Re: Apple IIx

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net> wrote:

>Supertimer wrote:
>>  
>> At the time, the IIGS design team had made a mess
>> of his IIx project.  They wanted a "pure" GS side
>> motherboard with a IIe emulation card in a special
>> processor slot.  The slot could also be used to hold
>> an MS-DOS processor card or even a Mac processor
>> card.
>> 
>> Wozniak would have none of this.
>
>     Too bad. The IIgs design team was right.

Maybe for you.  Maybe for even for me (I liked the Amiga).
But it would have been unacceptable for the majority of
Apple II users.  They had too much invested in cards.  It
is important to remember that in 1984/85 when the IIGS
was being designed, the Apple II line was still hot.  Apple
still owned a sizable share of the market and could still
claim the world's largest software library (a claim which
the PC overtook about a year later).

You could build a super-new unit, a "clean" GS, but
who would buy it?  The Amiga was going off to a slow
start, remember?  And Apple was already split two ways.
With a hot selling Apple II line chanting Apple II forever.
And with the much smaller, but significant Macintosh
crowd.  It would be a poor business decision to embark
on yet a third incompatible platform, no matter how cool
the graphics and sound.

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.

The PC, with its emphasis on backward compatibility,
simply had too firm a grip.  The user base was locked
into the platform because of their data, hardware, and
software.  New PCs always provided transitions.  THIS
fact was what Woz knew.

>> He wanted the IIGS
>> to be a real Apple II so that the II users would trust it.
>> Thus, it was Woz who proposed the "slow" 128k RAM
>> roped off for IIe compatibility controlled by a custom
>> chip, the Fast Processor Interface (FPI) which sat
>> between the 65C816 and the Mega II IC.  Basically, he
>> had the 8-bit emulation stiched so tightly into the IIGS
>> motherboard that it was invisible.
>
>     And, it is ... _unless_ you want to do a major hardware upgrade. The
>FPI + Mega stuff wraps itself all over the system making major mods very
>difficult and expensive.
>
>     Another bad decision was sticking with the old Slots. A pure GS could
>have had Slots with complete addressing and some useful interface signals
>which would have made graphics expansion via a Slot card  feasible.

The IIGS was a unit meant to last no more than a few years.
Woz's goal was user migration.  Keep the Apple II user
base.  They were firmly 8-bit users at the time.  The IIGS
would have slowly made them 16-bit users.  After a few years,
Woz planned to come out with the "pure" GS you want,
faster and more powerful with 8-bit side relegated to software
emulation.  It was a good plan and it would have worked had
Apple not already been committed to the Mac.

Another thing is that the IIGS should have been released
two years sooner as the Mac.  THAT would have been great.
You could then have the "pure" GS you want by 1987 since
the user base would have migrated to the new platform on
this "Mac IIGS" unit.

>> 
>> Woz figured that the IIGS would provide a bridge out
>> of the 8-bit world by straddling the 8-bit and 16-bit
>> worlds.  After several years, he figured, new IIGS models
>> could then be purely 16-bit clean and eventually 32-bit
>> with the 8-bit side relegated purely to software based
>> emulation.  This would give the user base a five year
>> transition window to move out of the past and into the
>> future.
>
>     All of which would be easier to swallow _if_ the GS had been the best
>computer. Lacking a hard disk pretty well killed any chances for making
>such a claim. Failing to offer 256-colors in 320 mode and 16 in 640 mode
>was another screw-up.

The Amiga 1000 and Atari 520ST, which were the ones the
IIGS was being built to compete against (the "behind the
scenes at the IIGS design team" article in the IIGS intro
issue of A+ repeatedly quotes IIGS design team members
comparing Amiga 1000 and Atari 520ST features), did not
offer 256 colors in 320, etc., either without tricks (like
HAM, which, like 3200 color mode, is incapable of being
animated).  Both Amiga 1000 and Atari 520ST lacked hard
drives.  The IIGS had better sound than either (although the
others had advantages of their own).

>     What Apple needed to do in 1986 was murder the competition. Instead,
>they offered a product with an appeal limited chiefly to II users.
>Basically, Apple 'never showed up' when it came to taking on the PC with
>an Apple II.

Well of course.  Apple, under Steve Jobs, was positioning the
Macintosh against the PC.  They never intended to position
the IIGS against the PC.  It was meant to keep Apple II users
from going to Commodore or Atari and that it did.

