide audience. Indeed, the simpler black-and-white Commodore 64 eventually sold for $199 per unit, a jaw-dropping low price (and before that the Vic-20 broke into the market for way less than the Apple II).

The more expensive Apple product, with its advanced color, graphics, sound and gaming features, surprised Commodore and eventually caught on with consumers. Tramiel suggested that part of Commodore's downfall may have been its failure to package software and hardware.

Strolling down memory lane like this kind of reminds us of those old "What if...?" comic book story lines, where we see what would have happened had Flash Thompson rather than Peter Parker been bitten by the radioactive spider. Okay, maybe a stretch, but it is wild to think about the iconic Apple company having come this close to not existing. Do you think Commodore would have come up with the iPod?

From Macworld

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Tags: Apple, Apple II, AppleIi, Commodore

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