The Mac 128K. The original Macintosh. The "thin Mac." Despite its legendary status as the first Macintosh in January 1984, it is the most maligned model. Despite its collectible nature, it is derided as a useless toy, a computer which cannot run any applications.
But is this modern-day appraisal truly warranted? After all, the contemporaneous Apple IIe shipped with just 64K RAM standard, upgradable to 128K. The Apple IIc with 128K followed the Macintosh in late spring 1984. But neither one is ever called a useless toy in the vintage Apple community. Moreover, an Apple II even with two 5.25" disk drives attached still has less online storage than a single 400K Sony disk in the Mac.
From an objective, technical standpoint, the Apple IIe is inferior in many ways compared with the Macintosh 128K, yet the former enjoys a wide community of hobbyists developing new software and hardware for it.
What?
...