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

[pubpc17@library.ucla.edu]

ballwebr@holmes.ece.orst.edu (Brian Ballweber) wrotr:
>rubywand@aol.com wrote:
>:      Apple, Inc. seems to agree. They appear to be getting out of
>: the P-Mac manufacturing business. More and more, Mac's will be made
>: by cloners.
>[cut]
>:      Is Apple "going down pretty quickly"? The company does appear
>: to be engaged in a 'controlled collapse'. A risk is that, at some
>: point, income will fail to match projections and the collapse will be
>: impossible to halt.
>
>Funny, controlled collapse must mean preparing to rake in lots of money
>where you are from.  I doubt most people including Apple would agree with
>your assesment of the situation.  In fact, given the recent announcement
>of Exponential to begin manufacturing its 533Mhz PPC chip early next
>year, I would bet that Apple's outlook is quite a bit more optimistic.

There may be new PPC chips (Apple's not the only one that uses them),
but Apple is making the smart move by moving away from the hardware
business.  More and more, they will license the PowerMac to clone
manufacturers to build and concentrate on improving Mac OS.  In short,
they are positioning themselves to be like Microsoft.

The signs are clear: not only are they letting others build Mac clones,
they are marketing the Mega II chip to companies like Tiger to build
Apple //e based products.  It only makes sense that IIGS technology
will be on the table soon.  


>Now I'm a GS user myself, and in my small amount of spare time I enjoy
>coding on it, but the facts are that the GS was given a relatively low
>powered 16-bit CISC processor and I can argue for days on why the
>'816 is not even RISC in the slightest bit>, and it does not compare
>to any of the modern super-scalar RISC designs that are now coming out.
>Apple is not going to produce any more GSs because simply put no-one
>wants them.

Well, if a IIGS type product were to be priced around, say, $200, people
WILL buy them.  Just look at the "computers for kids" section of your
typical department store catalog.  Vtech's "IQ Unlimited" computer, for
example, is laughable.  64K of RAM, 40 column video meant to connect to
a television, etc.  But people snap up these computers.  Now Tiger comes
in with a //e based product...clearly superior to the sily IQ unlimited
because it is based on a REAL PC.

A IIGS based version of these "home computers" will forever change the
genre.  It is, after all, much more capable than a //e based product.


>The facts are that there will not be another 32-bit version of the
>'816 because its architecure is relatively weak.  People don't
>start building processors to make an inferior processor.  There is no
>money in it, and in the end thats what its all about, money.

It is easy to trash a processor by comparing it to ones that exist
10 years after its design.  Still, it is not the processor that was
at fault.  When it was first released, the '816 could hold its own
against that day's 80286 and 68000.  Because Apple did not support
the IIGS, development of the '816 slowed while that of the x86 and
680x0 accelerated.  The '816 is actually a better base design than
the x86, but because IBM and the clone markets supported it, Intel
MADE it into the Pentium it is today.  There was no reason, if Apple
had given support, that we would not have a Pentium SCALE '816
extended chip today.

Now you could argue that the Pentium is inferior to the PPC.  You
could argue that the 68040 is inferior to the PPC.  You would probably
be right.  But if Apple had supported the IIGS, subsequent improved
'816 based chips would have enabled the IIGS to survive until a PPC
based IIGS could be built and then the user base migrated.  There is
no reason why we could not have had a PPC based PowerIIGS eventually.
The PC base is not going to stay CISC forever either, just that their
migration will happen later than the Mac's did.