Re: My Dream new Apple computer

[Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca>]

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010, BLuRry wrote:

> > This looks like an extreme case of "shoulda woulda coulda" envy of the
> > whole industry in general, but Apple specifically.
> >
> > I wonder how many other vintage computer platforms adherents have these
> > sorts of dreams of world domination that didn't happen?
>
> Indeed!  I remember a day before AppleTalk became AOL, dumped the //
> series and began to suck very quickly, there were many interesting
> conversations afoot with BurgerB[ill|ecky] concerning the Avatar.
> Too bad it never panned out.  :-/
But there's a big difference between desiring a line to continue when the 
line is still viable, and discussing extending it years or decades later.

Every one of the "non-standard" computers twenty years ago had that sort 
of discussion as the manufacturer dropped their computer. Here were lots 
of people who had invested in that specific computer, and often for 
specific reasons, and the manufacturer had decided to move elsewhere or 
close up.  Of course there'd be lots of fantasy, and of course there'd be 
attempts at extending the line.

There were multiple projects for the Radio Shack Color Computer when Radio 
Shack stopped making it.  There was a  third party compatible, with 
the caveat that they'd only run Microware OS-9 since there wsa no way to
get the ROMs to make a real compatible.  But there were also at least
two 68000 based computers that would run OS-9 and were seen as contenders
for people to move to after the Color Computer.

Someone once wrote that the Atari ST would have been the logical next 
step, if it had been sold at Radio Shack and Radio Shack had gotten as 
good a deal on the 68000 version of OS-9 as they had with the 6809 
version.  (Radio Shack sold the operating system, and some other software 
from Microware, considerably cheaper than what it sold for for other 
systems).

At that cusp, when people were still using the "old" computers as their 
main computers and they wanted to move on but still be using a somewhat
similar computer, there was room, sort of, for extensions.  Since they'd 
not gone with the pack already, they still wanted to stay away from the 
pack.

But since the original company abandoned them, it fell to smaller 
companies, who could market to the rabid users, but were never able to
reach a larger market, so the number of computers they could sell were
pretty limited, which kept costs high.

  Michael