Re: Slow GS video thanks to: Apple sucks

[mikew50@aol.com (MikeW50)]

Well, you folks can criticise Apple all you want for not doing a 10MHz
Apple IIGS, but the fact is that they couldn't.

It's true that Apple did not do all they could to support WDC. In my
opinion, it's true that they didn't do what they should have done. What
most people outside of Apple never heard, though, is that WDC was rather
difficult to deal with, too.

As for the availability of 10MHz chips from the start, it just wasn't so.
The decision to come out with the slower Apple IIGS initially was _not_ a
management decision, it was an engineering decision. The reason was that
the faster chips were _not_ available in the necessary quantities.
Actually, the early yields of 4MHz chips was rather low. While the 14MHz
design may have been the first major redisign, I know for a fact that a
number of changes were made to make the chips faster. I do _not_ know if
these were design changes or fabrication changes, but the issue was far
more than a simple lack of test equipment at WDC--the issue was that the
early chips simply couldn't run as fast as needed.

Apple has certainly made some mistakes. They have limited products for no
good reasons to avoid competing with another Apple product. But this was
not one of those cases.

Mike Westerfield