Re: Does Apple miss us?

[dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Dave Althoff)]

One comment on the way that Apple dropped the ][...

First of all, is this any different from the way that IBM dropped the PC,
then the XT, then the AT, then the early PS/2's?

(speaking for those of us who have used Apple ][s almost since the ][+ was
state of the art...)
We all come from an environment where there are certain things you can
count on in a computer...48k RAM, possibly a 16k memory expansion, two
5.25" 143k disk drives, and one of a dozen parallel printer options,
connected through a Grappler+ unless the printer is an Epson, in which
case it's probably an APL board.  Programmers knew this.  Sure, additional
hardware was available, particularly once we got to the ][e and the
ImageWriter became the de-facto standard printer.  

Programmers wrote their programs to work in a 64k 8-bit machine.  Programs
were developed to do just about anything you could want to do with a
computer, except some high-power graphics applications that the Apple ][
is (well, was before SecondSight, anyway) not really very good at anyway. 

This is the problem.  When the computer does what you want it to do, and
does it well, if you are a vendor, then you stop selling computers and
software.  In a way, the Apple ][ market self-destructed because we're all
sitting here with our old computers fully loaded and equipped with all the
software we will ever need.  Voila.  Apple can't sell any more Apple ]['s,
because we've already got them.  The software companies can't sell
software 'cause we've already bought it.

On the other hand, in the MS-DOS world, programs were written by
committee.  That's the corporate, IBM way of doing things, not the rugged
individual Apple way.  Where Apple users can look to individuals like Paul
Lutus, Rupert Lissner, Steve Wozniak, Mark Pelczarski, Bill Budge, Bert
Kersey, Tom Weishaar, Roger Wagner, and other individual programmers, the
IBM world looks to Microsoft, Intuit, and Lotus.  To do the same things on
an IBM-PC as we do on our Apples requires far more computing power just
because of the way the programs are written.  As programs become
friendlier and more powerful, they get bigger.  If you have an old Apple
][e, you can still run Apple Writer with a pair of 5.25 disk drives and 64k
of memory.  If you own an IBM-PC with a pair of 5.25" disk drives and 640k
of memory, you can't even think about running a recent version of Word
Perfect.  And in spite of its "advanced" features that a lot of people
have no real use for, in many *practical* ways, Apple Writer is still a
more powerful program.

Part of the problem for the Apple ][ is simply that the upgrade path that
MS-DOS users have become all-too-familiar with recently does not exist for
the Apple ][.  Upgrade or Perish is a corporate philosophy that Apple was
very slow to adopt.  And it ultimately meant the end of the line for the
Apple ][.

That said, I'm actually glad that Apple never offered a trade-up program
for A][ owners.  If they had offered a trade-up from the ][ to, say, the
Mac Plus or SE, it would have pulled a whole bunch of ]['s out of
circulation, and I'll wager that the amount of support we have now...even
in the form of fellow users...would be far less.  It would just be
stubborn fools like me, and we wouldn't see any Apple ][ newbies coming on
board.  In a way, Apple's failure to offer any incentives for A][ people
to move on has prolonged the survival of a fine, if somewhat aged, computer.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
(note:  Written at 12:34am.  Bear that in mind when composing criticism.)
-- 
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