Re: Slow GS video thanks to: Apple sucks

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

In article mikew50@aol.com (MikeW50) writes...

>Well, you folks can criticise Apple all you want for not doing a 10MHz
>Apple IIGS, but the fact is that they couldn't.
> 
>It's true that Apple did not do all they could to support WDC. In my
>opinion, it's true that they didn't do what they should have done. What
>most people outside of Apple never heard, though, is that WDC was rather
>difficult to deal with, too.
> 
>As for the availability of 10MHz chips from the start, it just wasn't so.
>The decision to come out with the slower Apple IIGS initially was _not_ a
>management decision, it was an engineering decision. The reason was that
>the faster chips were _not_ available in the necessary quantities.
>Actually, the early yields of 4MHz chips was rather low. While the 14MHz
>design may have been the first major redisign, I know for a fact that a
>number of changes were made to make the chips faster. I do _not_ know if
>these were design changes or fabrication changes, but the issue was far
>more than a simple lack of test equipment at WDC--the issue was that the
>early chips simply couldn't run as fast as needed.
> 
>Apple has certainly made some mistakes. They have limited products for no
>good reasons to avoid competing with another Apple product. But this was
>not one of those cases.

    I would agree with you there, I think during the months the IIgs
was in development there was not a large supply of fast 65C816 chips,
and so with Apple's conservative nature, they chose to use chips they
knew to be reliable and stuck with those (after the incident with the
Apple III, I would think Apple would have pushed for solid and stable
products). Come to think of it, one of the reason I chose the IIgs over
the Amiga in 1987, had to do with the fact the GS was _stable_ while the
Amiga was flakey (screen flicker, "Guru" errors, random locking up and
an overall flimsy constructed piece of hardware compared to solid Apple
made hardware of the time).

    However, that does _not_ leave Apple off the hook as far as history
went. There was blatant negelect of the IIgs, Apple purposely left it
in a crippled state and refused to enhancement or update it in the
slightest as the years went by. By 1988 there was a large enough supply
of faster 65C816 chips available, we should have seen the release of an
8 MHz machine around that time (back during AppleFest '89, Bill Mench
got into a yelling debate with an Apple employee on the stage, over the
fact they had no interest in the 12 MHz 65C816 his company was producing).

    And of course, speed was not the only thing Apple purposely left out.
There should have been 1 MB of memory from the start, the VGC should have
supported a 400 line mode (engineers actually pushed for this at the
beginning, but excuses were made) and 256 colors per line. There should
have been a full 128K for the Ensoniq chip and stereo in/out connectors
built-in. By the end of the 80's we should have also have seen built-in
support for high density floppies and SCSI hardrives, perhaps even with
3.5 drives and hardisks pre-installed. High memory prices in the 80's
and increased cost per unit are weak excuses for lack of these things,
especially when Macintoshes being manufactured by the same company did
include all these perks (yes, the Macs did require them to be useful,
but then so did the Apple IIgs, and why it ended up being used a fast
color Apple IIe in schools; yet not a Mac-like multimedia system with
better graphics and sound). The company was run as if by small children
in a schoolyard, with "favorites" being played rather than equal treatment
and full backing by the company of _any_ and _all_ products it produced.
These little games played may not have had immediately noticable effects,
but in the long term they did.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca