Re: _Infinite Loop_ by Michael S. Malone

[ChemSleuth@earthlink.net (Dennis Doms)]

In article <374C5AA2.1B953DB0@swbell.net>, Rubywand
<rubywand@swbell.net> wrote:

>     A hard disk was fairly standard equipment on PC's at the time. In fact,
>this is where you see the beginnings of an interesting feature of peripheral
>pricing. It goes like this: Your hard disk costs $300-$350. Whatever the size
>available-- then it was 20MB; now it is closer to 20GB-- when you buy a PC, the
>"big hard disk" (but, not the biggest) is going to cost about $300-$350.
>
>     $350 is not exactly an "extreme" price, especially when some poor II buyer
>is blowing $400 to get a second 3.5" 800k floppy! And, that quite a few Mac,
>etc. users might not consider it standard equipment is beside the point. It
>takes just one major platform with standard hard disk to pose a problem. That
>platform was PC, the guys who ended up winning.

My recollection about pricing is different. I recall looking at an IBM
PS/2 Model 50 at about $3000 at the time with an educational discount.
That well exceeded the cost of a IIgs with a (third-party external)
hard disk at the time.

I'll see if I can find an old magazine with some prices to post some
actual references. (Incidentally, I don't consider a non-name clone to
be a fair comparison; they don't bear the marketing and development
expenses of a company like IBM or Apple. But a brand like Compaq or
AST would be reasonable.)

>     True; Apple never did supply a decent GS language. Apple users were,
>chiefly, BASIC programmers. A good GS BASIC should have been ready when the
>IIgs was released.

BASIC is not an appropriate language for GUI development. At least, it
wasn't in that decade; it even took Microsoft years to make Visual
BASIC usable (and they specialize in languages).

And this is about all most companies did at the time. PC companies
supplied Microsoft's BASIC with their systems, but it wasn't a "real"
language at the time, either. (Tell me some examples of significant
software written in GW-BASIC that couldn't be done in Applesoft.)

Apple should not have wasted time on BASIC.If there is a criticism, it
is that Apple should have put more effort into finishing the native OS
(GS/OS) and better development languages (the cross-development system
approach was a poor scheme).

>     Definitely, much of the problem was third-rate support. It's one reason
>Apple is Out of a big chunk of today's market-- many IIgs users from that time
>have resolved never again to purchase anything from Apple. When these people
>have anything to say about computer purchases, they automatically eliminate
>Mac.

I finished Malone's book last night. There's a strange sense of deja
vu as he describes Apple's decision to announce it was committing its
future support directions to the PowerMac platform shortly after its
introduction.

>     Except, there was never a IIgs-Plus. However much one may love old-II
>compatibility, the cost was a machine which, in 1989, could not be upgraded
>with Slot plug-ins to match the competition.

The same is true of PCs. I have had to buy several
motherboard/processor/video upgrades (the video, and occasionally the
disk subsystem,  needs to be upgraded to avoid throughput bottlenecks
that limit  the processor upgrades) over the years. The issue isn't
what capability Apple built into the original IIgs, it's the lack of
committment to the platform (agressive pricing, packaging, and
continued upgrades) that killed it. And the developer support for
marketing was abyssmal.

The IIgs could have competed if Apple would have not restricted its
market to education alone (and then K-12, and finally K-6 or -8) and
had marketed versions appropriate to the times (with more memory and
better peripherals). A ROM 3 IIgs with a decent hard drive (not
Apple's $1200-$1500 undersized  external) would have been competitive
until VGA got cheap, and held enough market for the new model. But
Apple had set the direction shortly after it released the original
IIgs by methodically killing its market.

>     Apple knew about microprocessor loyalties and about the desirability of
>downward compatibility. They knew moving II users to a 68xxx-based Mac would
>meet with some resistance and that at least a promise of an old-II plug-in
>would be necessary.

I can't see this issue. If the LC with II card had been introduced and
the IIgs had never been, I think the environment would have been
entirely different. Even in retrospect, I would certainly feel better
about Apple today if that had been what they did.

The rest of the argument (maintaining high profit margins per unit)
was a fundamental error of Apple's. The last half of Malone's book
tends to focus on this, and I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but I
agree with the overall analysis that after IBM entered the market,
Apple should have realized market share was the battle. (And it doubly
should have seen this when a force the size of IBM tried to force the
MicroChannel architecture on the market *and failed*.)

 --
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