Re: A Tale of Two Apples

[shack@io.frii.com (Randy Shackelford)]

In article <22OCT199715215349@vax2.concordia.ca>,
Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:

>>I'm remembering more like five grand for Mac IIs.
>
>    I was recalling the price in Canadian dollars, which when converted
>to American would be near $10k (especially once you purchased a monitor
>and additional memory).

I think Mac IIs came with 2 mb, which was a respectable amount in '87. Tack
on $600 for a 13" monitor, say $300 for a video card, and $200 for a keyboard
and I can't imagine more than $6000.

>>Apple started bundling memory cards some time in '87, and the dealer where
>>I got my original IIgs in March '87 did so before that.
>
>    Are you certain about that? When I received my Apple IIgs in late
>January of 1988 (I placed the order around November 1987) I did not
>receive a memory card with mine. And digging out an old issue of A+
>here, the news blurb about GSes shipping with 512K was not printed
>until August 1988. Maybe things were different up here in Canada,
>but the magazine article seems to back up my experience that it was
>not until mid-1988 that GSes started to ship with 512K.

I would have to look at some old mags, but my memory is that it was in '87
some time. And my IIgs, which I got in March of that year, did have a memory
card thrown in gratis from the dealer.

>    Yep, I don't dispute the fact about high memory prices back then.
>However, that arguement totally falls to pieces when you consider that
>Apple was shipping the Macintosh Plus, Macintosh SE and Macintosh II
>with 1 MB of memory standard in the box. The GS price was already
>highly inflated and did not reflect the manufacturing costs or what
>was in the box (unless Ensoniq 5503 chips cost $400 back then).

But again, look at the prices. Pluses sold for $2600, SEs for >$3000, and
IIs for $5000ish. And if you want to talk memory prices in '88, I can give 
you some first hand numbers. 256K chips were $120/set and 1 mb were $400/set
that summer. If you can loccate the July or so '88 A+, the issue with
the goofy "dream machine" article, you'd see that they list a 6 mb AE
memory card as costing $3100 in some of the "dream" configs in the article.
I can remember getting all excited at the end of '89 when sets of 1 mb chips
dropped clear down to $100. Nowadays of course, you can get 48 mb for that 
amount.

>    For the cost of an Apple IIgs, it should have included a full 1 MB
>from the start. Furthermore, the Macintosh SE was shipping with 1 MB
>*and* a hardrive, does it make sense a machine with 1/4th the memory and
>_no_ hardrive should cost the same? (you can even argue that further as
>the GS lacked a SCSI port, stereo-out jack and had a less powerful CPU).
>Something was very wrong here. What was it that made the GS so much more
>expensive that memory had to be left out?

Apple introduced the Classic in '90, at roughly the same price as a IIgs
box. 1 mb, a 40 mb hard disk, no expansion slot. I think you're confusing 
that with the SE, which sold for a lot more than a IIgs in '87.

>>One time I mentioned to a service guy during one of the many logic board
>>swaps my IIgs had to have early on that I wanted a 1.5 mb memory card and
>>he said "not good for much unless you're heavy into RAM disk usage."
>
>    That service guy sounds about as sharp as the service guy who plugged
>my Apple 3.5 drive into the back of the GS while the power was on and
>fired my motherboard and drive. ;-) He would have been correct if your
>talking about using an Apple IIgs in 8-bit emulation mode, otherwise
>the additional memory wouldn't go to waste.

We're talking mid '87, when very little native software was out. What was out
was pretty mediocre, putting it kindly. If you ask me, one thing that killed
the market for IIgses was a lack of good native software. Can you name ten
good native apps released in the eighties? I can't. And good doesn't imply
memory hogging to my thinking.

>    At least it would have made SCSI hardrives standard on a IIgs, and
>would have encouraged software vendors to write applications and games
>that would take advantage of the extra storage and speed. Still, what
>about the Macintosh Plus? It had a slow SCSI port, but that changed
>when the SE model replaced it -- it is called evolution of hardware.
>If you had a slow SCSI port on your GS motherboard, you could upgrade
>by doing a motherboard swap to the next revision (or buy a new GS if
>you were so inclined and could afford it). The point is there would
>have been a Rev C built-in to early GSes, and probably a High-Speed
>built-in to later ones. Was the GS design set in stone or something?