Woz had a different idea.  He wanted the IIGS to help keep
the II users in the Apple family and move them forward with
future, more powerful and "pure" IIGSes.  I think he would
have welcomed the addition of a hard drive to this end, but
alas, it was Jobs and his people who were nearer the top
of Apple than Woz.

In the end, I think Apple would have been best to use both
what you are proposing and what Woz is proposing.  I would
have kept the IIGS as Wozniak intended, with emulation
stiched to the motherboard. This would have kept the highest
Apple II compatibility.  To that, I would have added a hard
drive and more video memory.  Position this IIGS against
the PC and you would have the ability to 1) hold the large
Apple II user base (something that a totally clean initial
IIGS design would not have been able to do) and 2) win the
feature competition against the PC, Amiga 1000, and Atari
520ST hands down.

Now you have your stable and growing IIGS user base, who
would slowly be moving away from 8-bit stuff to 16-bit stuff.
When the "pure" 16-bit or 32-bit IIGS units that Woz
envisioned the first IIGS model to be a bridge to arrived, the
user base would be ready.

The only problem was the hard drive option.  Hard drives
were very expensive in 1986.  Adding one to the IIGS would
have meant increasing its price by $1000.  Sure, that would
have made it more competitve with the PC (and priced the
same), but then the Amiga 1000 system would have cost
$1000 LESS than a similarly equipped IIGS system.  It is
important to remember that even the Macs of the IIGS day
didn't have standard hard drives (when the Mac II came out,
it was THOUSANDS of dollars more expensive).

>     Had the cost of implementing the MEGA2 and Fast Processor Interface
>been invested in new Slots, better graphics, more RAM, and a reasonably
>priced hard disk, II users would still have snapped up the GS. What
>matters more, everyone else would have, too.

That wouldn't have happened.  Again, it was the Macintosh
factor.

It was not only cost that prevented those other features from
being implemented, but the "do not compete against Mac"
mentality.

Put it this way, whether or not the IIGS was designed "pure"
GS side like the design team originally wanted or "Apple IIGS"
with an 8-bit emulation stiched tightly into the 16-bit GS core
was irrelevant.  The features you propose like a hard drive
would never have been tolerated by Apple's executive committee.
Jobs' people were there and there was no way in hell they would
let anything compete against the Mac in its intended market.

The only reason the IIGS came out at all was because Apple
did not view the early multimedia market as worthy of the Mac.
After all, IBM wasn't pursuing it.  Only Commodore and Atari
were at that time and using the IIGS to swat these minor
annoyances seemed right.  Since neither Commodore or Atari
were offering the type of graphics and hard disks you want,
there would be no danger of the IIGS upstaging the Mac.

In the end, it was Apple's split focus that doomed it.  The Mac
should have been the IIGS.  Had the IIGS came two years
earlier and been the Mac, such a unit would have carried the
exisiting user base forward because the Apple II *WAS* one
of the two big standards at the time (the other being IBM).
After a few years of compatibility using a IIGS like hybrid
platform, Apple could have then phased out the 8-bit side or
put it into emulation, providing a gradual transition for the users
and thus bringing them along into the future.  The "clean"
IIGS or Mac models should have come after a few years.
(And a decade later, Apple did in fact use a gradual transition
to move Mac users to the newer PowerMac platform...learned
its lesson a little too late.)

But Jobs was determined to make the company his legacy
and sideline Woz, so any Mac was not going to have II
compatibility in 1984.

>> Similar to how in the past five years, the PC
>> world has used motherboards with both ISA and PCI
>> slots.  ISA is the old standard and PCI was the goal,
>> but by giving users a 5 year window to move to the
>> new standard, everyone is happy.  When PCI pure
>> motherboards come, few users would mind.
>>
>
>     This sort of thing works fine when you are the standard platform and
>everything is cheap. Had the original GS been designed as a pure, hot
>machine, it could have become the standard platform by 1988.

In the time frame the IIGS came out, there was not yet a
standard platform.  There were several standard platforms.
The IIGS should have been released two years earlier in
1984 as the Mac.  With 8-bit compatibility, it would have
kept the Apple II user base.  With a GUI and great sound
and graphics (especially for 1984, before the Amiga and
Atari ST competition came) it would have moved the user
base into the future.  By 1987, the "pure" GS you want
could then have been released because by that time, the
existing, still integrated fanatical Apple II (or rather
"Mac IIGS") user base would not have shattered and instead
have been transitioned to the GUI and GS side features.

