I grew up with Apple at school, Atari at home.

The Atari machines were well conceived in some ways mentioned in the article. SIO peripheral connections came with device independent I/O support in ROM, for example.

Another was the controller ports! Paddles, joysticks, trac-balls, and more were useful for games, and other things! The joystick ports delivered 16 bits of bidirectional I/O that I found useful.

And there is FujiNET! Until that device showed up, my Atari gathered dust.

I have never quit using my Apple 2e though.

It is the better 8 bit workstation and the ability to add expansion cards, PC style is what really made the difference! Doing that is not cheap, but it is powerful.

The one item I crave is 80 column text, and the Apple does that well, and does reasonable color graphics well, no sprites aside.

Back in the day, that text got me on the Internet, was good for office type work, writing papers, programming.

Interestingly, I can get a FujiNET for my Apple, meaning both machines can participate in games and applications online!