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Re: Apple II Commercials
<pubpc1@library.ucla.edu> wrote:
(lots of lines deleted in which we definetely agree ;-) )
> > Hey, Sculley proclaimed a lot... ;-)
>
> At least he allowed the GS a few good years, merged the II
> and Mac divisions, and so on. Steve Jobs got upset just
> because some of his Mac engineers were helping put a mouse,
> GUI, and Toolbox on the GS.
Probably this was due to Sculley's vision of the Newton Message Pad: By
rationalization (having Mac & IIgs share the same concept), he saved
resources which he could move to the PDA project.
> If a company burns its customers, the customers defect.
> No wonder Apple is in bad shape. I think users of MacOS clones
> are probably upset also at the recent turn of events. Apple
> keeps hurting its users and thus itself.
Apple ist acting very strange. They don't want companies to produce
PowerPC-based Mac clones anymore; they stopped the development of Mac OS
for PowerPC-based CHRP machines, so the only PowerPC-based computers
left are genuine Apple PowerMacs, along with Umax and a few other
cloners. They obviously tried to get back the control about
PowerPC-based systems capable of running Mac OS.
But on the other hand, they are developing Rhapsody for Intel... a
platform where they have nearly no control about the standards! It's a
strange scenario: You either can run Apple's OS on a genuine Apple-brand
machine or on an Intel-based machine where there are lots of
compatibility risks.
I don't know what Steve Jobs has in mind when he rearranged and
re-rearranged Apple's business strategie. But I see lots of Mac users
leaving Apple and looking for alternatives - it's a similar situation to
the beginning of the nineties when Apple's support for the Apple II line
tended to become hard to understand...
I've read too many "We will survive, we will expand our market share,
and we will present a revolutionary new operating system which will
Windows make look lame" statements... to be exact, I'm still waiting for
Copland or at least that PowerPC-native operating system they did
promise us years ago ;-)
> > Well, there are lots of possibilities... What about a newsgroup
> > "comp.what-if"? :--)
>
> That would be great. On the other hand, what's there left
> to talk about here. :)
Hehehe :-)
> Apple has seen the error of its ways and will make Rhapsody
> Intel, but it may be too late now that Win95 is firmly
> entrenched. The Win3.1 era was Microsoft's weak point and
> Apple missed the boat.
Well, there _might_ be a chance of success if they can release Rhapsody
quickly. Windows NT 5 will probably be delayed until 1999, so Rhapsody
could repeat the "OS/2 Warp" syndrom and be a well-selling OS for a
while, at least until Microsoft's Monopoly Marketing Maneuvers [tm] are
working again...
> Well, Laser did clone the IIGS Toolbox, as did Bill Heinman.
> The IIGS Toolbox is much cleaner and easier to clone.
What happened to the project?
> Various Amiga hardware and software emulators do a better
> job of Mac emulation, but they use Mac ROMs (either the chip
> or an image in a file).
Months ago I saw an article about a new approach of Mac emulation on the
PC (and on other platforms - even on PowerMacs), called vMac. But that
emulator could only emulate a Mac Plus and needs a ROM image, so it is
very limited (and it was very buggy at the time I saw it - I think I'll
have to look out again for it).
> Hey, did you hear that there was an attempt to make a GS
> module for the Emplant hardware emulator for the Amiga?
> They tried, but got stumped trying to emulate the Ensoniq.
Hm... aren't the folks of F.E. systems interested in helping? ;-)
The Amiga is a computer with a very interesting history - I was very
surprised when a friend showed me his 68060/PPC604 dual processor Amiga
with all hardware enhancements Apple IIgs users can only dream of...
> Good point. How about a PCI card for PowerPC that has a cable
> you plug into the GS CPU socket. Have the PowerPC emulate the
> 65C816 _fast_ and the GS logic board take care of capatibility
> and slots. Then have the emulation software patch the GS
> Quickdraw for millions of colors and greater resolution. Plug
> the GS ADB into the PowerPC ADB chain for input control and
> you'd have a GS compatible "PowerGS" solution!
If I could design PCI cards and motherboards, I would have already
started... Aren't there any hardware designers with too much spare time
among us? ;-)
Regards,
Volkmar
--
"Die Staatsanwaltschaft hat nun Anzeige gegen Max Brym von der Muenchner
PDS wegen 'Raedelsfuehrerschaft beim oeffentlichen Vortragen des
Grundgesetzes' erstattet."
n.brauns@link-m.de (Nick Brauns) in <6hf8PVz2QdB@link-m54.link-m.de>