Re: USB input devices-- Second Sight

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net> wrote:

>     1989 was the last year a IIgs owner could bail out with a
>reasonable shot of getting enough from the sale of his/her system to
>cover the cost of a PC. Quite a few owners saw the handwriting on the
>wall and bailed. An 8-bit VGA card as late as Spring of that year would
>have been a big help in holding our user base.

Perhaps it was the last year that most people would spring
for a new IIGS rather than a new Mac or Windows PC
(although somehow IIGS sales limped along for another
three years....AMAZING how the IIGS kept going and
going and going with absolutely NO advertising from Apple
for YEARS), but this was not the end of the IIGS market.

In fact, most of the advanced stuff for the IIGS came after
1989.  You have the final version of the TWGS.  You have
the ZipGS, the BlueDisk, the SuperDrive controller, the
Apple High Speed SCSI card, the RamFAST card, FAX
programs, ProTERM 3.1, Spectrum, GraphicWriter III,
AppleWorks GS 1.1 (in 1989), the ROM 3 was released in
1989, and most importantly, System 6.0 and System 6.0.1
was still ahead...these opened the way for even more
products.

The Apple II market really did not start to implode until
the demise of InCider/A+ and even then, because the
programmer-oriented turned user-oriented GS+ Magazine
had so many of the diehard IIGS users onboard, the IIGS
market in particular survived until about late '95/early '96.

>     By 1995 we are at least four years past the end of Computer Wars I.
>PC had won and the majority of remaining GS owners were also PC users.
>Most were not interested in major non-PC investments in hardware.

Buying a new Apple IIGS, perhaps.  Apple killed the IIGS
in 1992, so this observation seems correct.  However, just
because I have a Windows 95 unit does not mean I don't
buy stuff for the IIGS anymore.  In fact, some of my Win
peripherals have ended up on the IIGS!  ;-)

Same with IIGS specific stuff.  I got the Second Sight after
I had a PC.

>     An expensive 24-bit card in 1995-- one which, even with a VGA
>monitor, could not completely replace the existing display-- was not
>much help to II computing.

That's not how it was like back then.  Because GS+ Magazine
was still around and the IIGS market was alive, there was
actually a very very strong interest in the card and its
competition, the TurboRez.  In fact, there was a large preorder
of the Second Sight that took Sequential months to fill.

>> Sadly, it was right after the release of the Second Sight that GS+
>> Magazine, followed by Softdisk GS, died. Without a major
>> support forum, development efforts dried up.
>
>     This seems to be putting the cart before the horse. One of the
>reasons Softdisk folded was the lack of material which could hold
>subscribers. Take a look at the last couple of years of Softdisk-GS--
>way too many fonts, songs, PrintShop files, and ClipArt sheets.

I agree.  Softdisk GS did not measure up to GS+ Magazine in
terms of fuelling Apple IIGS development.

>> The lost of the publications was what really ended the Apple II
>> market.
>
>     Not really. It was the decline of the Apple II market which ended
>the publications. Yes; to some extent we are talking about a spiral:
>smaller market--> fewer/smaller publications--> smaller market--> ... .
>However, if you went back to 1983 and wiped every existing Apple II mag
>from the scene, you would have seen new Apple II magazines within the
>next month. A strong market will always generate related information
>resources.

I agree, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what triggered what
and it was probably a spiral effect.  However, relating to the
last days of the IIGS market and GS+ Magazine in particular,
I am sure that the fall of GS+ had a drastic effect on the IIGS
market.  With GS+ Magazine, there was a IIGS market.  Without
a GS+ Magazine, there was not.

EGO Systems itself saw this happen.  Steve Dizbrow thought
he could keep EGO Systems going without GS+ Magazine,
but EGO Systems itself fell after a few months.  Other Apple
IIGS businesses, which did not have the same mailing list,
fared much worst.

Look at the list of businesses that fell after GS+ Magazine:

Tulin, TMS, LRO Computers (stopped selling IIGS stuff),
Softdisk GS, Memory Distributors Plus, etc.

>> >     This approach used to work fine back in the pre-GS days.
>> >Unfortunately for SS, the mass of users had long ago been cut out of
>> >'serious' programming. Had the new GS BASIC been available, things may
>> 
>> I think it would have turned out fine had GS+ Magazine stayed
>> viable for a few more years.
>
>     Not likely. II Alive, even up through 1996, was much larger than
>any of the mags you've mentioned and its presence did not turn SS into a
>success.

But II Alive was not the hub of IIGS activity.  You've got
to remember that GS+ Magazine published the best selling
IIGS software in terms of numbers.  ;-)

For example, if Facelift was going to be published by a magazine,
it would be GS+ Magazine.

>> >video board which did not seem to do much more than let
>> >you hook up a VGA monitor.
>> 
>> This I disagree.  The Second Sight's SVGA modes are real as any
>> Second Sight user who has .bmp, etc., true-color pictures linked
>> (or registered in WindowSpeak) to ThirdView knows.  Double
>> clicking on a true-color pic and seeing the image as it was meant
>> to be seen on an SVGA monitor is pretty amazing and games like
>> Second Sight aware Cogito vividly demonstrates the card's potential.
>> Potential that remains largely untapped.  If Facelift succeeds, this
>> will change instantly.
>
>     The comment to which you responded relates to perceptions of the
>board by potential buyers in 1995 or so. At that time, with no QD2
>patches and no display of hires from old games and no decent GS BASIC
>and no SS wares, the perception was essentially accurate. And, if you
>move to 1999 and look back, you've got to figure that the payoff for
>buying SS in 1995 has been very meager-- like, basically, you got to
>connect a VGA monitor.

I agree, the potential is not being used to the full extent.

My comment was that the potential is there.  Even when the card
was first released, it came with the Second View program
(pretty bad, I agree, use ThirdView from Brutal Deluxe instead)
for viewing graphics.