Re: Wozniak vs Jobs

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

In article pdueck@pli.mb.ca (Perry Dueck) writes...

>In article <22APR199821442791@vax2.concordia.ca>, spec@vax2.concordia.ca
>(Mitchell Spector) wrote:
>>     That is what pisses me off about Apple, and if they
>> planned this all along, maybe they should have never come
>> out with the Apple IIgs in the first place (the other II's
>> never evolved, the GS was the first and only II to do new
>> things). It's the fact that they lead us down a road to
>> nowhere.
>
>See, the thing is, Apple Computer, Inc. was not a small little fledgling
>company by the time the mid-eighties happened. It was a big business being
>run by corporates, and it was not the little garage/upstart company that
>it was in 1976. A lot of different people were the ones making decisions,
>not necessarily the same people that were making the decisions in the late
>1970's.

    Whether Apple was big or small, there is no excuse for the way the
Apple II (especially the GS) was handled throughout the years. However
you look at it, the bottom line is Apple mistreated a 6-8 million base
of customers and turned its nose up at a highly profitable product.
Is that good business -- Yes or No? Do excuses even matter?

    If Apple was so intent on killing the Apple II and going Macintosh,
they could have still handled the situtation better. For one thing they
could have been honest and up front about it, and cut off support at
the start rather dragging it out all those years and giving people
false hopes. They also could have offered trade in of "obsolite" II's
for discounts off Macintoshes, or introduced things like the Apple IIe
card back in 1986, not 1991. The GS was the worst of the false hopes
created, people put a lot of money and belief into the GS as a future,
while little did they know it had none.

>Although I can appreciate your frustration with the fact that the Apple II
>was eventually abandoned as Apple's computer platform, I disagree with
>your statement that "It's the fact that they lead us down a road to
>nowhere." I don't think they intentionally set out in 1976/1977 just to
>eventually screw over their customers and have a good laugh about it
>behind the customers backs.
>
>Things changed. Ideas changed. Their corporate structure changed. Sh*t
>happens.

    I feel very differently about the 8-bit Apple II, it just happened
as a logical evolution spawned from the Apple 1--and it is what started
the company off. Creating the original Apple II was not a road that led
nowhere, it did its purpose going from point 'A' to 'B'. The GS was like
a extension to the road, it was a turn-off that promised to take you off
a dirt road and onto a paved highway where everyone else was (it of
course never got there). The 8-bit Apple II was just stagnant all those
years, the GS was the first sign of things moving forward.

    It's not like the GS hit a brick wall by itself. It had MANY things
obviously left out (e.g. more memory, enhanced VGC with more color and
resolution support, built-in floppy and hardisk, faster CPU, etc) that
were purposely ignored. If other companies had control over the IIgs's
technology it would have continued and grown.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca