Re: Problems in "Modernizing" a //gs

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

In article bjblackbear@ibm.net (B.J. Major) writes...

>Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:
> 
>>     Well, almost 4 years have passed and the PowerMacintosh has had
>> ample time to grow and start ending its infancy stage. I personally
>> see it as a disappointment. What we got is the same old Macintosh
>> but with more horsepower than the 68k original. The 68k emulation
>> and the Macintosh design, toolbox and software drag the whole thing
>> down to a crawl. As someone out there once said, the PowerMac has
>> the PowerPC RISC processor acting as if it were hand-cuffed from
>> behind the back. Yes, it is a very powerful processor, but it is
>> going to waste emulating a Macintosh. All this power yet you can't
>> even do true multitasking? The inferior "PC" does, so what is wrong
>> with this picture?
> 
>The PCs running either Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, two systems that are
>sitting right here in the office I work in, next to my Mac, DO NOT do
>true multitasking as well.  You may *think* they do, but they don't.

    Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 are two completely different things.
The former is merely a graphical shell interface with MS-DOS running
underneath (and quite an awful interface at that) and supports only
cooperative multitasking, like the Macintosh does today. Windows 95
is completely independent of MS-DOS (and other problems associated
with it) and support preemptive multitasking.

    Let me see if I understand you correctly, your claiming the Mac
does multitasking _better_ than Windows 95? This is not an issue of
opinion, it is a black and white technical issue as to which is the
superior operating system when it comes to multitasking. If you
wish to go ahead and argue this fantasy, feel free to do so...
Though first I strongly suggest you read up on the difference
between cooperative and preemptive multitasking.

>>     Why do you have the notion the Apple IIgs design, as-is from 1986,
>> is the most the machine could have ever been? Do you actually believe
>> Apple pushed the envelope on the technology as much they could when it
>> was originally released?
>
>I don't believe this, but as you can readily read from the "Modernizing
>the IIgs" posts, the machine would need such a complete redoing in this
>day and age, that much of the gs as you know it now would be replaced
>(or redone).  Whoever has the funds for this project is certainly free
>to pursue the project.

    I was discussing the posibility for upgrading the Apple IIgs hardware
back in the late 80's. It was very feasible back then, probably right up
until the early 90's as far as a marketable product that would have been 
useful and people would buy.

    Today is a very different story. In order for an Apple IIgs to be
sold, it would need to be more or less redesigned from the ground up.
If Apple kept evolving the hardware, supported the machine and did
strong advertising, I am fairly certain the Apple IIgs could have been 
mainstream and still popular today. Considering the machine has been
relatively untouched for the past 11 years and dropped out of the
mainstream commercial market about 7 years ago, it is probably too
late to resurrect it or turn things around. I could see it being
sold like the Tiger Learning Computer, or sold as a very low cost
introductory computer system (with memory, graphics and CPU speed
enhancements to existing hardware) for children, but not mainstream
without several hundred thousands of dollars invested in reworking
the design from the ground up. Pretty unlikely anyone is going to
make an investment like that (and it would be possible to do once
Apple Computer collapses, as it stands, they're still sitting on
the rights to the machine).

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca