Re: Wozniak vs Jobs

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

toddpw@ugcs.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel) wrote:

>supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) writes:
>
>> The reason behind this comes from the
>>fact that the ARM can be used to emulate a 6502 on one hand
>
>No ARM chip yet built can execute 6502 instructions. You are
>reading way too much into the "make 6502 emulation easy" goal.

You keep wrapping it back to this, but the fact of the matter is the
ARM was more powerful than the 68000 and Apple in fact
designed and prototyped an ARM A2 that could run A2 software
as fast as the real thing.

The ARM was a hell of a lot faster than the 68000.  The 68000
could match, what, a fast 286?  The ARM was moving at the real
speed of a 486 before there were any real 486.  There was once
a comparison of a game animated with shaded polygons on the
Archimedes ARM based computer and a port to the Amiga 1000.
Even with all of the Amiga's cool custom co-processors helping
the huffing and puffing little 68000 along, the Amiga port could
not keep up with the Archimedes original.  The ARM was just
a more powerful CPU...

Apple had a real working prototype of an ARM A2 that can be
verified by Charlie Springer, an Apple employee of the time.

>Pretty much everything inherited from the 6502 (NZVC status
>flags, ALU ops) were considered to be good things in early
>32 bit chips, and for the same reasons (helping programmers
>from 8/16 bit chips make the transition). Thus, both ARM and
>68K had those features. SPARC does too.

The ARM was a more powerful CPU than the 68000.  Besides,
an ARM A2 was designed and prototyped and that is the issue.
It should have become the Mac because this "Mac" could run
A2 software.

It was Jobs that wanted the two lines very separate, not any
technical necessity to sever ties with the A2 line.

>If Apple really wanted to emulate 6502 instructions, they could
>have done it just as easily with 68K. They did not need ARM.

With the type of 68040 in a Quadra in 1992 I this may have
been true.  With a 68000 at 7Mhz in 1984?  I don't think so.
The ARM was the processor that could do it then.  Apple knew
it, or at least some parts of it, which was why they had an A2
powered by an ARM designed and prototyped.

>>and the fact that the ARM was more powerful than a 68000 on
>>the other.  Thus, the ARM A2 could run old A2 software and it
>>also had more power than the 68000 so it could have easily
>>implemented the "Mac" GUI.
>
>Since the ARM was designed for the Archimedes, a very Mac-like
>machine in spirit (co-op multitasking, GUI in ROM, but it had
>BASIC too!) I agree that the ARM could easily have run a GUI.

Yes, but it was even more powerful than the Mac because of the
ARM.  The Archimedes was really the first RISC personal comp
and it was amazing.  The Amiga 1000 could kick the original Mac
butt in games, but the Archimedes could beat the A1000 without
the special smattering of silicon the A1000 used to get its graphx
performace...it relied on the power of its ARM CPU to provide it.
The Archimedes could even emulate MS-DOS faster than most
real PCs ran at the time!

>However, it is not clear that the ARM was sufficiently more
>powerful than the 68K to be worth considering.

Step away from the Apple/Jobs party line for a minute...and
you will see the truth.  A chip that can alone beat the 68000
in a computer where that 68000 is helped by custom co-
processors (the Amiga 1000) is MUCH more powerful than the
68000.  You are also ignoring the fact that the ARM A2 was
designed and prototyped and it ran A2 software!  A 7Mhz
68000 simply does not have this kind of processing power...

>The ARM had
>very lazy growth and no visible corporate backing, whereas
>Motorola was going to be pushing the 68K up-and-up no matter
>what Apple did. The Macintosh was not the most important 68K
>customer until after the 68020 era. More 68060's went into
>telecom products and Amiga emulators than into Macintoshes.

That's the biggest joke of them all...WHY did the Amiga designers
choose the 68000?  The fact of the matter is that Apple's stamp
of approval made 68000 an "industry leader."  Were the Mac to
have had the ARM, Amiga designers would have chosen it.  If the
Archimedes can outperform an Amiga without the Amiga's tricks,
then it would surely have been a great CPU for a better A1000!

>Your argument that Apple should have championed the ARM carries
>about as much weight as the similar historical argument that
>Apple should have bought a chunk of WDC and forced them to think
>hard about making fast 65816's, not to mention the fabled 65032.

Let's see...

You are accusing me of misusing 20/20 hindsight when you, having
the benefit of seeing the 68000 become a standard because of its
use in Macintosh, claim that a similar success could not have
been achieved using the more powerful ARM.  First you claim it
can not be done with an improved 65816...which can not be proved
or disproven.  In the ARM's case, it CAN be proven that the backing
of a product by a major company like Apple can make the product's
design accelerated, its use accepted, etc.  The Apple product that
helped the ARM along was the Newton.  The ARM A2 "Mac" would
have been an even better promoter than the Newton, right?  It in
fact spawned 200Mhz StrongARM chips, right?

Now you are backtracking and saying ARM sucks?  Come on.
This is blind support for Apple and denial of Apple's past mistakes!

>I was an intern at Apple two summers, and I spent both of them
>working on the CAD library files for Apple's custom chips,
>standard parts, and grunt logic... they made an incredible number
>of Macintosh motherboard controller chips and peripheral
>controllers, but it never occurred to anyone high up that the
>65816 was easily less complicated than some of the things they'd
>designed. However, the whole industry mindset is that if you want
>leading edge CPU performance you buy a "real" CPU from a company
>that makes them ... only recently has the ARM business model (own
>your CPU and license it) become viable in America for anyone other
>than MIPS (who actually has been part of SGI off and on, over the
>years, so they are not pure fabless whereas ARM always was).

