Re: Apple //f...

[ChemSleuth@earthlink.net (Dennis Doms)]

In article
<Pine.SGI.3.91r.990627075851.2485759A-100000@tcfreenet.org>, "Greg J.
Buchner" <buchner@tcfreenet.org> wrote:

>On 27 Jun 1999, Supertimer wrote:
>
>> Frank Carney <frankc@cyberhighway.net> wrote:
>> 
>> >If you are going to make an Apple IIgs computer clone/successor then you will
>> >have to use a fast CPU.  Nobody is going to buy a slow 7Mhz computer.  At
>> least
>> >use the fastest chip available for 65816s.  There is a 20Mhz version
>> available.
>> 
>> The article was written in 1990.  ;-)  That design would have made sense back
>> in 1989, actually, back when Apple tried to deny there were faster chips and
>> William Mensh jumped on to the podium at AppleFest to say otherwise and
>> got dragged off by Apple people.
>
>There may have been sample quantities of faster 65816's, but there wasn't 
>the large quantity available that Apple would have needed to go into
>production (not that they would have used them if there had been the
>numbers of chips available).  After all, look at a smaller company
>like Applied Engineering...they had problems getting 7MHz units for
>their first TransWarps.  
The question I would have liked to have seen raised... My recollection
is that when Apple was gearing up for the Macintosh, there were
reports in the trades of Apple placing *large* orders with Motorola
for 68000 processors, presumably to get volume production and the
accompanying drastic reductions in price. In a similar situation, they
did not place a large order with Bill Mensch for the 65816. I also
recall Bill Mensch saying that, without that volume commitment, he
could not justify prioritizing the 65816 of the meat of his business
(which was still the 6502 series and associated products). I hope I am
remembering these items correctly, I apologize for not having
references at hand (my magazine collection suffered the fate of a need
for space years ago :).

I acknowledge that Motorola is a lot larger company than Western
Design Center, so there was more certainty in Motorola being able to
throw money at any R&D problems for scaling up production of the
68000. However, Mensch also frequently pointed out that his company
focused a lot on licensing designs to other companies for production.
The question then becomes: Apple seemed to be willing to throw a lot
of (Apple ][, remember!!!) money into making the Mac a success; did
they do all they could in a similar vein for the IIgs?

(Also from my recollection, the Mac was not paying its own way as late
as 1988, so it was taking money from the Apple II line to finance
work. This may be hard to verify since I don't believe Apple reported
respective revenue from the two product lines. Draw your own
inferences from that. Also, one of the high-ticket items Apple sold at
the time was the LaserWriter, and if a choice was made I'd bet that
was tallied as a Macintosh product.)

When you consider that the computer that bootstrapped Apple Computer
was based on the 6502 (from MOS Technology, a small company) versus
the competition's 8080 (from, even then,  industry giant Intel), you
wonder when the philosophy had changed. And whether it reflected
maturity or narrowing of vision for the company.

>And I never heard of Mensch getting dragged off the stage...what I
>heard was that he was just ignored by the Apple people...like he didn't
>even exist.

I concur on this.The instance I think I recall (I was there, it's just
hazy in my mind) is  Mensch trying to bring his questions to a
microphone at an AppleFest where John Sculley(?)  was speaking and
that they "ran out of time" about the time he got to it (Bill Mensch
is a *very* interesting person to talk to, but he also frequently
speaks *at length*, so time could have run out before he did :). But
the microphone was on the floor in an aisle, away from the stage.

However, the above point I mention was raised in several contexts, and
I don't know I ever saw a satisfactory answer (as to why Apple didn't
commit more fully to Western Design Center for the sake of a better
IIgs product). Of course, I may not like the real answer even if I saw
it. (I do try to be fair and acurate in my perspectives. :)

>Greg B.
>
>+---------------------------------------------+
>| buchner@tcfreenet.org -or- gjb@wavetech.net |
>+---------------------------------------------+
 --
Dennis Doms  ChemSleuth@earthlink.net  http://home.earthlink.net/~chemsleuth
"If Bill Clinton, Kenneth Starr, Linda Tripp, and Monica Lewinsky all worked
              on car lots, I would buy my car from Monica."
            -- Brian Clarke, "Letters", _Time_, April 5, 1999