Re: Problems in "Modernizing" a //gs

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

Mitchell Spector (spec@vax2.concordia.ca) wrote:

:     My personal opinion is they should have just let the Macintosh
: concept go completely. There was so much hype when Apple announced
: it would be introducing PowerPC based machines, I really felt that
: RISC technology was going to make everything else plain obsolite.
: Everyone was convinced this was the wave of the future and would
: mark the end of the Intel PC.

But wouldn't that be doing the same thing Scott G. keeps complaining about?
He says Apple ditched a profitable product line and came out with a new line
incompatible with the old one.

:     Well, almost 4 years have passed and the PowerMacintosh has had
: ample time to grow and start ending its infancy stage. I personally
: see it as a disappointment. What we got is the same old Macintosh
: but with more horsepower than the 68k original. The 68k emulation
: and the Macintosh design, toolbox and software drag the whole thing
: down to a crawl. As someone out there once said, the PowerMac has
: the PowerPC RISC processor acting as if it were hand-cuffed from
: behind the back. Yes, it is a very powerful processor, but it is
: going to waste emulating a Macintosh. All this power yet you can't
: even do true multitasking? The inferior "PC" does, so what is wrong
: with this picture?

Just like IIgses had to live with ProDOS 16 at first, it has taken some
time to get a real live OS going for the Pmacs. And the software emulation
for 68K apps has gotten a lot faster, in case you haven't seen a Pmac
past the first generation in action.

:     Why do you have the notion the Apple IIgs design, as-is from 1986,
: is the most the machine could have ever been? Do you actually believe
: Apple pushed the envelope on the technology as much they could when it
: was originally released? Is this the reason why the most Apple did to
: the IIgs in its 6 year run was to fatten its memory, add more ROM space
: and add a removable clock-battery?

They did do some good things in the system software over the years.

:     Please, I think a 5th grade student could come up with better ideas
: for improving the Apple IIgs than the engineering department at Apple
: Computer (mind you, I'm sure they had lots of ideas, just the heads at
: Apple would not allow them to act on them). It is completely ludicrous
: and short sighted to believe that the ROM 3 represented the _most_ the
: Apple IIgs could evolve!

With no successor to the 65816, I can't think of anything they could have
added which couldn't have been put on a card compatible with all IIgses.
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