I got to spend a little time talking with Tramiel and I first asked him what was different about people who bought C64s and those who ponied up for the Apple IIe.

"The only difference was the price," Tramiel said. "Because it seems that in this country, if you sell something cheaper, it couldn't be as good. If it's more expensive, and it's the same product, that must be a better product. That didn't stop me. I still wanted to sell it for a low price. If a person pays three times as much for a computer, he has to be proud of it, because he paid for it."

Fair enough. But does he agree that there was a culture war, maybe even one akin to today's Mac/Windows split?

Not really, Tramiel suggested. In fact, how could there be a culture war when one platform has 95 percent of the users, he asked. Never mind that Mac users are probably infinitely more passionate about their machines than Windows users.

So, since Tramiel didn't buy my premise, I decided to give Wozniak a try.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was on hand at the Computer History Museum to help celebrate the Commodore 64's 25th anniversary.

Woz didn't seem to buy it either. In fact, his position was that, secretly, most C64 users really fancied themselves Apple IIe users.

"I talked to young people," Woz said, "and a lot of Commodore 64 users (told me they) would have gotten an Apple II if they could afford it."

He added that users felt they could learn more from the Apple's open system, while the C64's closed architecture offered only a cheaper price.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that these two didn't acknowledge the culture war the way I did. After all, they were unabashed partisans. But if you read between the lines of their comments, you can see that I'm right. Tramiel bashed the price of the Apple; Wozniak said everybody really wanted an Apple.

sdyates wrote:
Too bad Jack left the company -- he might not have steered the Amiga in the right direction, but he was a good business man -- at least Commodore had direction under him.

sdyates wrote:
Too bad Jack left the company -- he might not have steered the Amiga in the right direction, but he was a good business man -- at least Commodore had direction under him.