Apple never offered such upgrades for Macs either. And SCSI throughput on
SEs is very little faster than that on a Plus, take it from me.

>    If you use that analogy, then the Corvette "features" Apple left out
>were things like tires and a gas-tank. When you buy a car, you want to be
>able to at least drive it out of the lot. I would expect the same from
>a computer, it should be usable *out of the box* and ready to run. The
>Apple IIgs was simple not (Apple kind of left it up on cinder blocks).

Ever use a 128K Mac? You could say the same about it. Refer to the bit
about hardware evolution a few lines up.

>    It was just rumour. As I recall, several companies claimed men
>dressed in business suits and carrying Apple business cards visited
>their companies and ask that they halt production of all Apple IIgs
>software. Maybe it was someone playing a hoax, maybe it was just a
>fabricated myth, but the same report came from a couple of totally
>unrelated companies (I may still even have the article here). This
>really wouldn't surprise me, it is something I would expect from
>Apple Computer based on the way they operate.

It seems far fetched to think Apple would sabotage a one time billion
dollar/year market before the end of its life cycle. As I mentioned,
68K Macs today are analogous to IIs at the beginning of this decade. They
are reaching the end of their life cycle and support for them is beginning
to dwindle.

>    Then why was the Macintosh enhanced by Apple engineerings and not
>left unchanged to give third party opportunity to 3rd party Macintosh
>developers? The thing is, if all Apple produced was the Apple II, there
>would be ways to rationalize the way they treated the machine. You could
>argue costs, motives for third party opporunities to encourage a market,
>a lack of engineerings with new and creative ideas, etc. However, when
>the same company was making another line of computers and treated it so
>differently, all these excuses fall completely face flat.

I think it stems from how much you could advance the platform while keeping
it compatible with IIs dating from the '70s. There is only so much you
can do and still use the same expansion cards, peripherals, etc. And for
those who say forget the compatibility, then there's another product line
with room to grow.

>>How do you figure? Apple's been offering logic board upgrades all along,
>>and new boxes have the processor on a swappable card so you can up the speed
>>with Apple or third party processor cards. Plus they have pledged that
>>Rhapsody will run on any box built from the 9500s on, and that box debuted
>>in summer '95. And Mac OS 8.0 runs on my six year old Quadra 700.
>
>    I don't like the way Apple is pushing for a proprietary market once
>again, squeezing the life out of all the clone companies and any form of
>competition. I do not like how Apple forces you to purchase THEIR own

Apple is still offering licenses to people who will abide by the rules.

>products by having the operating system actually _check_ firmware ID
>in CD-ROMs, hardrives and printers, or only writing drivers to support

People are always free to use third party software to support other devices.
Moot in the case of CDs since you basically can't buy a new box without one 
which is of course supported. Moreover, the latest Drive Setup recognizes
my 1 gig DEC and 2 gig Quantum, both of which are third party. When I see 
the fits which simple things like adding a modem or hard disk causes wintel 
using people, I'm really happy about the tightly integrated hardware/software
of MacOS boxes.

>their hardware. This is a practice they did 10 years ago, and apparently
>they are still doing it today. Just their business practices and support
>attitudes alone are enough to turn me off from Apple Computer. I don't
>even want to get into the Macintosh itself, which is so far behind the
>PC in software and hardware it is laughable at this point (something as
>basic as preemptive multitasking is not even available on the Mac, or
>two button mice). I already made my points a few months back, so I'll
>not go any further on that.

The developer release of Rhapsody is out as we speak.

>    Apple's business practice and computer technology will be the death
>of them not too long from now. I think it is rather sad too, since at
>one point the Macintosh was clearly superior to what PC's had to offer,
>even right up until 1994. There is no longer innovation in the company,
>just a driving force to make as much profit as possible without regard
>for much else anymore. You just cannot survive like that for long.
>I don't want to get too much into this though, since it is a very
>sensitive issue (that is, Apple Computer as a company and the Mac). 

I dunno, I think things such as personal web sharing are pretty innovative.

As far as being a "sensitive" issue, I don't see why. People who would
come to blows over computers are need of some help, or a life or something.
But if you're gonna discuss what happened ten years ago, you gotta get the
facts straight.
--
Randy Shackelford                                 
shack@frii.com