Re: Apple ///?

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article ps10600@cedarnet.org writes...

>In article <1APR199702301346@vax2.concordia.ca>,
>  spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector) wrote:
>> >>     As things turned out, the Apple III was a miserable failure and
>> >>so was the Apple Lisa. Despite that, the Apple II not only kept the
>> >>company afloat, but highly profitable too (which came as a surprise
>> >>to management at the Apple Computer). Oddly enough, Apple once again
>> >>decided to try and replace the Apple II, this time with the Macintosh,
>> >>but yet again their new computer didn't do to well and _again_ it was
>> >>the Apple II that kept the company afloat and profitable. By the late
>> >>80's the Mac was strong enough to stand on it's own though, so this
>> >>3rd replacement had worked out. Ironically though, now that Apple has
>> >>finally killed off the Apple II, it doesn't look like the company will
>> >>have any future. :)
>
>Yep..IBM killed off the PC Jr and Commodore killed off the Vic20..  Whats
>your point?

    The IBM PC Jr was a very poorly designed machine and commercially
unsuccessful, a major flop. The Commodore VIC20 was not a technical
wonder (5K RAM and 22 columns text?) and never had a huge following
behind it, which is why it was dropped. Neither company killed off
these machines, per say, they killed themselves being poor products.

    The Apple II was a *hugely* successful product, it was a billion
dollar industry, it was very popular and well liked, with millions
of loyal, devoted fans and users. In 1988 it accounted for well over
60% of the education market and was installed in a large number of
homes and small businesses. Apple ignored this, neglected and sat
on the product for years, eventually giving that huge following no
choice but to pick a new platform that was still being supported
and updated. Where do you think all these millions of people went?
Apple had shot itself in the foot, and although the damage may not
have been immediately noticeable, it is now becoming apparent. That
is my point.

>Getting back on top takes time considering the 5300 fiasco.. Apple should
>do well with PowerBook sales this current quarter and may well as save their
>ass considering their supply problems with their desktop line.

    So you believe the source of all Apple's current financial problems
root back to the 5300 PowerBooks, and had that product gone smoothly,
they'd be a strong company with a future today? That thinking is rather
shallow. Oh, and it's going to take more than selling lots of notebook
computers to bring Apple's head above water AND give them a future.

>>     I just read they laid off something like 4000-5000 workers a few weeks
>> back. Come to think of it, each time I see something about Apple mentioned
>> in the business section of the newspaper, it's more bad-news. I'm still
>> watching to see what happens, but I'm wouldn't buy stock in the company. ;)
>
>Apple needed to refocus on their bread and butter, The Mac divsion.  Apple
>was getting distracted by working on hundreds of projects that eventualy
>failed to bring to the bottom line.  Apple focused and reduced R&D to get
>their finances in order.

    Hundreds of projects, what projects? If the Mac division is going to
be Apple's bread and butter, then they will certainly disappear in the
near future. As I've repeated time and time again, there has not been
any solid advantage choosing a Macintosh over generic PC clones for many
years now. Just myths about greater ease of use and plug'n'play. Even if
you want to argue these things are true, those two benefits become
irrelevant if the machine falls behind and is lesser than PC's in all
other respects. Either totally revamp the Macintosh or come out with
a new product, they will not make it selling the PowerMac.

>Same thing will eventually will happen to Microsoft in the future.
>Microsoft is spreading outside of their OS and app business to
>content areas and other markets not related to their core business.
>This will be their undoing!

    Ah yes, I see it now. Apple Computer is on its way to becoming THE
computer company giant and Microsoft is headed towards bankruptcy. I'm
no more a fan of Microsoft than the next person, but this sounds quite
ridiculous. MS is in no danger of disappearing at the moment, Apple
Computer is.

>>     With all the PC can do (preemptive multitasking, real music synthesis,
>> complex games, more variety/expandability, etc.) which the Mac can't do or
>> offer at the moment, along with the fact PC clones are cheaper, custom
>> configurable and more available -- not to mention have a GUI more than
>> comparable to the Finder -- how does Apple expect to survive? The PowerMac
>> hasn't exactly made people stop dead in their tracks and jump back to
>> Apple, nor has System 7.5.6 made much of a splash in the computer world.
>> I may sound like I'm putting down the Mac, but there needs to be significant
>> _advantages_ to make people think twice before rushing out and buying a
>> generic PC clone. The argument about easy of use and plug'n'play doesn't
>> cut it anymore, PC's have or are quickly catching up in that area, so what's
>> left? I'm not much of a PC fan, but when it came time to choose between the
>> two, I found more pluses on the PC side.
>
>Have you talked to wintel 95 users lately.  Many are pissed that their DOS
>games do not work properly.  Plug and pray is alive and well in Redmond.

