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From: fran@cbscc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.apple
Subject: Re: Why is the Apple so popular?
Message-ID: <197@cbscc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Aug-83 22:23:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbscc.197
Posted: Mon Aug 29 22:23:28 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Sep-83 04:54:14 EDT
References: <1911@ihldt.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs <SCCS>, Columbus
Lines: 56

First, I think that many small businesses DO use the Apple II.  
Your assumption that it will run out of gas pretty quick is not
too accurate.  It is slow for many jobs, but for the single user
kind of operation, this is not too noticeable.  Among the "business"
kinds of things I have done on the apple:
	POLLSTER- Survey preparation, data collection and analysis
	program.  formatted a printed form for about 50 questions,
	answers multiple choice, keyword, and numerical data.
	Set us analysis template at the same time as it printed out
	the master form.  (Paper copies given to phone team)
	Collected results (with error correction) from the marked
	papers.
	Printed analysis of results, with confidence intervals, etc.
	-- used with a school levey in the local community.  about
	500 respondants.

	Newsletter Manager - maintained the mailing lists, subscription
	information, and invoicing for technical newsletter to about
	1000.  produced invoices, labels, mailing labels, reminder
	letters, dunning letters, etc.

	Both of the above in PASCAL.

	Simulations in (ugh!) Basic.
	Roll replacement stategies for vertical cold mills.  Simulation
	for MBA project.  Ditto for several traffic simulations.
	Only problem with BASIC is the lack of the distributions as
	an internal function.  You fake them or approximate them mathematically.

	Depreciation, and profit/loss on 6 apartment units.  (Visicalc).

	General Ledger for a small business.

	And my most used program, SCREENWRITER II, a quite acceptable
	word processor which has produced most of my papers for MBA,
	all of my son's letters to graduate schools, maintains the
	mailing lists and produces the form letters for a subcommittee
	of NCTE, and handles all documentation which I want immediate
	output from at home.  (If I need, I carry a floppy to work
	and move UNIX files to the floppy, and vice versa.)

	I have not yet picked up a terminal emulation program, and
	use a vt100 to get to UNIX, and to better printers, and
	to do Bell Labs stuff. 

	Finally, I have DB Master, a fair dbm program, and the
	Howardsoft Tax Preparer, which was good until last years
	rework.  I would have tried to make a couple of bucks before
	the screwed it up, but they kludged it so badly that I wouldn't
	even try to use it commercially now.
	(I would be interested in hearing about others.....)

		Frank Webb
		The unruffled sage
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		<cbosg!fran>