Re: Apple Drops Backward Compatibility for Next MacOS

[christw@lexis-nexis.com (Christopher C. Wood)]

In article <55ajhp$lv8@uni.library.ucla.edu>, pubpc1@library.ucla.edu writes:
|> christw@lexis-nexis.com (Christopher C. Wood) wrote:
|> >In article <5534t9$8ur@darla.visi.com>, nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates) writes:

|> >>   In the early to mid 80s, there were tons of platforms (A2,
|> >>IBM, Commie 64, Amig, Atari, TI*, etc) out that have fallen
|> >>extinct; there were companies that stayed exclusively for one or
|> >>two platforms, and plenty (Broderbund, EA, lots of others) that
|> >>developed for many platforms. At the time, developers routinely
|> >>developed for multiple platforms, so A2 _and_ Mac was not a
|> >>problem for them.

|> >Except the Apple II had the least-capable hardware out there.
|> >Even after the IIGS was introduced, the competing platforms had a
|> >lot more horsepower, and better graphics.  By then, the world had
|> >gone PC, C64 was gone, Amiga and Atari were struggling, and TI was
|> >gone.  Apple was fighting for business penetration with the
|> >Macintosh.

|> >Chris

|> Chris, you said you had a //e, right?  

Yup.

|> Because of that, I can understand why you keep claiming the
|> "incapable hardware" thing about the Apple IIs.  If you think //e's
|> are representative of Apple II computers' capabilities, you are not
|> correct.  

The //e was the most popular Apple II series machine.  It stayed in
production longer than any other machine made by Apple.  If that
doesn't qualify as "representative", I don't know what would.  

|> (Besides, even the //e is more capable than the C64, non-ST Ataris,
|> and the TI, man!)

C64, Ataris, and the TI had dedicated sound and graphics hardware.
The //e didn't.  The //e was expandable, but better video graphics
devices (other than 80 column boards) weren't supported by other
software vendors.  Go ahead, show me software for the Synetix
SuperSprite board.

|> Having been exposed to the //e, PC/AT, C128, Mac Plus, IIGS, and
|> Amiga 500 before, let me point out a few things...

Having developed software for the ][, ][+, //e, PC/AT, Mac Plus, Mac
IIs, and all sorts of Unix systems, I could show you the flaws in your
reasoning.

|> Let me answer your "horsepower" assertion first.  A couple of years
|> ago, a friend who owned an Amiga 500 took the source code for one
|> of the Amiga system utilities index benchmarks and recompiled the
|> code on both the IIGS and an original IBM PC/AT.  Based on this
|> benchmark, the IBM PC/AT (a 6MHz '286 without a '287 math
|> co-processor) benchmarked 510.  The IIGS made 595.  

So the IIGS could barely beat a two year old machine.  When the IIGS
was introduced, competing machines were no longer 6 or 8 MHz 80286s,
but were 16 or 20 MHz 386s with 640x350 EGA graphics adaptors.  When
did the Amiga 2000 come out? (Or whichever model introduced the 68020?
AIR, it was before the Mac II).  It's easy to puff up the IIGS by
comparing it to older machines.  

|> The Amiga 500 scored 610.  The Amiga 500 uses an MC68000 processor,
|> so the result should be representative of, say, a Mac Plus as well.

Or the original Macintosh released in 1984.

|> Where is the "lots more horsepower?"  The IIGS basically ran at
|> the speed of computers of its day!

At the speed of computers a year or two older.  As I recall, the Amiga
500 was a stripped down version of the original Amiga 1000, which was
introduced in late '85, a year before the IIGS.

|> Of the above computers, I would say the Amiga and the IIGS
|> shared most in common.  Both are "graphics and sound" computers.
|> The Amiga owner and I used to compare the two machines. The
|> graphics modes are similar, both computers have a 4096 color
|> palette.  Yes, but you say the Amiga has a greater vertical
|> resolution?  Most early (eg. 1986-89) Amiga software used the
|> same 320x200 and 640x200 modes as the GS.  Why?  Because the
|> 400 scan line interlaced mode flickers too much.  Such is the
|> price for color in the early days.

Using hacks to get color on less-expensive monitors.  I am not up on
IBM PCs enough to tell you exactly what came between CGA (1981) and
EGA (1987; 640x350 with at least 64 colors).  It all certainly paled
next to 640x480 with 256 colors from a pallette of millions, that took
no extra CPU overhead.

