Re: Apple IIx

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net> wrote:

>> no matter how cool
>> the graphics and sound.
>>[an incompatible machine that alienated the existing Apple II user base
>>would not have captured the market from the PC users who were already
>>invested in their platform...just look at the Amiga]
>
>     ??? Probably, you miss spoke yourself here.
>
>     The reason Amiga and ST did not sweep the home user market is that, for
the
>prices asked, they were really not especially good computers. This was true
for
>Mac, too. The moderately careful shopper could see "orphan" written all over
>these machines.

You have a point, but Commodore revised the Amiga so much that by
the time the Amiga 2000, a model much advanced of the Amiga 1000
which was the IIGS' contemporary, came out a few years later, it blew
the PC away.  The Amiga with peripherals like the Video Toaster was
so advanced of the PC, that the folks who did Babylon 5 generated
the CGI scenes on banks of Amiga 2000s rather than on Silicon
Graphics Indigo workstations, thus saving mega amounts of money.
I think they did this for the first few seasons before replacing the
Amigas.  But not even with the Amiga 2000 could Commodore compete
against the PC because it had no large existing user base and had to
build one from scratch.

>     Meanwhile, Apple, Inc. could count on selling just about any reasonably
>good looking Next Apple II to hundreds of thousands of current II users.
Getting
>bogged down in designing for old-II compatibility was an enormous mistake.

I submit, a non-compatible Apple II from the start, no matter how good
the graphics and sound, would have not been considered an Apple II
by the II users.  Otherwise, we'd have all jumped ship when the Amiga
came out.  Amiga 1000 not good enough?  What about the Amiga 2000?
I mean, generating your own Babylon 5 scenes has got to be good
enough.  Doing SGI stuff (granted, at a slower pace) has got to be good
enough.  If compatibility was not an issue, why not just consider the
Amiga 2000 our "super Apple II?"

Also, ask any Apple II user here on csa2 what they would have thought
of a non-compatible "Apple II."  The ones who responded in another
thread like Jeff Blakeney said that they bought the IIGS because it was
8-bit II compatible as well as providing new features.

>     We wanted Cool graphics and sound. We wanted there to be no question
about
>which was the best platform and we were ready and willing to pay. Apple could
>have introduced an 80xxx-based "Apple II" with zero old-II compatibility in
>1985. If it were The Best Computer with super graphics and sound and speed and
a
>hard disk, it would have been bitched about and, then, sold like hot cakes.

Ok, how about late 1988 and the Amiga 2000?  Can you explain why
the Amiga 2000 could not capture the market from the PCs?  It WAS
the best computer, hard disk, super AGA graphics with Video Toaster
option for generating Babylon 5 level stuff, very respectable sound,
great speed, expansion slots all over the place.  It was a great power
machine.  And it could multitask so well as to put Windows 3.1 to
shame.

Why did the Amiga 2000 not sell like hot cakes (I mean to the level
making it a PC killer)?
 
>> If you think that super graphics and features alone can
>> capture the market from the PC, look at what happened
>> to Commodore.  You have this fantastic Amiga that
>> started off as the Amiga 1000.  Still graphics similar
>> to the IIGS, but with a blitter, motion graphics superior.
>> Not as good sound as the IIGS' 32-channel Ensoniq
>> wavetable synthesizer, but very respectable.  The Amiga
>> was a "clean" design and Commodore moved forward.
>> After a few years, the Amiga 2000 showed up.  Amazing
>> unit with hard drive and super-new (AGA, I think they
>> called it) graphics.  The Amiga 2000 was better than
>> any of its PC competitors using the MPC standard.
>> What happened to the Amiga and Commodore?  It failed
>> to capture North America.
>
>     Too easy. What happened was, mainly, the price. A new platform has to be
>underpriced in order to convince potential buyers that there will be a
>significant user base and software support.
>
>     Commodore's C-64/128 user base was not used to paying premium prices. It
is
>why they were C-64/128 (and VIC-20) users instead of Apple II users.

Why didn't us Apple II users jump ship, then.  The Amiga 2000 can
just as easily be considered the "super Apple II" since being
compatible does not define "Apple IIness."

>     Amiga benefited from ample hype, even in Byte. But, it lacked
>expandability, carried a high price tag, suffered from comparisons with the
>cheaper ST, and did not have a user base of hungry buyers. From the start, it
>looked like orphan bait.

The Amiga 1000 was full of slots.  The Amiga 2000 even had two
different types of slots.