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

[pubpc17@library.ucla.edu]

Tom Zuchowski <tjz@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Maybe it's just me, but I can't tell the difference between a 32-bit
>high-resolution GS and a Macintosh, thanks to Apple's far-sighted
>decision
>to modify GSOS to look more like the Mac OS.

Three differences.  First, the Mac is a closed, shielded machine both
hardware wise and software wise.  Sure, it has a slot or two, but they
cannot be accessed by user "hacked-together" boards for dumping, say,
research equipment data into the computer. Also, on the software side,
the IIGS is better suited- you can run shells or even BASIC or assembly
to whip up a quick program to read the input from your custom board
through the slots.

Second, the IIGS is a graphics and sound machine in architecture,
much like the original Amiga was designed to be.  It has a lot of
hardware to tweak, resulting in cool demos and programs outside of
the official OS.  On the Mac, everything is done through Mac OS and
is bogged down by it.  You have no choice.  This is why we don't see
cool demos and "programmed on the metal" games like we do on the IIGS
or on the Amiga.

Third, the Mac cannot run IIGS software.  I am sorry, but as a user
of AppleWorks GS and other IIGS software and having many data files,
I expect Apple to preserve my investment in both.  If the Mac is not
a reasonable upgrade in this respect, in my opinion Apple has failed.

No matter how much you hate Wintel (Micosoft's monopolistic behavior
in the Netscape, Win NT, Explorer fiasco is deplorable), you can't
help but understand why they have succeeded.  You never lost the
ability to run your software or access your data on a Wintel.


>In either case, old software would run awkwardly and few would bother
>to do so.

Says who?  I would could run AppleWorks GS, for example, instead of
a text editor if I wanted to jot down a quick note.  Because it was
originally optimized in order to run at a reasonable speed on a IIGS,
it will run like lightning on a PowerMac.  Faster, even, than something
like TeachText.  Sure, I would probably use ClarisWorks for "Works"
type stuff, but if I would still have AWGS handy for some quick tasks
..and for accessing my years of accumulated data.



Dr E. Buxbaum <EB15@le.ac.uk> adds:
>One place were IIe is going to survive for quite some time is
>universities. A lot of research equipment is controlled by those
>maschines. Given present funding situation, that is not likely to
>change for the next 20 years...

That is the truth.  I once saw a Macintosh hooked up via a the SCSI
port to a special box that had inputs for physiological measurements
(muscle activity, respiration, etc.).  The equipment was exorbitantly
expensive.  The funny thing was in another lab in a different
department across campus, they were measuring the same things with
custom hardware on plain vanila Apple //e computers!  The //e plus the
custom hardware together did not equal the cost of one of those little
Mac input boxes (and we are talking about when the hardware was
originally bought years ago - when the //e was still in production).

An Apple II with slots is extemely flexible for these purposes whereas
a closed architecture Mac, even with a few slots, is inflexible.