Re: What's to become of the Apple II?

[earle@pacbell.net (Earle F. Philhower, III)]

It's technically true that the Macs have expansion ports that are accessible 
to the home hacker.  But in reality, very few people can actually design a PCI 
card in their spare time in their basement.  NuBus is not too terribly 
difficult, and the 10Mhz speed makes it possible for designers  to build 
working hardware without a dedicated design team. :)

However, the two busses just pale in comparison to an Apple IIe or even IBM PC 
8- or 16-bit slot.  There you have nothing between the microprocessor signals 
and your design, except for a buffer or two.  This makes designs very simple 
and fast.  And, incidentally, you need to pay TI a licensing fee if you sell a 
NuBus card commercially, as I recall...

As far as BASIC:  Sure, its *available* for the Mac, but it's not *built-in.*  
That's a big difference...even an inferior built-in program will be used more 
than a superior, separately purchased, package.  Cost is a big concern to us 
hackers! :)

-Earle F. Philhower, III
 earle@pacbell.net