O-boy...Intel did not REALLY take off until IBM backed it in its PC.
In the case of the ARM, the chip was superior in every way to the
68000.

>BTW I made the "Apple should buy out WDC" argument back about the
>time of the Apple //f paper... by then things were too far gone.
>Apple severely needed to focus their efforts on the Mac, and it
>would have been better if they had had the guts to say "sorry,
>it's not forever, here's how we're going to phase out the II" and
>just ended the whole pathetic vigil.

The 65C line had many advantages, but somewhat plausible
arguments can be made against it.  I think the stunted evolution
of this chip is mainly Apple's fault, but no one can prove this
one way or another...

The ARM however DID evolve.  It WAS the superior chip to
the 68000.  The Mac COULD have been based on it.  An ARM
A2 WAS prototyped and could run A2 software.  Mix the last
two and what do you get?  The realization that if not for Jobs
stubborn insistance that the Mac and A2 lines remained
separate, a more powerful original Mac would have appeared
(call it ARM A2 if the name Mac offends) that would have
been able to run A2 software.  Rather than siblicide, we
would have had a continuous evolution of A2 into Mac like
today's evolution of 68k Mac into PPC Mac...which is more
logical, right?

If Jobs was in charge of the 68k Mac to PPC Mac transition,
do you really think the PPC Mac would have been a Mac
at all?  That does not fit with "next big thing" and "keep the
two lines distinct and separate" mentality, you know!

>>This is 180 degrees from what Jobs wanted...that the A2 and
>>Mac lines remain very separate.  This guy was even upset
>>that the IIgs used a mouse and GUI!  Thank God he wasn't
>>there during the 68k Mac to PowerMac transition!  He would
>>probably have wanted the 68k world and the PPC world
>>separate...and repeated the same mistake!
>
>Please take your hatred of Steve Jobs and do something constructive
>with it, like starting your own software company or something.

If he were there a few years back, PowerMac would not have
been able to run 68k Mac software and it would have flopped.

>Jobs was not alone in wanting the computer families to be separate;
>such products are vastly easier to market, sell, and support.

If the 68k Mac and the PPC Mac were to remain separate
and incompatible, would they sell better?

The very reason that Apple was able to successfully phase out
the 68k Macs was because the PPC Mac was NOT separate,
WAS backward compatible, and could carry the torch once the
68k Macs were phased out.  Can't you see that this would
have occured had Apple went ARM A2 instead of 68k Mac?
(The ARM A2 would have BEEN the alternate Mac with the
same revolutionary GUI and backward compatibility too!)

>The
>other good model (which Sculley pushed for and mostly got) is to have
>everything use the same peripherals, so CPU's are chosen for power
>and compatibility and Apple sells you the same peripherals for both.
>
>Things did not get that much better for the A2 when Jobs was ousted.
>If he is so much to blame, why did those who carried on after him
>do much of the same with regard to the A2 ??

They were already brainwashed by Jobs.  Sculley realized that
the commitment to the 68k series Mac had already been made.
By that time, the only thing he could do was release the IIgs and
let the II line live a little longer as a cash cow until the Mac (which
sold poorly) could finally catch on.  It was a rational strategy,
but one which he most likely would not have made had he been
able to turn back the clock.

If the ARM A2 was adopted as the "Mac" then the Mac and A2
lines would never have been separate.  You would have no
A2 vs Mac conflict and more importantly, the ARM A2/Mac
would have been more popular intitially!

>>By the way, did you hear Jobs killed the StrongARM powered
>>Newton.  He wants to make a MacOS PDA...which of course
>>will NOT be able to run Newton software!  Jobs does it again!
>
>Jobs killed Newton because it was not profitable enough and Apple
>desperately needs to focus its resources -- same reason he canceled
>the Mac Clone market. Try browsing www.news.com for the ongoing
>coverage of Newton, you'll find that Apple is trying to recycle
>the technology even as the Newton market is trying to get Apple to
>sell the technology.

A little strange that of all Apple CEOs, ONLY Jobs could come
up with this...

>As for the PDA, if they can port MacOS to StrongARM, they will do
>it, because StrongARM is much,much,much better for PDA's than any
>powerpc yet fabbed. If they try to sell a stripped down PowerBook
>then they will ship on time but it will be heavy and have lousy
>battery life. If they do it right, it will be more of a Windows CE
>type rework of the MacOS running on Newton-derived hardware. That,
>probably, is why Apple refuses to sell off Newton; they need to
>recycle too much of it for the PDA product.

You are assuming that Jobs is logical.  He'll probably try to make
a 68000 palmtop because it resembles the original Mac that he
championed.  Crazy, but the guy is an egotist!  You have to realize
this is the guy that killed the ARM A2/Mac that would have gave
Apple continuity...the same continuity that made the PC clones
so attractive as they evolved from 8088 to Pentium II...

>Personally though I think Apple is foolish to compete with PalmPilot
>and WinCE. Unless they have something up their sleeve, it means they
>are getting ready to cash-cow the desktop Mac, so I really hope that
>the new PowerMacs become the Linux box of choice so that people
>defecting from Win95/NT are tempted to buy Mac and run Linux on it
>(I am, when they have a copper-PPC PowerBook that is).

As much as I disagree with Apple for what they did to the A2,
I don't want them to make the same mistake again.  However, in
an interview some time before Jobs was invited back to Apple, he
did say that if he were in charge of Apple, he would want to milk
the Mac for all it was worth and move on to "the next big thing."
I think that would be stupid for Apple to do.  Jobs does not know
the meaning of "installed user base"...