Re: Wozniak vs Jobs

[shack@onyx.southwind.net (Randy Shackelford)]

Jeffrey T Berntsen (jeffb@world.std.com) wrote:

: >: According to an interview with Bill Mensch, even the 65816 at 4 MHz (which
: >: it was capable of at the time it was engineered into the GS) could
: >: outperform the original Mac, and 'Apple' purposely kept the clock speed
: >: down because of this.

: >Man I'm sick of propaganda like this. If you've been using IIgses since the
: >'80s, you know the story of how Jean-Louis Gassee was giving a speech saying
: >that WDC couldn't supply Apple with enough fast 65816s to build a faster IIgs.
: >Bill Mensch said otherwise, and the two nearly got into a fistfight over it.
: >The end result however is that 3 MHz is the fastest part you see in a IIgs.

: Well, sure, a lot of folks know about that, but that's not the point.  The
: point (and the real question) is this: Which one of them was telling the
: truth, and if Jean-Louis wasn't then _why_wasn't_he_?  "Propaganda" doesn't
: mean it's not true.....

It no longer matters who was right. The end result is that no IIgses have a
65816 with a rating higher than 3 MHz. And since Mensch hasn't delivered a
successor to the 65816, that makes me lean toward the Gassee side of the
story. (Now before anyone throws in some Scott G type "WDC needed Apple to
support their R&D" malarkey, keep in mind that 6500 chips are a lot more
things than Apple IIs. That's no excuse.)

The propaganda I'm sick of is this "Apple crippled the IIgs to keep it from
competing with Macs" crap. I swear, militant Apple II users must be the only
people around who can't grasp the concept of a product line with differing
price and performance levels. They sold Apple IIs on the low end of the price
and performance scale, and Macs higher up. Later they came out with low cost
Macs to cover the bottom end, and Apple IIs vanished. That's not so difficult
a concept if you ask me. I don't recall ever seeing a Classic II owner saying
"Apple left out color and crippled my '030 with a 16 bit bus so it won't
compete with the Quadra." Mac users get it.
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