My years-old Apple II has started running very slowly.

[kentauros]

Like it ever ran fast :P

(No I don't actually own one, but have worked on one ;))

[HopeHoops]

1. At 1Mhz, it STARTED that way - although VisiCalc was faster on an Apple II than an IBM PC

IBM loved to claim that the PC was almost 5 times as fast (4.77Mhz as opposed to 1Mhz), but when you look at the clock cycles to achieve anything in machine code, the 6502 in an Apple II started at 2 (load immediate) and maxed at 14 (indexed indirect with a page boundary cross). The 8086 had one transfer instruction that was 14 cycles, most took 35 or more, and it topped out at 156 cycles for one instruction. It was really funny to put an Apple II next to an IBM PC and set up the same calculations in a VisiCalc spreadsheet.

[Deja Q]

3. Intel deliberately underpowered their PC;

fearing they would lose their mainframe monopoly.

Oops.

[HopeHoops]

4. Wow - I didn't think there were many alive who still knew that!

Yes, you are correct. At the time, Intel didn't see a market for PCs, but they did fear the impact they could have - a little schizophrenia perhaps. And it was well into the success of the multi-tasking Amiga and Atari ST that executives from IBM and Microsoft were still saying there was no purpose for multi-tasking on a desktop system. Of course, early on, and I'm sorry I forget who said this, one of the major players predicted a maximum of ten computers would be needed to meet the needs of the country.

[JCMach1]

2. The biggest drawback to the early Apples were the constant breakdowns...

I think that's why Jobs et al eventually got fixated on hardware and OS quality...

I remember working on these 1984/1985ish and there were breaking constantly compared to the TRS80's and the IBM's.