Re: Yay! Finally got myself a IIgs!

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

John wrote:
> On 29 Jun 2006 02:40:26 -0700, "skylarking" <petsoundsnz@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> > N.N. Thayer wrote:
> >
> > > > So anyone else got any Apple II bargains recently?
> > >
> > > Free from my brother-in-law:
> > >
> > > Apple ///
> > > ProFile 10 MB
> > > Monitor ///
> > >
> > > Free from my dad:
> > >
> > > Apple ][ (Rev 1)
> > > Apple ][+
> > > 2 Disk ][ drives
> > > Apple //e
> > > DuoDIsk
> > > Monitor //e
> > >
> > > And everything works.  :)
> >
> > Even the Apple /// works ok? I thought that they were notoriously
> > unreliable, and that was one of the reasons they flopped.
>
>
> The first release of the Apple /// had a near 100% failure rate due to
> system overheating.  The revised model (Dec '81) was better and is
> probably the most common model found.  The Apple /// Plus released in
> Dec '83 was the most reliable revision of all but it was too little to
> late and was dumped early in 1984.
>
> The Apple /// flopped for a number of reasons.  It was rushed on to
> the marketplace and had some serious quality control problems when
> released.  The high initial cost of the system coupled with the
> release of the IBM PC in 1981 also worked against the /// in the
> business marketplace.  The poor compatibility with existing Apple //
> software was also a major drawback with the /// as it was designed to
> be a completely separate machine from the Apple // line.

And let's not forget the fundamental problem of the Apple ///:
its form factor and case were "designed" by Steve Jobs!

Nothing says "not an engineer" like the "cast iron" case of the
Apple ///.  Able to hold heat like an oven, able to strain a
back like a sack of sand, able to smash lesser computers with a
6-inch drop...it's Apple ///!

I think that the Apple /// says most clearly, "I can design
a computer, too, and it's *not* like the *other* Steve's."

I pity the real engineers who had to find a (bad) way to cram
everything into the tiny spaces of that huge exoskeleton.

> I have a 1982 release Apple /// with 256KB standard and a 10MB ProFILE
> hard drive. It's quite a nice machine to use and featured many
> advanced hardware improvements which became commonplace in the Apple
> //e and later machines (80 column display, bank-switched memory,
> upper/lower case support, video interlacing, inbuilt RGB, serial &
> disk drive ports).  

Me, too--and it runs its relatively "closed system" software quite
well.  But because it is so wierd to develop for, given its low unit
numbers, there is relatively little software and it didn't keep pace
with competitive developments.

I feel like the best result of the "Sara" was that it resulted in
some good software migrating to the already-neglected Apple II,
particularly ProDOS and Appleworks.  In many ways, the Apple ///
prefigured the monomaniacal obsession that Apple contracted with
the introduction of Jobs other "child", the Mac.

Someday someone will write the history of Apple as the struggle
of an ego with a non-combatant engineer.

-michael

Parallel computing for 8-bit Apple II's!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it is seriously underused."