Re: Idea to save the IIgs

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article mdragon@eagle.ptialaska.net writes...

>Like someone suggested, why don't we just buy the Apple IIgs?

    Well that _is_ a nice sentiment, but that is about the only
positive thing I can say about the issue (more on that below).

>All of the AppleII community pulled together to buy that hard drive for
>Aimov correct? (Asimov or that other place...)

    That was for the Ground FTP site (then Grind) which a number
of people on comp.sys.apple2 pooled small donations in order to
pay for a 1 Gigabyte hardrive. The plan was the university would
host it, but the drive and the archives it held would belong to
the Apple II community (hence a permanent archive more or less).
Back then it wasn't cheap for a large amounts of storage.

>Why don't we all just donate money and put in a formal request to
>purchase the IIgs rights from Apple?  We could publicise this and
>also make it clear in the statement that we could "Take the burden
>of supporting a much older computer from the arms of Apple into our
>own, thus helping both of us, and ultimately helping the user."  I
>believe that Apple (With the New and Improved Steve Jobs) Would consider
>this offer as a way to dump a crappy old product into some suckers arms
>(Like selling swampland, and this is their view, not mine, I like the IIgs)
>so they could provide the support for it.  I do believe it wouldn't take
>that much cash either.  This is exciting to think about to me, email me
>at mdragon@eagle.ptialaska.net to give me your opinions.  I can also
>start a page about this if you all would like that.  I believe we should
>all work together to accomplish this goal.

    There are some flaws with that plan. First off, how many people
would be willing to donate towards such a cause, and how much would
each person be willing to pay? Considering the size of the Apple II
market, I would say you would be looking at about 50-100 people at
best. Let's be optimistic and say each person contributed $50, and
all 100 people took part in this bid. That is what, $5,000 dollars?
(realistically, since not everyone would contribute the same amount,
you'd probably be looking at about half that amount). That is not
even enough money to license a piece of SOFTWARE to port (remember
id Software asking $10K for Wolf 3D, or Maxius wanting $150K for
SimCity?). You would need hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not
a couple of million to purchase the rights and ownership of any
Apple product, before Apple would even take any notice.

    Next, Apple Computer is very protective of its products, even
products that have long been out of production. They would not be
so eager to sell off the rights to one of their computer lines,
especially the Apple IIGS which was eliminated because it had the
potential to cut into Macintosh sales (if you gave it better color
and resolution, speed and a hardrive, you'd essential have a rip
off of the Macintosh). I don't think the issue would be Apple being
afraid of someone building a killer IIGS, but someone getting their
hands on the right to some of its technology, like the Apple Desktop
Bus, the Toolbox, the look of the Apple interface, etc.

    Finally, say you did manage to raise all the money necessary,
or Apple decided to be kind and practically gives away the rights
for a song. Then what? Does anyone have the money to put the
machine back into production, or better yet, rework the design
and build an Apple IIGS with modern state-of-the-art features to
compete with PowerMac's and Pentium II PC's? (again, note that
Apple would not be too pleased about an outside company being
able to use the Apple GUI or Apple technology in its product.
Especially at a time when they recently stopped all the clone
companies from making Macintosh PowerPC compatibles). Nope, 
Apple is going to sit on the rights to the Apple IIGS until 
the very end.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca