Re: So, what do you think? real IIgs or emulated IIgs?

[Pim Blokland <appletalk@at.at>]

Here's my two cents:
Some people argue that an emulator is not the same. Simply because it 
runs on another platform. And well, that is largely true for Windows. 
Can't speak for Unix and other platforms, but I've tried XGS on a 
Windows machine, and it simply doesn't FEEL right.
However, on a Mac, things are different. You have the same keyboard 
(with the Option and Apple keys and so on), the same one-button mouse 
and you can use 800K ProDOS floppies with no problem whatsoever.
And, you know, a Mac is an Apple.

But enough of the silly sentimentalism. Then there's the real advantage: 
the speed. You mention 15 MHz, but on the latest Macs an emulated GS 
does much better than that. Plus you can use a portable computer and 
have a portable GS. For me personally, this was the main reason I bought 
a Mac portable. Honestly.
There are also disadvantages: it's impossible for an emulator to run at 
exactly 1.23 MHz, to execute every machine language instruction in 
precisely same the amount of time it takes on a real Apple. So old sound 
routines (which rely on cycle timing) aren't very accurate. And I've 
never seen emulators which can display all of the Apple IIgs' video 
modes properly. And a Mac cannot be made to display 200 scan lines, or 
even 400. And you cannot hook up most of the Apple II hardware to a Mac.
So it's always a trade off. The GS can do things an emulated GS cannot 
do and vice versa. For me, the scales are definitely tipped in the 
direction of the emulator, but I can understand people who find the 
disadvantages greater than the advantages.

Other issues are of less importance to me, like the discussion if it's a 
good idea to have an emulator have more features than the real thing. To 
people who are afraid that there will be programs that can run only on 
emulators I say: but those kind of things have always happened. When the 
//e came out, with its new features, soon afterwards there appeared 
programs that could run only on the //e. Ditto for the //c, with its 
built in serial ports and other stuff, and for the GS, with its new 
standard for memory expansion and so on. So now there's Bernie, an 
emulator with 13.9375 MB of RAM instead of 8 MB. So what? Don't be 
afraid to view GS emulators as the next generation!

-- 
Groetjes, Pim

Same excuse every time