Mike Maginnis wrote:
On 2012-02-15 10:12:24 +0000, Michael J. Mahon said:David Schmidt <schmidtd@my-deja.com> wrote:On 2/14/2012 10:00 AM, Michael Black wrote:[...] But I don't see what great new development happened with the III that helped the II line along. It was a separate branch, the never went further. Unless the failure of the III meant Apple went back to extending the II line in a more logical fashion.The 80-column firmware was transplanted from the III to the IIe. As Brendan pointed out, ProDOS is a direct descendant of SOS.Yes, but these are both natural evolutionary developments that would have occurred on any Apple II follow-on.Apple tried to design a new machine for the business market and discoveredthat what the market really wanted (besides IBM PCs) was an Apple II with additional business features--like a lower-case-capable keyboard, an 80-column display, a clock-calendar, and a DOS with mass-storagecapabilities. (All of which had been delivered (suboptimally) by the AppleII aftermarket!) In 1981, I used to attend an Apple user group in Austin, TX, and several members had Apple ///'s. I found it ironic that they were almost all used in ][+ emulation mode (except when running the /// demo software)!-michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahonInteresting, considering how crippled the emulation mode was. The /// didn't catch on in the market due to the well-documented technical issues and lack of usable software resulting from a stupidly shortened QA cycle, not because is wasn't a II.
I certainly don't disagree that the /// was permanently hobbled by poor design and execution issues. But by the time that the /// was released into the wild, the II already had developed a pretty robust infrastructure and following. Lots of great programs, lots of workable hardware extensions, and lots of users anxious to make it do anything that people wanted to do. Introducing a new computer architecture into this environment was a serious matter, and Apple chose to play the "proprietary" and "chosen developers" game instead of letting the market do whatever it wanted, as happened with the II. The result was a slower growth of software, hardware, and market share, just as the II was accelerating like crazy. Even if the hardware of the /// had been perfect, I think it would have been a "one trick pony", and would never have garnered enough market share to be a successful product against the IBM juggernaut. -michael NadaNet 3.1 for Apple II parallel computing! Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."