    My DOS games work just fine, thank you.

>As for your asertion that PC clones are cheaper is fallacy and shows that
>you have not been in the Mac picture for awhile. 180 mhz PowerMacs from
>Apple(6400/180), Motorola and APS can be had for $1199 which includes CD rom,
>adequate memory and HD size.  You can purchase OEM Motorola Mac OS 
>motherboards with processors starting in the $500 range.

    I have, separate hardware is always many times greater in cost on the
Macintosh side than PC. Apple Computer does not give any great bargains,
nor do any of these clone companies, few as there are. When you can count
the number of manufactures of Macintosh products on the fingers of one
hand, and the compare that to the number of PC manufactures (pretty much
uncountable), which side will you see price wars on and which side will
you see pricing monopolies?

    Ahh, "which includes CD-ROM, adequate memory and HD size". So then,
your stuck with Apple's Soup-Of-the-Day when you buy a Macintosh? I
prefer to pick how much memory I want, the type and size of hardrive,
or CD-ROM, etc. It's also interesting to note, a couple of years ago
Apple would void your warranty unless you brought your Macintosh to an
authorized Apple dealer to add more memory or a bigger hardrive. Is this
still the case?

>There are significant advantages for the Mac is their strength in
>multimedia, internet and digital video.  True plug n play.  Can't say
>the same for wintel.

    This is such bloody nonsense, I'm quite tired of hearing these silly
myths. Multimedia generally refers to the bringing together of music,
sound, animation and images. Let's examine that now, shall we?

    Music: the Macintosh only has a DAC for playing back digitized sound,
they have _NO_ music synthesis capabilities and _NO_ company sells add-on
sound boards for the Macintosh. The PC has a wide variety of sound cards,
wavetable is the standard. Tell me, have you ever listened to a MIDI file,
game or multimedia application through a Yamaha XG, AudioTrix Pro or the
Roland SCC-1? The listening experience is like nothing you've ever heard
before, yet on the Mac all you have are looped digitized recordings
or something mediocre like mixing digital sound to playback MOD files.

    Animation: Most Macintoshes, including PowerMacs, are too slow to do
any kind of complex animation. Many will point out that games and demos
(what mostly require intensive animation) are unimportant applications
with no serious value, and that if you want games, go buy a dedicated
game console. The point is, games and demo are what show off the machine's
true capabilities, and if they cannot handle that, then they are not very
well suited in general. Most Macs I've seen slow down doing the most simple
of animations.

    Let's talk about digital video. I've used a PowerMac 8100/80 with
32 MB of RAM, yet it could not handle playing back a video image full
screen. Meanwhile, my lowly 586-133 (about a P75 equivalent or less)
plays back full-screen video (not just a large window, the entire
screen without any obstructions) with high-quality stereo sound
perfectly. There are no slowdowns or choppiness, it is as smooth
as can be. I don't want to even get into what it is like playing
full-screen video on a 6100/60 or 68K Macintosh.

    The Internet? Gee, my PC let's me run several Internet applications
at the _same time_ and continues to run while I'm holding down the mouse
button. I'm able FTP several files at once, read newsgroups, have Netscape
or Explorer running and it works quite stably. I can even open other
applications or listen to music. Preemptive multitasking is a nice thing.
Explain to me how the Macintosh is better suited for the Internet? This
is utter nonsense.

    May I ask why you must refer to PC's as "Wintel"? I'm not stuck
running Windows 95, and for that matter, my PC uses an AMD chipset,
not Intel. ;) The Macintosh should get a similar fitting name,
considering there is only one OS you can run and it comes from Apple
Computer. The other amusing thing, I've owned Amiga computers built
around the same time as the Macintosh SE and even today, they run
circles around Macs in terms of "multimedia" and animation. PC's are
generally up to par with those 10 year old systems and beyond, and it
took long enough, but it's funny Macs are still far behind them today.

>> and I'm turned off by the low-quality hardware they're now being made up
>> of (at one time if you bought Apple hardware, you _knew_ it was quality,
>> but today they're cutting back and throwing any junk at the users in hopes
>> that they'll be computer "newbies" and not know any better). There is
>> a whole list of reasons why I don't see a future for Apple, and there
>> most likely won't be, unless things drastically change...
>
>And you think PC hardware is quality?

    Yes, I do actually. I'm planning to purchase a Trinitron display for
my PC at some point. I have a Quantum-brand hardrive, I can purchase a
high-quality mouse and keyboard, any brand of CD-ROM, my motherboard
is high-quality, etc. There are low-quality parts available for the
PC, but if you have enough sense, you avoid them. With the Macintosh
you have to take whatever Apple gives you, and today they're using the
same low-quality parts I tend to avoid when looking for PC hardware.

