Re: A Tale of Two Apples

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

In article shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford) writes...

>In article <17OCT199723141927@vax2.concordia.ca>,
>Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:
>>Macintosh II, with a price tag near $10k, it was well out of any average
>>person's price range (making the IIgs a slow, poor-man's Macintosh II).
>
>I'm remembering more like five grand for Mac IIs.

    I was recalling the price in Canadian dollars, which when converted
to American would be near $10k (especially once you purchased a monitor
and additional memory).

>>    It was absolutely disgusting that Apple was shipping the GS with just
>>256K of memory for the first 2 years the machine was out! Out of the box
>>the computer could not run any of the GS-specific software titles out
>>there, this was plain stupidity (it would be like selling a car without
>>a gas-tank and engine, later informing the customer they'd have to buy
>>that as an extra option when they discovered the car won't run!). It was
>>not until late 1989 that the GS shipped with a full 1 MB of memory out
>>of the box, pretty much towards the end of its life span (and by that
>>time most applications were demanding 2 MB or more).
>
>Apple started bundling memory cards some time in '87, and the dealer where
>I got my original IIgs in March '87 did so before that.

    Are you certain about that? When I received my Apple IIgs in late
January of 1988 (I placed the order around November 1987) I did not
receive a memory card with mine. And digging out an old issue of A+
here, the news blurb about GSes shipping with 512K was not printed
until August 1988. Maybe things were different up here in Canada,
but the magazine article seems to back up my experience that it was
not until mid-1988 that GSes started to ship with 512K.

>You really need to keep in mind that in those days memory cost $, and
>putting a lot in the box would run the price up. It's really not that
>big a deal to put in a memory card, especially nowadays.

    Yep, I don't dispute the fact about high memory prices back then.
However, that arguement totally falls to pieces when you consider that
Apple was shipping the Macintosh Plus, Macintosh SE and Macintosh II
with 1 MB of memory standard in the box. The GS price was already
highly inflated and did not reflect the manufacturing costs or what
was in the box (unless Ensoniq 5503 chips cost $400 back then).

    For the cost of an Apple IIgs, it should have included a full 1 MB
from the start. Furthermore, the Macintosh SE was shipping with 1 MB
*and* a hardrive, does it make sense a machine with 1/4th the memory and
_no_ hardrive should cost the same? (you can even argue that further as
the GS lacked a SCSI port, stereo-out jack and had a less powerful CPU).
Something was very wrong here. What was it that made the GS so much more
expensive that memory had to be left out?

>One time I mentioned to a service guy during one of the many logic board
>swaps my IIgs had to have early on that I wanted a 1.5 mb memory card and
>he said "not good for much unless you're heavy into RAM disk usage."

    That service guy sounds about as sharp as the service guy who plugged
my Apple 3.5 drive into the back of the GS while the power was on and
fired my motherboard and drive. ;-) He would have been correct if your
talking about using an Apple IIgs in 8-bit emulation mode, otherwise
the additional memory wouldn't go to waste.

>>    Another annoyance was the lack of a built-in SCSI port. The Macintosh
>>Plus had one from the beginning, the Macintosh SE even allowed you to add
>>a hardrive internally. In order to make a IIgs usable, as most here know,
>>that has always required a hardrive. Why did Apple not ever add that?
>
>It'd be rev C speed if it were built in, who wants that? For those who
>bought //e's new and popped the lid and saw an array of slots and a vast
>empty space around them, this is no surprise or bother either. Adding cards
>is easily done. And suppose you didn't want SCSI? Would you want to have
>to pay for it anyway? Wasn't really cheap back then. I didn't get a hard
>disk until my IIgs was over three years old, and paid $350 for a 30 mb
>drive in mid '90. Another thing to keep in mind in these days of $100/gig
>hard disks.

    At least it would have made SCSI hardrives standard on a IIgs, and
would have encouraged software vendors to write applications and games
that would take advantage of the extra storage and speed. Still, what
about the Macintosh Plus? It had a slow SCSI port, but that changed
when the SE model replaced it -- it is called evolution of hardware.
If you had a slow SCSI port on your GS motherboard, you could upgrade
by doing a motherboard swap to the next revision (or buy a new GS if
you were so inclined and could afford it). The point is there would
have been a Rev C built-in to early GSes, and probably a High-Speed
built-in to later ones. Was the GS design set in stone or something?

