Re: A Tale of Two Apples

[bjblackbear@ibm.net (B.J. Major)]

> In article <17OCT199723141927@vax2.concordia.ca>,
> Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:
> 
> >    What killed the Apple IIgs was _Apple Computer_. Other than the fact
> >that the Macintosh SE had a higher vertical screen resolution and more
> >powerful 68000 processor (although not necessarily much faster in terms
> >of noticable speed) the SE was inferior to the Apple IIgs. As for the
> >Macintosh II, with a price tag near $10k, it was well out of any average
> >person's price range (making the IIgs a slow, poor-man's Macintosh II).
> 

For some reason, I never got this original message on my server, but I'm
replying from cut and paste of Randy's reply....is there a point to
going over this stuff over and over again?  I mean, I just don't see
what the point is.  Everyone knows what happened back then and everyone
has their own opinions on it or who was at fault, etc. etc.  This is
like constantly dredging up the past--it doesn't help things NOW.

> 
> >    It was absolutely disgusting that Apple was shipping the GS with just
> >256K of memory for the first 2 years the machine was out! Out of the box
> >the computer could not run any of the GS-specific software titles out
> >there, this was plain stupidity (it would be like selling a car without
> >a gas-tank and engine, later informing the customer they'd have to buy
> >that as an extra option when they discovered the car won't run!). It was
> >not until late 1989 that the GS shipped with a full 1 MB of memory out
> >of the box, pretty much towards the end of its life span (and by that
> >time most applications were demanding 2 MB or more).

You indeed are comparing yesteryear's memory requirements with memory
requirements of present day.  Back then when the GS debuted, 256 was
ample for running games that were available; I have games on floppy disk
for the gs that only require 256K.  And, it was more than ample for
running productivity programs such as Quicken and Appleworks.  Huge
megabytes of memory were not needed for MOST things back then.  And like
Randy stated, memory was VERY expensive back then--many, many times more
than what it is now.  You either had to be a well-off (money wise)
person back then to afford megabytes of memory, or save up a long time
to get it.  As I remember it, most software manufacturers back then took
into account the amount of memory a computer shipped with (NOT what was
added on later); so everything that was "store bought" like Epyx games,
Broderbund software, etc. always managed to run within the limits of
what the computer shipped with.  If this were not true, I would not have
been able to buy software for my 128K Apple IIc way into the late 1980s.

> 
> >    Another annoyance was the lack of a built-in SCSI port. The Macintosh
> >Plus had one from the beginning, the Macintosh SE even allowed you to add
> >a hardrive internally. In order to make a IIgs usable, as most here know,
> >that has always required a hardrive. Why did Apple not ever add that?

The Mac Plus was the first Mac to have built-in SCSI "from the
beginning".  The 128K Mac and the 512K Mac did not have built-in SCSI.
And a IIgs is VERY usable without a hard drive, especially if you are
Appletalked to a hard drive connected to a Mac, as my setup is.

(snips)

> >    Leaving these things purposely out made it clear Apple was not serious
> >about the Apple IIgs, and if you wanted a "serious" product you had to buy
> >their Macintosh. The Apple IIgs was just there if you wanted an Apple made
> >product (as opposed to Commodore/Atari solutions) for school, home or hobby.

You are totally forgetting what markets each computer was aimed at that
Apple produced.  The II line was ALWAYS the home and school computer--no
businesses/corporations I know were using them (except small family
businesses which were using them).  The II line was never marketed to
the business community at large, because the business community chose
IBM from the start only because of the association with IBM's mainframes
and other business machines such as typewriters, etc.  The Mac was
designed to compete with the IBM pc from the very beginning--the Apple
II was not.

-- 
--bj   Auto reply will not work; please reply to bjbear@ibm.net
Proud owner/user of Apple Computers since 1984
Barbie & Ken doll fan since 1961