Re: Apple IIx

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Forrest <bctimes@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Supertimer wrote:
>
>> The only reason the IIGS came out at all was because Apple
>> did not view the early multimedia market as worthy of the Mac.
>
>And because Mac sales were lousy all through 1985 and some of
>1986.
>
>> In the end, it was Apple's split focus that doomed it.
>
>The IIgs?  That was doomed by being rejected by many 8-bit

I don't know about you, but I was an Apple II user who wanted
a piece of the GUI action.  The Apple IIGS let me take my
hardware and software with me.  What's so "un-Apple II" about
that?  And what is so bad about having better graphics and
sound?  As for the Amiga 1000, I liked it, but looking at its
GUI made me reconsider.  The IIGS had a better GUI and
also better sound.  I was and am a sound fanatic.  ;-)  Now if
the Amiga 2000 were available at the time, things might have
been different.  But the 1000 was not the 2000 and at the time,
I naturally chose the IIGS.

>owners who thought -- and still think, judging by many
>messages on this ng -- that it was all about graphics
>and sound and being Mac-like, and then also rejected by the
>power users who (according to Call-APPLE, as I recall)
>were screaming for more power all through 1985, then
>compared the IIgs to the Amiga and bought Amigas.

Are you kidding?  Apple killed the IIGS by cutting its marketing
and R&D.  The Apple IIGS early sales figures were phenomenal.
The IIGS itself (not even including the other members of the
Apple II family) outsold the ENTIRE Macintosh line of computers
in its first year.

How did Apple react?  They cut all advertising and R&D for the
computer and channeled the profits made by the IIGS into
Macintosh development.  That's how IIGS sales were artificially
diminished over a six year period until Apple axed it.  While
Commodore was rigorously improving the Amiga 1000 so much
that by the time the Amiga 2000 came out, it had improved so
much as to be barely recognizable, the IIGS stayed the same
over the six year period it had to sell itself (virtually no
advertising).

THAT was what I meant by Apple's split focus.  It had the
Apple II and it had the Mac.  So it artificially stifled the IIGS in
order to not compete against the Mac.  They COULD have
easily made a IIGS like Mac in 1984 with integrated II
compatibility.  THAT would have avoided the split focus and
kept a fanatically loyal user base happy.  But Jobs didn't
want the Mac to be II compatible, users base be damned.
He wanted to leave his own mark on Apple independent of
Wozniak's influence.  As I said earlier, the best move would
have been to implement Wozniak's plan two years earlier
with the release of a IIGS like Mac in 1984 with integrated
8-bit compatibility.  This hybrid platform would give the user
base a few years to migrate from the old 8-bit stuff to the
newer 16-bit/32-bit stuff.  In 1987, THEN release your "pure
Mac IIGS" or whatever you want to call the computer, maybe
with an 8-bit software emulator of some kind.  By 1987, it
would be safe to relegate the oldest 8-bit stuff to software
emulation.  The Mac or IIGS or whatever does NOT have to
remain hardware 8-bit compatible forever, just for a few
years to give time for the Apple II user base to migrate.

Give the user base a transition, like the one Mac users got
in the Mac to PowerMac transition, of a few years and you
keep your integrated loyal user base.  And Apple would not
have been doomed to a drop to a smaller market share like
the 10% or less it has today.  When Apple switched
platforms from Apple II to Mac without providing a transition,
it lost much of the loyal Apple II user base, who defected to
the PC.