Re: why did apple go mac?

[wbdesnoy@acs5.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron Desnoyers Winmill)]

Because Apple needed the next best thing, and they could not do that on the
6502?  Because, at that time, very few people knew what GUIs were so a radical
departure would not hurt their potential market?

The 68000 based Macintosh served Apple very well, thank you.  The fact that
the Apple IIgs could do it better, for a time, was only an afterthough.

In exchange, Apple did not have to carry the baggage of legacy application
support.  They were, after all, out to capture the market.  Companies such as
IBM are out to keep an existing client base.  As such, they give their
existing customers what they want.  Usually that something includes support
for their existing software.  This is a habit which you see Apple adopting
as time goes on: the switch from 680x0 to PowerPC did not break software
compatability (or even hardware compatability, in many cases); the transition
from MacOS to MacOS X will be much the same (it is the transition from a
single user, co-operatively multitasking system to a full fledged Unix system).

Well, that is what I think.  And, while it may have hurt the Apple II, we
would not be here discussing the machine as we are today if Apple did use a
progressive approach.

Byron.


guy-jin (guyvf@my-deja.com) wrote:
:  why did apple 'upgrade' to the macintosh when
: the ][ series was still going strong? i mean the
: ][GS came after the mac! why switch? why didn't
: apple just keep improving the ]['s, like IBM did
: with the PC?