On Tue, 14 Feb 2012, Michael J. Mahon wrote:
I don't recall the III using custom ICs, which of course did happen with the IIE. And the III wasn't really in the direction of the IIE. It had odd things like that external ROM decoder to add functions to the basic 6502.BLuRry <brendan.robert@gmail.com> wrote:He probably had to mash in the chips between film shoots to keep it running though. :-D I digress, without the /// there would be no //e.Really? I'm curious about that conclusion. It seems to me that the Apple ][+ had such legs that any business would have invested in a successor. Without the /// they would have invested sooner.
I can see the point if it was "without the Lisa, there'd have been no Macintosh" since the Lisa did take the company in a different direction and having worked things out on it, they were able to build a more cost effective "better computer" with the Mac.
But I don't see what great new development happened with the III that helped the II line along. It was a separate branch, the never went further. Unless the failure of the III meant Apple went back to extending the II line in a more logical fashion.
Michael