> I suppose that the 68K only trickled down to the home/consumer market > after about 5 years. The original Mac was circa $2.5K and the Lisa was > around $10K -- *not* home computer prices for most people, even in the > USA. > > The Sinclair QL was arguably the first affordable mass-market 68K box, > and it used the somewhat crippled 68008 and 8-bit RAM to keep costs > down. > > Before the Mac, I suppose that, as Cameron points out, the accurate > comparison was with standalone multi-user machines such as the Sage > and Alpha Micro. Desktop minicomputers, really. > > Agreed.
A fully provisioned IBM PC / XT in 1981-4 was pretty expensive too, that's why 8-bit machines continued to sell well into the later 80's. 16-bit was overkill for most home needs. Apple would not have survived the 80's without their 8-bit machine sales, and Commodore, Atari, Tandy.... Bill
