Re: Apple IIGS still rules!

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

"mm" <mark6546@aol.com> wrote:

>Yes but it was slow, with less power than an Atari ST, even that could do
>4000 colour screens with tricks, which is how the GS did it anyway. The
>sound was truly excellent though. The Amiga was a better all-rounder though.

The Atari ST and the Amiga were great machines too but the
Atari ST wasn't expandable like the IIGS and its internal
sound system was far less advanced.  The Amiga was a very
cool system but it had a poorly implemented GUI that was
very ugly.  The core OS was sound and was one of the first
semi-mainstream PC for consumers that could really take
advantage of multitasking, but the GUI half was far behind
the IIGS.

I much preferred my IIGS to either, though, because I was
mainly into synthesis and what the IIGS offered on the sound
front was far in advanced of ANY personal computer of the
time.

Speedwise, yes the Mhz rating of the CPU sounded poor
but in reality, the Atari ST and the original Amiga couldn't
really run their GUIs/operating systems faster than the IIGS
could.  All three performed slowly as did the Mac but none
was as bad as watching a 16Mhz 286 trying to run early
Windows.

I still think the IIGS was one of the best computers for the
time.  Drop in a ZipGS or a TWGS and the computer runs
its GUI as snappy as a modern PC running Windows.  I'm
not talking about processor speed but look and feel.  Sure,
I can't run seti@home on the IIGS but the accelerated IIGS
will scroll through a WP window or open and close folders
from the Finder as fast as my PC does these in Windows
which tells a lot.

I'm not delusional.  I mainly use my PCs these days but
looking back, it was amazing how many years I could
carry on using the IIGS.  That machine was well desinged
and built for expansion, that's for sure.