Re: WHO killed the Apple II???

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

"Mike Westerfield" <MikeW50@aol.com> wrote:

>>The person who killed the Apple II is now the "temporary" CEO of Apple; none
>>other than the "Evil Steve" Jobs. He just couldn't stand it when every
computer
>>he introduced didn't measure up to the Woz's ][ line.
>
>While it's true that Steve Jobs was no friend of the Apple II, he wasn't
>even at Apple when Apple Computer axed the Apple II line. They had axed him,
>too. :)

Steve Jobs planted the seeds for the demise of the Apple II.  He created
the entire anti-Apple II mentality.

Steve Jobs was the one who split Apple into Mac and Apple II divisions.
Steve Jobs was the one who called the Macintosh division "family" and
     everyone else at Apple (ie. Apple II people) "outsiders."
Steve Jobs didn't want Apple to be dominated by a Wozniak legacy.
Steve Jobs tried to distance the company from the II at every opportunity.
Steve Jobs tried to push the III, it failed.
Steve Jobs tried to push the Lisa, it failed.
Steve Jobs' original Mac failed.  The Apple II kept Apple alive in the interim.

ONLY when Steve Jobs was fired could Sculley's Apple reinvent the Mac
into a more reasonable (more like Apple II) system which finally caught
on.

The Mac that finally succeeded was not Steve Jobs' Mac.

Steve Jobs didn't want anyone messing with his original Mac design
(closed box, no expansion, crippled memory expansion, b&w screen
...he had to be pestered to give the Mac even 4MB memory expansion).
That's why the IIGS got ADB first.  His Mac engineers finally got fed
up with him and took the goods to the II division.

Steve Jobs went ballistic when he realized "his" Mac people were
putting mouse tools in the IIGS.

Finally, everyone at Apple got fed up with him and Sculley swung
the axe.

Sculley reintegrated Mac and Apple II divisions, but by then the
damage had already been done.  Mac people were closer to the
top and commanded the levers of power at Apple.  Sculley's last
great move other than axing Jobs was to get the IIGS out the
door.  After that, the unified Apple with a decidedly Mac oriented
management and Mac oriented focus basically stopped Apple II
line development and marketing which directly lead to the final
decline and death of the Apple II in the early 1990s.  It is a tribute
to the Apple II that it survived on its own for so long.

The Apple II and the Mac should never have been separate products.
Either the first Mac should have been the IIGS or it should have
been a Mac with a IIe co-processor option.  Coming out with a IIGS,
getting II users to migrate, then stranding them is not right.  Neither
is coming out with a Mac LC six years after the fact with a IIe card.

Either IIGS from the start or a Mac with a IIe option from the start.

But Steve Jobs needed a jihad.  Apparently, a holy war against IBM
was not enough.  He had to crusade against the user base that
supported his company.  He had to crusade against his own
product and employees.