Re: Apple model history?

[Paul Guertin <pg@sff.net>]

CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney) wrote:

> On Sun, 09 Apr 2000 12:57:50 +0900, Paul Guertin <pg@sff.net> wrote:
> 
> >From what I understand, ProDOS is a rewrite of the Apple III operating
> >system SOS. Without the III (and therefore without ProDOS), the
> >transition from floppies- to HD-based Apple II systems would have been
> >more chaotic.
> 
> If they created SOS for the Apple III, what makes you think they
> wouldn't have created it for the Apple II?

Without the SOS code to work from, writing ProDOS would have taken
more time, and vendor-patched DOS 3.3 could have become a standard
difficult to dislodge. Maybe.

Of course, without the III, all those nifty Apple II projects at
Apple wouldn't have been cancelled.

One thing about ProDOS, or rather Basic.system -- how come there is
no equivalent of the "cd .." command, to go up one level in the
directory hierarchy? I've always found that odd. Almost as odd as
DOS 3.3 having a two-letter command for a seldom-used function (FP)
but a seven-letter CATALOG command.

> It isn't like there was something special about the Apple III hardware
> that made designing the operating system a task that was specific to
> only that machine.

Agreed, but before the III, did anyone at Apple see the need to write
a sophisticated, HD-compatible operating system for the II, and act
on it? Hm... I suppose the Apple Pascal OS might have been it.

Paul Guertin
pg@sff.net