Re: Apple IIx

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Forrest writes ...
> 
> Rubywand wrote:
> 
 ....

> >The simple fact is that established II users were aware of being 'in
> >the doldrums' regarding hardware development.
> 
> Established II users at the end of 1984 would be...people with IIs
> and II Pluses, who were by then a minority of the Apple II population.

     Hard to say. A lot of those IIe's were going into schools all over the
world. At least at users group meetings, IIe's were relatively rare.



> Everyone else had just made a kilobuck+ investment, and having just
> bought the darn thing probably were not interested in buying another
> right away.

     Probably not; but, they were definitely a minority of the users I
encountered. A friend who had bought a IIe (in 1983, I think) was among the first
to pre-release order a IIgs.



 ....

> 
> >The Mac was in B&W; but, anyone could see that the high-res mouse
> >& windows interface was way ahead of ours.
> 
> Of course, there was no standard Apple II interface until
> AppleWorks came along.
 ....

     The standard interface was Applesoft BASIC under DOS 3.3 or ProDOS. In 1984,
it was still chiefly BASIC + DOS 3.3.


> 
> >And, some of the clone PC's were showing very nice text displays
> >using fonts
> 
> ...that might or might not print on your printer...
> 
> >and colors
> 
> ...that definitely wouldn't print on a black-ribbon printer.

     Didn't matter. Once you saw one of the hi-res text displays on a PC clone--
i.e. sharp, clear fonts where you couldn't see the dots-- you knew the Apple II
text display was toy stuff.


 
> >      You talk about 800,000 sales in 1984-- so what?
> 
> So it was a record-breaking year after a record-breaking year.
> Sales hadn't even reached a plateau despite the PC and Mac.
> This was very much a "hot" product, which you denied above.

     Not so. There is all the difference in the world between 'Apple II computing
being hot' and Apple, Inc. selling lots of Apple II's.

     In the early Apple II years, up through about 1982, II computing emerged as
the winner of the personal computing battles which began in the mid-1970's. We
had the best computer and we knew it. Everyone was writing software and all sorts
of new games were being released. We had piles of new Slot hardware, (and lots of
users experimented with hardware changes), too. All of the indicators were Up.

     A major part of being interested and involved and the feelings of optimism
was that the individual user had such extraordinary control of the machine. If
you wanted to add a hires screen dump to your printer interface, you could easily
figure out how (or get help) and burn a PROM to do it. The same goes for making
your own games-- which you could get published in mags like SoftSide.

     Something which may be difficult to appreciate is that II+ users greeted the
IIe with very mixed emotions. We were glad 'the new guys' didn't have computers
clearly better than ours and disappointed that IIe was not so much better that we
would be forced to buy one. By the time //e improvements like double-hires
arrived, everyone was fairly set on waiting for the next Apple II.

     Sure, 1983 and 1984 were good years for II computing-- lots more new
software, MockingBoard music, expanding BBS's, ... . But, by 1984, we knew there
were lots of areas where other computers were pulling ahead.

     The Mac, of course, was an open insult. (How come it had to use a 68000? Why
did it need to be a closed-box non-Apple II?)

     Meanwhile, Byte was heavily into PC stuff; and, realistically, it was
difficult to object. It was obvious that, except for the first Mac, PC was were
hardware advances were happening.

     So, whatever Apple's IIe sales and whatever the new software, it should be
no surprise that a darkening cloud of pessimism served to damper II user
enthusiasm. 1984 was definitely _not_ a hot year for II computing.


 
> >we were acutely aware of falling ever farther behind the leading
> >edge.
> 
> The leading edge being the PC/XT, the main advantage of which
> was a built-in hard drive.  How long did it take Apple to figure
> out the importance of built-in hard drives?
 ....

     As far as the II series is concerned, they never did.



Rubywand