Chip

Yesterday a comment reminded me of these old US ads for Apricot computers. Sadly these are low resolution photos I snagged off of eBay, as the seller wanted unreasonable money for the originals.

It's interesting that they're attacking Apple directly, when their obvious competitor was the IBM PC. Further, they seem to believe Apples were only suited for home use. But this was 1985. The Fat Mac was out, the LaserWriter was out, and if this was late '85, you could get Microsoft Excel. So even this approach was dead in the water.

#Aprilcot

Apr 2 at 4:47pmWeb
Show threadChip5d ago

I also found this article written by someone who used to work for ACT from 1985-1996. https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/40284/Memories%20-%20Computers%20in%20the%20Dark%20Ages%20(Apricot%20Computers)

If his recollection isn't misplaced, it seems to be they were working on porting Xenix (described as "Linux to those of you under 25, Unix to those of you over 45") before the fully PC-compatible models were designed. I wonder if that was ever released.

He also mentions that the company was fairly small, and like most cutting edge outfits of the day, young. "At one point we worked out 95% of staff [in R&D] were younger than 30."

Memories - Computers in the Dark Ages (Apricot Computers) - Article - Computing History

This article was contributed by G.This article was contributed by 'G.O.' or 'Apricot Man'. Early Days At Apricot Computers When I was 14 my maths teacher took our class to the local technical colle...

Show threadChip5d ago

So @elithebearded suggested I search through IA's Magazine Rack, which was a great idea. I found sources and one I hadn't seen before!

The first two I found in Byte Magazine, May and June 1985.
https://archive.org/details/1982-10-byte-magazine-october-1-byte-magazine-21533/1985%2005%20BYTE%2010-05%20Multiproces%20-%20Byte%20Magazine_21698/page/12/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/BYTE-MAGAZINE-COMPLETE/198506_Byte_Magazine_Vol_10-06_Programming_Techniques/page/202/mode/2up

The third I found in Creative Computing, May 1985.
https://archive.org/details/Creative_Computing_1985-05/page/n73/mode/2up

#Aprilcot

Show threadEli the Bearded5d ago

@bytex64

Have you tried searching "The Magazine Rack" at archive.org using text from the ads?

Show threadChip5d ago
@elithebearded I have not. I'll give that a shot!
Show threadChip5d ago

@elithebearded That was a good call! https://archive.org/details/BYTE-MAGAZINE-COMPLETE/198505_Byte_Magazine_Vol_10-05_Multiprocessing/page/12/mode/2up

There's some other ones I haven't seen, too!

BYTE Magazine COMPLETE 1975 to 1998 : BYTE : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Complete PDF print collection of BYTE Magazine

Internet Archive