Re: New Apple II (was Apple's next move ...)

[rubywand@aol.com (RUBYWAND)]

In article <4ma875$ob7@usenet4.interramp.com>, Tom Zuchowski
<cd003508@interramp.com> writes:

>In article 4m8hm0$lg7@newsbf02.news.aol.com,
>	rubywand@aol.com (RUBYWAND) said:

>> .... Many '486 and
>>slower Pentium owners are standing pat, waiting for something more than
>>just another MHz boost.   
>
>You apparently run with a different crowd of PC users than I do.  Most
that I
>know are waiting for performance to become available at the price they
want
>to pay, and/or can't justify buying an expensive mew system when their
>present machine is doing an adequate even though it is a little slow.
>

   _That_ is the point. If getting more PC performance were a genuine
attraction, these PC users would be going to upgraded systems. A
Pentium-166 motherboard with 32MB RAM is, today, listing at less than
$1100-- not such a high price for a user craving more PC performance but
way too much for one who doesn't much care. My PC user friends do have
interest in various games and net wares, they are uniformly bored with the
machine itself. 


>>     Today's PC comes nowhere near efficiently harnassing the power of
>>available hardware. The fact that critical subsystems-- chiefly Video
and
>>Sound-- must be plugged into Slots is a major weakness. That the
platform
>>must support a wide variety of such cards is another. 
>
>A major weakness?  That is a major strength!  You aren't locked into
aging,
>obsolete video and audio hardware.  A 33mhz slot is nothing to sneeze at,
>either, and sooner or later Intel will give in to the demand for 66mhz
slots.
>

    Of course. Yet, the real joke is on PC users (including me) who are
sold on the notion that they are saving oodles of $$$ with this "PC
Expand-ability". So far, every single major processor upgrade has also
required a motherboard upgrade-- the alternative is to blow a hefty sum on
the new processor and accept sub-par results.

    It turns out that, if Video and Sound were part of each new
motherboard, most users would enjoy approximately state-of-the-art
graphics/sound performance until it's time for a new motherboard.

    Integrated system motherboards would cost more. But, when you factor
in the cost of buying high-performance Video and Sound boards to plug into
the current platform, the integrated approach has to produce a sizable
saving.

    Standardization _and_ user-friendliness would be much enhanced, too.
PC users would suddenly find that running new games no longer required
special configuration settings or making a boot diskette.

    Basically, PC is an Intel Development System board that became a
computer. It's long past time that it became an integrated system. In
fact, it is probably too late.

    No major maker can afford to freeze PC at any moment in the on-going
process of development. IBM tried and failed several years ago. Today, no
one has the market power to dictate the form of an integrated PC.


>>     In the battle to match PC, Apple IIGS-X's high level of integration
>>could recover the cost of implementing full downward compatibility.
>>On-board Video and Sound alone represent both a major cost advantage and
>>an opportunity to leap-frog PC capabilities. Since major systems are
>>well-defined and standardized, a user-friendly interface is assured and
>>IIGS-X developers need design for just one machine.
>
>I don't know that it's =that= much of a cost advantage to put the
hardware on
>the motherboard instead of a card.  A few hundred dollars, at best.  And
then
>what do you do when, two years down the road, the GS-X is now boat-anchor
>slow and is missing many state of the art hardware capabilities?  Will it
>have the ability to disable on-board stuff and use a slot card instead? 
Or
>will we have to buy a new motherboard?

     Will GS-X be "boat-anchor slow" in two years? three years? ...  Not
likely. Running a 200MHz RISC and with the capability for in-Slot
acceleration (say, to 500MHz, 1GHz, ...)  it will be able to 'muddle
along' well enough. On-motherboard Video with no performance-killing data
bottleneck is not an advantage easily overcome by any plug-in Video
system.

     When, eventually, a new GS-X2 motherboard is required, we'll get one.


     PC will be replaced because it is not a good home computer. Lacking
both standardization and integration of key subsystems, it can never
become user-friendly.

     PC has, perhaps, 2-3 years before it is demolished in a renewed
competition among high-performance integrated home computers. A lion's
share of the home user market will go to the first such platform. It might
as well be Apple's II/IIgs compatible IIGS-X. It might as well be _ours_ !


Rubywand