>>Or why was the 'Video Graphic Controller' chip never updated to support
>>a 400 vertical resolution mode, or more than 16 colors per scanline? Or
>>why was the Ensoniq chip given only half its usable memory capability or
>>no built-in stereo-out/sound-in connector on back? Where were the faster
>>65C816 chips in the machine?
>>
>>    Leaving these things purposely out made it clear Apple was not serious
>>about the Apple IIgs, and if you wanted a "serious" product you had to buy
>>their Macintosh. The Apple IIgs was just there if you wanted an Apple made
>>product (as opposed to Commodore/Atari solutions) for school, home or hobby.
>
>That must mean that when Chevrolet left Corvette features out of Chevettes,
>they weren't serious about selling Chevettes. I think I see a lot more
>Chevettes on the road though. Every product made by any company has a
>target market and a price tag to match.

    If you use that analogy, then the Corvette "features" Apple left out
were things like tires and a gas-tank. When you buy a car, you want to be
able to at least drive it out of the lot. I would expect the same from
a computer, it should be usable *out of the box* and ready to run. The
Apple IIgs was simple not (Apple kind of left it up on cinder blocks).

>>    There was one point Apple actually went around telling companies to
>>stop producing Apple IIgs software back in 1990 (one of the reasons so
>>many titles were never completed and sat in limbo). When the Apple it-
>
>I'd need to see some proof of this. I figure it was driven by market factors,
>similar to the way less and less Mac software is coming out in 68K versions
>these days.

    It was just rumour. As I recall, several companies claimed men
dressed in business suits and carrying Apple business cards visited
their companies and ask that they halt production of all Apple IIgs
software. Maybe it was someone playing a hoax, maybe it was just a
fabricated myth, but the same report came from a couple of totally
unrelated companies (I may still even have the article here). This
really wouldn't surprise me, it is something I would expect from
Apple Computer based on the way they operate.

>>self refused to support the machine, drop its price or enhance its
>>features, many software companies didn't even need to be told to stop.
>>There was lots of potential in the machine, but how wanted to spend
>>several thousand dollars for a bare-bones computer, then spend several
>>thousands more to buy 3rd party solutions to put in what Apple LEFT OUT.
>
>Three words: "third party opportunity". That's the reason Apple gave for
>not including external video in the first generation Powerbooks. Boy seems
>like they're damned if they don't support third party companies and if they
>don't build in everything under the sun too.

    Then why was the Macintosh enhanced by Apple engineerings and not
left unchanged to give third party opportunity to 3rd party Macintosh
developers? The thing is, if all Apple produced was the Apple II, there
would be ways to rationalize the way they treated the machine. You could
argue costs, motives for third party opporunities to encourage a market,
a lack of engineerings with new and creative ideas, etc. However, when
the same company was making another line of computers and treated it so
differently, all these excuses fall completely face flat.

>>And after all that, find out software companies were dropping support
>>because Apple didn't want to back the machine? Once again, it was Apple
>>that killed the machine. Not piracy, not the Mac (not directly anyhow)
>>and not other reasons people out there may believe. I really don't think
>>there was ever any other computer more negelected by a company than the
>>Apple IIgs (the Amiga would be my second choice, but at least Commodore
>>kept the price competitive and updated the hardware). Its really sad
>>when you think about it, and Apple hasn't really changed its ways.
>
>How do you figure? Apple's been offering logic board upgrades all along,
>and new boxes have the processor on a swappable card so you can up the speed
>with Apple or third party processor cards. Plus they have pledged that
>Rhapsody will run on any box built from the 9500s on, and that box debuted
>in summer '95. And Mac OS 8.0 runs on my six year old Quadra 700.

    I don't like the way Apple is pushing for a proprietary market once
again, squeezing the life out of all the clone companies and any form of
competition. I do not like how Apple forces you to purchase THEIR own
products by having the operating system actually _check_ firmware ID
in CD-ROMs, hardrives and printers, or only writing drivers to support
their hardware. This is a practice they did 10 years ago, and apparently
they are still doing it today. Just their business practices and support
attitudes alone are enough to turn me off from Apple Computer. I don't
even want to get into the Macintosh itself, which is so far behind the
PC in software and hardware it is laughable at this point (something as
basic as preemptive multitasking is not even available on the Mac, or
two button mice). I already made my points a few months back, so I'll
not go any further on that.

    Apple's business practice and computer technology will be the death
of them not too long from now. I think it is rather sad too, since at
one point the Macintosh was clearly superior to what PC's had to offer,
even right up until 1994. There is no longer innovation in the company,
just a driving force to make as much profit as possible without regard
for much else anymore. You just cannot survive like that for long.
I don't want to get too much into this though, since it is a very
sensitive issue (that is, Apple Computer as a company and the Mac). 

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca