Re: PLEASE STOP THE MAC AND MICROSOFT MESSAGES

[shack@onyx.southwind.net (Randy Shackelford)]

Mitchell Spector (spec@vax2.concordia.ca) wrote:

:     The premature obsolescence of 68K Macintoshes, be it true or not,
: is an entirely different issue which is completely irrelevant to the
: argument. Yes, the Macintosh Quadra machine itself will be abandoned,
: but *YOU*, as a Macintosh user, will not. There is a path for you to
: follow, and you have the choice of whether or not to take it. The way
: it goes is you use your old 68K software on the new machine, while
: slowly starting to use PPC native software as well. Eventually, you'll
: only be using native PPC titles.

:     Sound familiar? It should. When I first bought my Apple IIGS,
: I continued to use my 8-bit II Plus software titles, while slowly
: trying out native IIGS software. Eventually, I found myself only
: running native software. Sure, my Apple II Plus machine had been
: abandoned by the industry, but it made no difference to me since
: I had an Apple IIgs that let me move on painlessly. The transition
: was very smooth and did not affect me negatively in the least.

Suppose Apple bundled an IIgs emulator with all Pmacs. Then what?

:     Yes, but there were some serious problems your conveniently ignoring.
: First of all, this migration came about 6 years too late for the Apple
: IIe/IIc crowd. Shortly after the Macintosh was introduced is when this
: migration path should have been offered. Secondly, the emulation was
: just good enough to serve as *ONLY* a migration tool. The Macintosh
: had to take care of video emulation, so in many cases it was slower
: than a real Apple IIe, not too mention you had to give up something
: the Apple II crowd valued heavily -- SLOT EXPANSION.

You could run software at 2 MHz with the card. Can't see how that's slower
than a real //e. And the //e software let the host Mac's hardware stand
in for everything from slinky type memory to a clock card to a hard disk card. 
Unless you have some really esoteric cards like a Z80 or A/D converter, you
were set.

:     The biggest problem here is that it offered a migration path to
: Apple IIe/IIc users *ONLY* -- there was not Apple IIGS emulation to
: run GS software.

Not a problem in my opinion.

: >Now before the "it should have been a IIgs card" chant breaks out, keep in
: >mind that there was (and still is) little native software worth using, all
: >of which has a Mac equivalent.

:     Whoah, excuse me? Whether the IIGS was a solid worthwhile machine
: or complete rubbish is irrelevant here. The fact remains software for
: it *WAS* written and there *WAS* an existing user base on that machine
: with well over ONE MILLION units sold. You cannot simply brush those
: facts under the rug and try and rationalize dumping that user base.

First point: it has been said that 2/3 or thereabouts of the million IIgses 
produced went to schools and served as glorified //e's. Second, what software
do you use most? I bet 80% is ProDOS 8 based, e.g. 8 bit Appleworks and 
Proterm. I can't think of a solitary IIgs native title which is better than
any equivalent Mac title. So the decision to not make a IIgs card, taking into
account the added complexity and added cost, makes sense to me. Obviously
not everyone agrees. Apple decided that scarcely anyone uses any type of
ethernet cabling other than twisted pair, so that's all new boxes support.
I'm not fond of that since I use thin coax cabling, but there ain't much
I can do about it aside from converting part of my network to twisted pair
one of these days.

:     Here's a thought. At present, I personally feel there is little
: native software on the 68K or PPC Mac that is worth using, and there
: are much better Intel equivalents or often, the identical title (using
: Photoshop or Netscape is a lot nicer under a preemptive environment).
: When Apple falls and the Macintosh slowly fades out of existence, how
: would you feel if I said, "What does it matter, you can run all your
: old 68K tiles in crippled emulation under Executor, and as for the
: PPC titles? Well who cares since there are better Intel equivalents
: you can run instead".

Bad example since 1) Apple is becoming more profitable, not less; 2) Adobe
has pledged support until doomsday; 3) I use Netscape under Win95 daily
and it utterly sucks compared to even the 68K Mac version; and 4) I can
put in a PCI card with a 166 MHz Intel type chip on it and run all that stuff 
better and with fewer headaches than can be done with Brand X hardware.

If people think IIgs native software is good, bully for them. In my opinion,
lack of good native software and the delay on the part of Apple to put out
a real OS for it are fundamental problems which crippled the IIgs throughout
its life cycle.

: >Having a //e card is a perfectly viable way to move from Apple II to Mac.

:     It was a perfect example of too little, too late for the Apple
: IIe/IIc crowd. It was not even an option at all for the Apple IIgs
: crowd (how can it even begin to be, if it meant losing the entire
: GS half of your machine and accepting a *crippled* half of the IIe
: side). Now if the Apple IIgs never existed and this option was made
: available in 1984, then your above statement would make more sense.