The "pure" GS would have been freed to concentrate on
advanced "PC killing" multimedia features and this time,
being "pure" would not have hurt the user base because
the users would have already transitioned.

Basically, super new features are great.  Moving to a new
mindset (like the Macintosh) was also great.  The GUI
was great.  New graphics and sound were great.  But Apple's
most precious commodity was the user base.  A huge
group of Apple II owners that still provided a sizable
challenge to IBM and clones in the 1984-1986 time frame.
That user base was not yet lost.  You HAD to provide a
transition platform like the IIGS or a Mac like it with
integrated emulation.  Doing it in 1984 in place of the Mac
we got would have been even better.

THEN, after a few years, you can come out with your
"pure" new architecture unit.  Keep your user base and
move forward.  That's good business.

>> Woz's stategy was in stark contrast to the Macintosh,
>> which cut off compatibility from day one.  That was
>> Steve Jobs' idea.  He favored innovation, true, but at the
>> expense of the users.  Woz wanted innovation but the
>> preservation of the user base too.
>
>     Which just means neither one of Apple's leaders knew what was going
>on. You can win quickie profits by targeting small markets. You can win
>pats on the shoulder for sticking up for compatibility no matter what.
>
>     Or, you can build the best computer for the money and win the whole
>ball of wax.

Ok, Rubywand, aside from the fact that (as I said earlier) the
hard drive equipped IBM XT was $1000 more than a IIGS
or Amiga 1000 system, neither of which had hard drives, let's
say I buy your argument.

What you seemed to be saying is that giving a bridge to
your existing user base was not important.  If that is the
case, I do not understand why you just don't buy a Mac.

That was Jobs' argument all along.  Build a kick butt unit,
the existing user base be damned.  Build it and they will
drop all their existing investment and come.  That was the
Macintosh.  I suppose you are going to tell me the Mac
did not have a hard drive either, but again, that was the cost
factor.  Apple, unlike us idealists, has to think of the profit
line.  The Lisa was way to expensive.  The early Mac was
thus a scaled down idea.

But what about graphics, you say, and the hard drive?  Why
didn't you get a Mac II when it came out.  The Mac II had
hot graphics and a hard drive?  Too expensive?  That's my
point.

What about sound, you say?  Why didn't you get a Mac
when the AV Macs came out, then?  It had sound that
rivaled the PC sound cards of its day.

And above all, why do you not get a PowerMac G3 today?
Mhz per Mhz, the PowerMac G3 outpeforms the Intel
competition.  If compatibility does not matter, why not get
the G3?  You want Apple to build a kick butt computer,
compatibility be damned, the G3 is it.  And if you change
your mind and find that you DO value your PC data and
software, well the G3 under SoftWindows 98 or Virtual PC
can run your PC software as fast as good speed Pentiums.
Maybe even as fast as your own unit, depending on the
speed.  I've played with a Windows 95 combat flight
simulator on a Mac and it is amazing.  Downing an F16
or two feels exactly the same under the Mac emulating
a Pentium as under the real thing.

Like I said before, Jobs and Woz both knew the future
would be powerful.  Either of their plans would have led
us to a PowerMac/PowerIIGS type computer with
similar features.  It is just that Woz saw the importance
of taking the Apple II users with the company as it moved
forward.

Jobs: Apple II -> Apple IIGS -> kill user base
      (no bridge) Macintosh ->....->Perfroma...->Quadra...->
      PowerMac

Wozniak: Apple II -> Apple IIGS (has 8-bit compatibility)->
         "Pure" 16-bit unit (relegates 8-bit stuff to emulation)->
         32-bit unit with 16-bit compatibility ->
         Pure 32-bit unit->PowerMac like "PowerIIGS" via
         CPU jump to RISC processor.

If compatibility were not an issue, Jobs' way sounds like
what you want, so why don't you have a Mac?

It is safe to say that if we followed Woz way, the PowerIIGS
would be not much different from a PowerMac, after all.
It is just that Woz method helps users transition from 8-bit
stuff to 16-bit stuff, to 32-bit stuff.  Either way, the original
8-bit design would have been left in the dust a long time
ago.

The only difference is that Woz method keeps the Apple II
user base in the family and happy.  Proof: Woz method
was used in the Mac to PowerMac transition.  Mac users
are happy.