I believe the Apple II floppy drive was "dumb", that is, controlled by the 6502 of the Apple II, so the machine couldn't do anything/much while loading/saving data. But the C64 + floppy drive was essentially a two-node distributed system.

But it's a computer in the same way as a bare-bones microcontroller with an ARM core is, say, the one in your car keyfob. Sure the CPU is capable but paired with just enough ROM and RAM to do the job it needs to do. And in the 1541's case that was only 2KB of RAM.

So what’s remarkable isn’t that a 1541 can run BASIC or process data internally, but that constraints and packaging decisions (cost-cut bit-banging, slow serial link) shaped a design that was, in practice, more distributed than a lot of modern “smart peripherals.” That’s both a lesson and a reminder: simple external interfaces often mask surprisingly rich internal behavior.

Also, find it very difficult to find this newsworthy - sorta like being amazed that modern PCs can run MS-DOS.