There was nowhere to put a card in'84. But software emulation existed back 
then. You've heard of II in a Mac right?

:     It is what also killed the "Mark Twain" Apple IIgs. A low cost
: Apple II that worked as a color Mac-like machine with a built-in
: hardrive, decent graphics and speed (I have no doubt if finished,
: the M.T. would have incorporated a faster 65C816 and enhanced VGC)
: would make the Macintosh LC, Classic and IIsi seem superfluous.

I suppose you gotta decide if you're gonna base future products on the past
or on the future. I've heard talk that Intel will drop the x86 instruction
set and make more RISC like chips in the future. I guess even they've caught
on. When they get out of trouble with the FTC maybe.

:     Steve Jobs was not the only religious guy about the Macintosh,
: there were still plenty of people working there who believed you
: could not make an Apple II that was equal or better than the Mac.
: Faith and interest surrounding the Macintosh today is based more
: on a religious following, than actual merits the machine may have.
: That is why the Apple II was ignored and pushed aside at Apple.

People have to be pretty twisted to consider their platform choice a religion.
Now brand loyalty is a good thing on the other hand. Apple is #1 in brand
loyalty as you've probably heard.

:     Oh please. The cost of the Apple IIgs never dropped from what
: it was when introduced in 1986. As the years went by, the cost of
: manufacturing and parts went down, so the price of the GS should
: have remained relative to that. Other computers and technologies
: coming on the market have an influence too. The fact that the
: Apple IIe (1 MHz, 8-bit CPU with 128K) sold for about the same
: amount as 386/486 machines (33 MHz, 32-bit with 8 MB) in late
: 1993 was absolutely digusting business practice.

No one's gonna deny that Apple stuff was expensive. It reminds me of
that Acura commercial with the line "paying for quality is a hard decision
to make" in it. That's why all my Mac stuff is secondhand and fairly well
out of date. That it's at all usable any more is testament to the well known
advantage in life span and return on investment in Apple products.

: >I can't reuse any of my hardware such as nubus cards in a new Pmac. And
: >again, I'm talking continuing support of my existing equipment. There is
: >very little difference between a IIgs and a 68K Mac there.

:     Did you not tell me a few months back that there were early
: PowerMac's with Nubus slot support? The important thing here is
: offering backwards compatibility at each step, but not forever.

Nubus Pmacs have been out of production for three years, and won't run
Rhapsody, let alone OS X.

: PC's have kept ISA slots for backwards compatible since the 286
: era, but that is soon going to be phased out soon. Care to refresh
: me on which, if any, Mac's have had 50-pin Apple II slots?

It's as valid to ask what PCs have them. There were clones with both with both
nubus and PCI slots although I don't see the relevance of that either.

: >Many Mac models were dead ends upgrade wise too, e.g. IIfx, Q700. Logic
: >board upgrades were never cost effective versus the sell-n-buy approach
: >either.

:     Dead ends in themselves, but the user was never abandoned since
: software that ran on the IIfx and Quadra 700 could run on any equal
: or higher model Macintosh. I could say the Apple II Plus and IIc were
: dead end upgrades too, since neither could take a motherboard swap to
: turn them into Apple IIGSes -- However, you could buy an Apple IIGS
: and run your II Plus and IIc software on the IIGS. Do you see the
: point I am making here?

: >As I mentioned, the advent of low cost Macs plus the arrival of
: >the //e card in '90 ended the Apple II's market viability. Not for those
: >with old Apple IIs of course, but to the average Joe wandering into an
: >Apple dealer, they were a better deal.

:     Not quite. APPLE COMPUTER ended the Apple II's market viability.
: How so? They refused to back it with any support, which turned off
: software and hardware companies (Western Design Center would have
: continued the 65C816 evolution had Apple been willing to back them).
: Apple never made the Apple II price competitive with the Macintosh
: or any other machines on the market--in fact they made them look
: like utterely ridiculous options (see example of IIe above). They
: also refused to update the technology in the slightest, leaving it
: quite stagnant when the Macintosh and the rest of the computer world
: kept moving forward every year.

Apple still ostensibly supports '68Ks but the market has left them behind.

:     There was a huge following of people loyal to the Apple II, the
: market was there and the companies to back it too. Apple decided to
: squeeze the life out of that market so they could focus entirely on
: the Mac market and eventually succeeded. Some people were unphazed
: by what happened and remained loyal to Apple and its products (rather
: like someone in an abusive relationship going through denial) while
: the largest majority went elsewhere.

I wonder if there are any statistics on how many Apple II owners went the 
Brand X route versus how many stayed with Apple. I guess you'd first have
to figure out how many people you're talking. Units sold doesn't translate
into owners when you figure how many went into schools. I'd bet it was
half and half.

I tell you what, I think the time has come to agree to disagree and give
this thread the death it so richly deserves. Eh?
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