Not hype like the iPod or iPhone. Computers hadn't become a household item yet. The internet didn't exist yet, software companies were barely a thing, and for the price there just wasn't really a justifiable use at home yet. It was an expensive video game console and word processor. Neat sure, but it wasn't flying off the shelves. Rich person toy. Early and mid 90s is when home computers really took off.
Not only had computers not become a household item, but for those who were interested enough to buy a home computer, there were many different brands and models to choose from, most at a fraction of the price of the Apple. The computers I actually saw in the 80s were Timex, Toshiba, Sinclair, Commodore, Tandy, BBC, Amstrad, Archimedes. These were pretty much all separate ecosystems, with different models from the same manufacturer frequently being incompatible with their stable mates. Considering how capable machines like the Amiga and Archimedes were at a fraction of the cost of the Apple, and considering the fact that Apple was just another expensive ecosystem, you had to be particularly loaded to buy into it. Was there a must-have piece of software that only existed for the Mac back then? Computer graphics was arguably better on the Amiga, and even desktop publishing wasn't a done deal.
I know of only one person who had a Mac, and it was loaned to him by the company he worked for (as a software developer). No idea why they chose Apple.
The first "PC" I ever saw in real life was a Wang (unknown model) some time in the very late 80s. that was purchased for our school tech drawing class. It ran DOS and AutoCAD (unknown version) and also had Prince of Persia.
Founder Dr. An Wang set up the company to have tight control of the stock via his family. He elevated his son, Fred, to president.
While Dr. An Wang (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Wang) was a genius and pioneer in computing, his son was not up to the task of running the company and the coming PC revolution caught him flat footed. The company never really recovered.
The succint answer would be they were choked out of existence in the office market by IBM.
They had an early lead and captured word processing, IBM had big iron and expanded down to personal computers suitable for office word processing and had the big government | military | banking contracts to force through sweeter deals on the desktop range as a "one shop" solution for everything computing related.
They kinda did, they sold some minicomputer stuff and also standalone wordprocessors even in the Netherlands. I played games on the one at my dad's work. They just didn't pivot to the PC age as others have mentioned.
Lots of people had computers in the 1980s. Not just "rich people". There were even dozens of magazines about computers that you could find in any bookstore or newsstand. There were stores in every city where you could buy software for computers in the 1980s. You generally didn't have access to the Internet (which certainly did exist even if the Web didn't) unless you were at a university, but other online venues existed in the 1980s such as dial-up bulletin board systems. I got my first modem in 1983.
The Mac, yes. But my father was a construction worker earning a below median wage (definitely not middle class) in 1988 when we bought our Atari 1040 ST. This was in the Netherlands, Europe.
(Although admittedly we were rich by world standards.)
