August 3, 1977: The Tandy TRS-80 personal computer makes its debut. The first affordable, mass-market computer gives the Apple 1 some serious competition.
Although the TRS-80 arrived the year after the Apple 1 and a few months after the Apple II, it proved to be the first “Apple killer” on the market, predating later rivals like the IBM Personal Computer as Apple’s first big tech industry opponent. And, for the longest time, Tandy’s computer seemed to be on course to win.
Tandy TRS-80 launch brings first ‘Apple killer’ to market
The success of Tandy’s TRS-80 built on the promise of earlier personal computers, but benefitted from three main things: great distribution courtesy of the thousands of Tandy-owned Radio Shack stores around the United States; a relatively low price point of $599 (compared to $1,298 for an Apple II); and the fact that it was actually a pretty darn neat product.
Rather than simply eyeing the hobbyist market, Tandy targeted the TRS-80 at small businesses, the education market and regular consumers. Within days of its August 3 announcement at a press conference in New York City, the TRS-80 was already being hailed by the Associated Press as a home computer able to do “a payroll for up to 15 people in a small business, teach children mathematics, store your favorite recipes or keep track of an investment portfolio. It can also play cards.”
When it arrived for sale later in 1977, Tandy’s computer outsold the Apple II by a significant margin. It also beat Tandy’s own forecasts of 3,000 sales per year by selling more than 10,000 units in its first six weeks on sale. During the TRS-80’s lifetime, Tandy sold more than 200,000 of the machines.
Photo: TRS-80.org
Tandy TRS-80 finds immediate success
By 1981, when it was clear that personal computers were taking over, Time magazine described Apple as one of the new tech giants helping drive a $1 billion industry. But the first place on Time‘s list of tech giants went to Tandy:
“The Fort Worth-based Tandy Corp. has the broadest reach of any computer manufacturer through its 8,012 Radio Shack stores. The firm introduced its first small computer, the TRS–80, in 1977. A newer version of the TRS–80 (popular models now cost $999) has become the largest-selling computer of all time, and Tandy now commands 40% of the small-computer market. Tandy recently introduced the first pocket computer, which shows only one line of information and sells for $249.”
Licensing Mac OS to Tandy?
Interestingly, in a May 1982 private memo to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Apple marketing manager Mike Murray made what was probably the first proposal in Apple’s history to license the Mac’s operating system to Tandy for the TRS-80. (Bear in mind that the original Mac did not launch until two years later.)
“We would like the Macintosh user environment to become an industry standard,” Murray wrote. “The hitch, of course, is that now one must buy Mac hardware in order to get this user environment. Rarely (if ever) has one company been able to create and maintain an industry-wide standard that cannot be shared with other manufacturers.”
The argument was that Tandy drew a different type of customer than Apple did, and would therefore not cannibalize sales. Jobs declined the suggestion.
Although it’s often forgotten about today (Radio Shack filed for bankruptcy in 2015), the Tandy TRS-80 was an incredibly significant machine for its day. In 1977, it represented close to 70% of the total PC market, which is a stat that even the ubiquitous IBM PC couldn’t match until 1988. It remained the bestselling computer line until 1982.
What’s the earliest computer you remember owning? Leave your comments and recollections below.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
13 responses to “Today in Apple history: World’s first Apple killer goes on sale”
I actually had a TRS-80 model 1 with 16 kb of memory and a tape drive. I was 10 years old and my dad bought it new in 1979. I had a lot of fun with it, and went on to get a Commodore 64 in 1983.
Thanks for the comment. It’s great to hear readers’ recollections of these topics.
My earliest I remember tearing into as a kid was my neighbor’s TRS-80. Shortly after that, we bought a Commodore 64.
We had a TRS-80 Model III – My Dad was the type who never bought any first model anything. Years later when we got a Mac II Si, we never went back to Windows.
IIsi was a great machine. I once did a demo at my User Group where I disassembled my IIsi, upgraded the RAM and HD, and put it back together in 10 minutes with no tools! The whole thing snapped together! Loved that machine.
My dad brought home the TRS-80 Model III too. At first he borrowed a friends Model I which we used for a couple of weeks before he got the Model III. 16K RAM and a tape recorder(drive). We would eventually upgrade to 48K and two 5 1/4 floppy disk drives. Never got a hard drive. In about 82 or 83 we moved to Apple, getting an Apply //e, originally with 2 floppy’s. In 1989 I bought my own computer for the first time, a Mac SE 30. I loved that machine. I still have many fond memories of gaming (lots of text adventures, and my favorite game: can’t remember the name, but it was a graphic game where you drove a sled around collecting items and avoiding bad guys – most of the screen was hidden until you visited there – first real “graphic” game I played on the TRS-80). Thanks for article Luke and the journey down memory lane.
I started out in 1983 with an entire Commodore 64 system: 64K, monitor, floppy disk drive, dot matrix printer and plug-in cartridge modem. First internet experience was with CompuServe and a blue screen with white text. I was on top of the world. LOL
My first computer was a Timex Sinclair TS1000 (ZX-81), which I got for Christmas, 1982. It had built-in BASIC and 1K of RAM. 1K! Storage was provided by a cassette recorder. After about a year I got an Atari 800XL, which lasted thru high school and half of college. I still have both of them in a box in my garage.
My first computer was a TK-82C (Brazilian copycat of ZX-81), my dad bought it in 1982. It had only 2K of RAM, and cassete storage as yours. That was the only computer I knew until 1986 when we bought an Apple II copycat. By that time, Brazilian computer market protection policy, make it almost impossible to buy anything from abroad. Of course, that has left us behind for several years.
We had these at my grade school in the mid-eighties. They got Macintosh Color Classics my last year there and I was super jealous (never got the chance to use them). A few years later we got our first computer at home. A Performa 400.
My secondary school got four Model I TRS-80 machines (4k memory) and a Model III (16k) for ‘heavy computing’. I remember typing listings that were published in magazines and then tweaking with the data values in the last lines, just to see what happened. I was caught playing Santa Paravia on it (I was a gamer in 1982…) which cost me .25 of my math score that semester. Got a PET after that, then an Amiga 500 and Macs since then. Looking to buy a Model I again, just to play Santa Paravia again. Civilization sure made up for itin graphics, but the fun of cheating your way into royalty by changing part of the code was unbeatable.
TRS80 color computer was the first computer I learned to program on. After that I went to the Atari 800, for it’s superior sound and color graphics.
I didn’t start using Apple computers until I was in college and they had a bunch of Mac Se and later Mac IIci and IIfx.
People liked to call them the ‘Trash 80’, because it was hard to think of Radio Shack as selling anything but. However the Z80 architecture was the basis for most early personal computers. The Pet CPM, Timex/Zinclair etc.
If they had started with the 8086 arch that Microsoft went with, they might even still be a player.
My first computer was a TRS80 model I with 4K of memory. I used a cassette tape recorder for storage. In 1979 I upgraded the ram to 16k. The chip cost $100.