Re: Apple Drops Backward Compatibility for Next MacOS

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <nevin-ya023180002810961239520001@192.12.69.9>,
Nevin ":-]" Liber <nevin@CS.Arizona.EDU> wrote:
>There is no doubt that Apple could have made the technological decision to
>go with improving the IIgs.  The question, which most advocates tend to
>ignore, is:  are there sound *business* reasons for doing so?

>There were three possibilities (well, actually more at the time, since
>there were more platforms like the Apple III and the Lisa):

   A3 was _dead_ and gone by mid-1981. The Apple III+ had all of the
features (and more) of the Apple III, but none of the flakiness, but
the public's perception of Apple III machines was that they stank, and
it didn't sell well at all.

   Funny you should mention the Lisa. Better than the original Mac,
but killed off to support the Mac. [Hmmmm. Where the heck have we
heard this before? The killing of the Apple II was not the only
misguided business decision to come out of Apple by a long shot.] When
the Mac took off, the Lisa (renamed as the Mac XL) became real
popular.  Why? Expandable, more powerful, etc. However, Apple had
closed down the Lisa manufacturing lines, and they didn't reopen them
in spite of *obvious* demand for Macs better than the original 128K
box.

   It took them until the Mac II a few years later before Apple
regained sanity from the Steve Jobs design of "Closed box; 128K should
be enough for EVERYBODY." (Bill Gates ain't gont nothing on Jobs-- it
was only by the designers sneaking in the ability to go to 512K of RAM
that the Mac could be a halfway useful machine, not a cute
toy). Similarly, in the design of the Apple II, Jobs was pushing for
only 1-2 slots; Woz had the foresight to figure out that users will
find uses for them. An unexpandable box is fine for a game console you
plug into your TV or certain palmtops. However, anyone looking at the
tremendous progress in the computer industry would have to be blind to
try and deny users the ability to upgrade their boxes.

>1.  Support Macintosh only.
>2.  Support IIgs only.
>3.  Support Macintosh and IIgs.

4. Provide a bridge between the A2 and Macs. Make a 'Apple //e on a card'
in 1985, not 1991, and sell it as a nice migration path.

   Apple took the worst route, supporting Macs and then throwing
tidbits to A2 users that were too little, too late. The hardware for a
//e on a card was designed with the GS-- the 'Mega II' chip with a 6502
and some ram _is_ a //e. So, why'd they take 6+ years to get around to
doing such a thing?

5. Split the company and/or otherwise license off the A2 line. Once
again with Macs, Apple's proved that they'd rather have high profits
and little market share than some form of market domination. Spinning
off a division for the A2 with its own budget for advertising, etc
would have made Apple a lot more money. As a separate division of
Macintosh, Inc., the A2 division could share technological inovations
in software and hardware; a little internal friendly competition to
develop better things can be healthy.

   In the early to mid 80s, there were tons of platforms (A2, IBM,
Commie 64, Amig, Atari, TI*, etc) out that have fallen extinct; there
were companies that stayed exclusively for one or two platforms, and
plenty (Broderbund, EA, lots of others) that developed for many platforms.
At the time, developers routinely developed for multiple platforms, so
A2 _and_ Mac was not a problem for them.

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein