Re: Wozniak vs Jobs

[toddpw@ugcs.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel)]

supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) writes:

>Also, there was an ARM based 32-bit RISC powered Apple II.
>Between this computer and the prototype for the Macintosh,
>Apple chose the Macintosh.  Now the 32-bit ARM powered A2
>was actually MORE powerful, could easily have run the "Mac"
>GUI, and was backward compatible.  It was the logical choice,
>but Apple vetoed it because...Steve Jobs wanted to do something
>that Wozniak had no part of.  It was personal ego, not sane
>business sense.

Please give references. I have kept track of a lot of this stuff over the
years, but never heard of Apple seriously considering the ARM for anything
until the Newton came out.

You should also explain why, when the only significant design win for ARM
was the "British Mac" Archimedes academic workstation, and Motorola was
majorly pushing the 68K forward into both unix workstations and telecom
devices (especially the comm devices because that's where the volume was),
Apple would have seriously considered the ARM _just_ _because_ its first
parts had slightly better MIPS numbers than the 68k and was designed by
ex-6502 users (Acorn, the makers of the 6502 based BBC micro).

>ARM was originally a 6Mhz 32-bit RISC chip.  Today, chips of
>this family run hundreds of times faster.

ARM was not taken seriously anywhere outside of Britain for a decade.
ARM stalled at 25-33 Mhz for years, while every other desktop chip
soared past it. Unlike the others, ARM was not owned by a semiconductor
company with internal interests in using the CPU performance curve to
sell other product containing that CPU.

It was the superior energy efficiency of the ARM that selected it for
Newton, and the computational albatross of the Newton's handwriting
recognition that drove clock-speed increases via StrongARM. For years
I told people who asked why no one was using ARM, "There's nothing
wrong with ARM that a decent fab process and ten times the clock speed
wouldn't fix" -- and StrongARM confirmed my prediction. Now with the
Compaq purchase of DEC throwing StrongARM's future up in the air, the
main hope for ARM is something called I2O -- Intel originally invented
this to sell more i960's, but many other companies involved would rather
use StrongARM because it kicks i960's butt all over the place. I2O is
essentially a general-purpose I/O coprocessor standard. You will see it
showing up in high-end "server" PC's later this year. (My current employer
makes part of the I2O software kit, and I have an ARM board on my desk.)

>Apple had the opportunity to make a 68k->PPC like transition
>if it had chosen the 32-bit ARM based RISC Apple II instead of
>the incompatible Mac.  It could have done this earlier and saved
>its user base....

Ah, but would it have been fast enough? ARM was 6 Mhz for many years,
and no one took the software emulation idea seriously until the RISC
chip clock speeds shot up and it seemed reasonable for the first time.

Find me one person at Apple (or outside, for that matter) who really
understood how to make this scenario work during that time, and said
so. And give references! I don't think you will be able to -- and
that's why it didn't happen! The simple existence of a prototype does
not prove that it was viable as product -- there may have been other
problems with it that no one outside of Apple ever heard about.

>The Apple II users NEVER had a period of transition.  See the
>problem?  Basically, if the original Mac could run A2 software
>and use A2 hardware, Apple would be a lot better.  The ARM
>based A2 prototype says that this WAS possible, but Steve
>Jobs wanted no part of it...

Now this is the crown glory of 20/20 hindsight paragraphs. I do not
think it is fair to blame Jobs for something that very few (if any)
people in Apple or the WHOLE INDUSTRY really understood until much
later. Certainly the minute they made the mistake and the users suffered
it started to become obvious how much that mattered, but by then it was
too late to drop everything and retrench -- we're talking millions of
dollars, tons of product, thousands of employees and their offices and
other buildings...

I wish people would stop trying to find "proof" that Jobs is some evil
malevolent force preventing the Apple II from the proper glory that it
supposedly deserves because it was the first success. History is filled
with such upsets, and invariably they come about because of things
_nobody_ anywhere near the action understood. Making up sinister motives
after the fact may seem plausible, but THERE IS NO PROOF, ONLY INNUENDO
for these allegations. You will not find a "smoking gun" -- if you do,
by all means give the reference so I can check it out!!

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ ugcs.caltech.edu