[ snip ]

|> I would say that for motion graphics and mutitasking, the Amiga
|> was superior to the Mac or PC of its day.  It has a cool blitter
|> chip to move graphics around without straining the CPU.  

Conceded.  On the other hand, these chips were eventually the downfall
of the Amiga -- it took them too long (and too much money?) to get
them to work at higher resolutions, bit-depths, and vertical refresh
rates.  It locked them into 1985 video, even in the late 1980s.

|> In terms of GUI and stable OS and architecture, I'd give the IIGS
|> the nod.  It could accept 16MB of RAM (8 RAM/8 ROM), had both ports
|> and the seven general purpose expansion slots, and ran the same
|> interface as the Mac of its day, except in color and 16 grayscale
|> rather than black and white with no grayscale.  

Eventually.  GS/OS was pretty good, but you had to go live with ProDOS
16 for a while.

|> The PC/AT was a solid computer, nothing fancy.  Because it was IBM,
|> people bought it for business so there was much business software.
|> The Mac Plus had nothing going for it except the interface which it
|> displayed in black and white.

Untrained folks could do things with a Mac Plus that they simply could
not do with any other machine.  The graphics I used to illustrate
constrained multidimensional optimization algorithms in my Master's
Thesis would be a good example.

I'll concede that the Ensoniq produced unequalled sound for many years.

|> So what do you mean by "least-capable hardware?"  Memory?  The
|> 65816 could address 16 megs, same as the 80286 and MC68000. 

Except that the state of the art had moved on to 386s and 68020s at or
shortly after the introduction of the IIGS.

|> The IIGS could take 8MB as RAM and 8MB as ROM.  The Mac Plus could
|> only take 4MB of RAM, period (even though its processor supported
|> more - the stupidity of Steve Jobs).  

No.  4MB comes out of fundamental HW limitations of the 68000 (24 bit
addressing), and the Mac 128 software and hardware architecture
(reserving the top half of 16 MB for I/O, and splitting the remaining
8MB into 4MB RAM and 4MB ROM.  Jobs was opposed to selling Macintoshes
with 512K of RAM.  Fortunately for users and for Apple, the engineers
had the sense to put that capability into place in spite of Mr. Jobs
(or so I've heard.) 

|> Graphics?  The Mac didn't have color.  

For six months.  Then it was the best available on the desktop.

[ snip ]

|> By the way, you have the time line messed up.  When the IIGS was
|> introduced, Commodore did not cancel the C64.  They put it in a
|> new case and bundled it with GEOS and called the package the
|> C64C.  The C128 was also introduced at around this time.  

But they were irrelevent for markets other than games.

|> The Amiga came on the scene in late 1985, putting it a couple of
|> months before the IIGS.

Only if your "couple of months" is a year.  IIGS wasn't introduced
until October 1986.

|> Regarding someone's assertion that Apple II's were not in business,
|> business software was developed first on the Apple IIs.  

By 1986, Apple IIs had been pushed out of the vast majority of the
business markets.  Even AppleWorks couldn't produce business graphics
like 1-2-3 could.

|> The first spreadsheet, VisiCalc was developed on a II.  The first
|> integrated software, AppleWorks, was developed on the II.  

Try again.  3 EZ Pieces, the predecessor to AppleWorks, was developed
on the Apple III.

[ snip ]

|> Why Apple lost the computer wars was because they chose to abandon
|> the successful II series, thus alienating users, and starting up
|> new with the Mac.  

I vehemently disagree.  The Mac had a sustainable advantage, that the
Apple II did not.  Macintosh is as weak as it is now because Apple
pursued a high-margin strategy rather than a high market share
strategy in the late 1980s.  Microsoft has always been a ruthless
competitor in the business of selling software, and Apple had gotten
complacent. 

|> Remember, I am not saying we should sell Apple II Pluses today.
|> What I am saying is Apple should have, based on the GS outselling
|> the Mac Plus in its first year (source: Compute's list of the best
|> selling personal computers), came out with a GS II instead of a Mac
|> II 

Except there was no 16MHz 32-bit CPU for the GS II.  You are
advocating a race car with a go-kart engine.

Chris
-- 
Speaking only for myself, of course.
Chris Wood    christw@lexis-nexis.com   cats@CFAnet.com