>Apple eliminated some of the bumps to upgrade to the Mac from the Apple II
>era.  Most of the peripherals such as printers and external drives worked
>on the Mac eliminating some cost.

    That is eliminating bumps? What on earth could you recycle from your
Apple IIgs to a Macintosh? Your 800K floppy drive? That would have only
made sense up until 1988, when the IIgs was about a year and a half old.

>The Apple IIGS and the II came to end of the life cycle.

    Utter nonsense. The IIGS had not reached the end of its life cycle,
especially when Apple never even let it grow out of its infancy stage.
It was a very powerful computer and full of potential. Please don't tell
me the GS as-is was the most the GS could have been. As I said, if Apple
couldn't figure out how to give it more color and resolution, speed and
storage, then the engineering department at Apple must be pretty dim.

>It was not feasible to continue the II line with miniscule improvements.

    Yup, so why settle for miniscule improvements? Why not add great
improvements? What is that I hear you say...? It wouldn't have made
sense because it would have cut into Macintosh sales and overlapped
onto the same market? Bingo.

>Apple wanted to get their Apple II k-12 customers on the Mac via the Mac LC
>to thwart any wintel penetration.  The Mac is the ultimate k12 computer than
>the II is today. Apple did provide a II card for the LC so schools could
>preserve their Apple II software library and investment.

    Apple wanted the education market to dump billions of dollars in
investments of hardware and software, and start fresh with the Mac.
The "Apple II card", as you put it, was just an Apple IIe card. Where
was the Apple IIGS card they developed and then decided not to release?
What were schools supposed to do with their investment in Apple IIgs
software? Furthermore, the Apple IIe Card was not available until 1991,
a case of too little, too late.

>Apple did support the Apple II technology as long as they could.  Do
>manufactures of 8086, 286 and 386 PC's still support those line?

    They never truly supported it, they let it drift as-is, milking it
for revenue to fund the Macintosh. They did not want to kill it entirely
because it was a _huge_ source of income, but they did not like it, so
they just left it as-is (figuring those customers would eventually just
jump to Macintoshes, so it wouldn't matter and they'd keep that revenue
base. Too bad for Apple that revenue base migrated elsewhere).

    Eh? Wake up, of course manufactures still support the 8086, 286, 386
and 486! It is called the Pentium, and it is backwards compatible with
the oldest pieces of software. I can run an 8088 application with CGA on
the latest PC. I can plug in old hardware cards because PC's still have
ISA slots with 8-bit compatibility, along side PCI slots. Apple could have
evolved the Apple II in the same way, it was not carved in stone that the
Apple II was to be forever as a 8 or 16-bit machine with 1 MHz bus.

>Made no sense for the consumers to invest in a GS system because of the
>end of the life cycle.  Apple knew it and that why they made sure that their
>peripherals were cross platformed compatible with the Mac.

    Jumping from an Apple IIgs to a Macintosh did not same money. What
exactly were you supposed to salvage, the 150 ns DRAMs from the GS's
memory card? The by then obsolite 800K drive (not only were Macs using
1.44 MB by 1989, but 1992-93 saw a removal of the external disk port).
You certainly could not use the AppleColor RGB display on a Macintosh
(minus that one rare exception with that NuBus card, but it was worthless
being interlaced and such a low dot-pitch). There was no point salvaging
the ADB keyboard or mouse, those came with the Macintosh. So what exactly
was the big advantage, I could bring over my clunky 9-pin serial dotmatrix
ImageWriter II?

>What ever...Apple's K-12 customers were telling Apple to make a line of
>low cost Mac line for them.  The bulk of the Apple II installed base were to
>the education/k12 market.  Apple has done well responding to their needs and
>still is today with their recent roll out of the PowerMac 5500 and 6500 line.

    Gee, I spoke to a number of teachers in different schools in different
geographic locations over the years, and most voiced they wanted improved
Apple II computers or further support of them. Face it, schools are not rich,
they do not want to spend tens of thousands on new computers every other
year or so, especially when the current ones do the job.

    Apple forced schools to change systems, and they did, but they went and
bought PC clones, not Macs. Go tell me what market share Apple has in the
education market now, or the overall market for that matter.

>Apple's K-12 customers indicated to Apple that they need to move on with
>the Mac and away from the Apple II.

    Where did you hear this? From Apple's web-site or some publication
that Apple wrote and distributed? There are many teachers and educators
reading this newsgroup, why not ask them if they wanted Apple to dump
their current systems so they could go out and purchase shiny new Macintosh
systems.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca