Re: _Infinite Loop_ by Michael S. Malone

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Mon, 24 May 1999 00:40:18 -0500, Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>
wrote:

>     Forcing built-in, integrated old-II compatibility was a fundamentally bad
>design decision. There was, simply, no need; and, the costs were enormous.
>
>     Just as the first PC was a from-the-Intel-manual design with Apple
>II-style Slots, a straight-forward native mode '816 design could have been
>finished within 2-3 months of any 'Go' decision. There _could_ have been a IIgs
>ready to battle the spiffy new Amiga's and Atari's in 1985.
>
>     A pure native mode GS would have included new Slots supporting full
>addressing. I/O would be out of the Zero Bank, "language card" kluges would be
>gone, RAM expansion would be easy, and everything would run at the base speed.
>For the same development and production cost, the GS could have started with
>built-in stereo sound plus 320 x 200 256-color and 640 x 400 16-color video.
>
>     Agreed, coming up with a hardware design which can also run most old-II
>software was quite an achievement. Even so, it was a bad idea. As TrackStar
>demonstrates, old-II capabilities would have been available within a couple
>years as a plug-in option.

Umm, Apple came out with the Mac which couldn't run Apple II 8 bit
software and how many of us II users jumped onto it hoping that there
would be some way to run our old software in a year or two?

If Apple had done as you said and come up with a third computer line
that was incapable of running any of the existing applications for
their other two computers it would have flopped even bigger than the
original Mac did.

The only reason the IIgs was as popular as it was was because it was
backwards compatible with the Apple II line.

I'm all for coming up with a new Apple II with modern speed and
features but I'll be damned if I ever build one that can't run the
current 8 bit and 16 bit software that already exists for the IIs.

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