Re: New Apple II (was Apple's next move ...)

[Tom Zuchowski <cd003508@interramp.com>]

In article 4m8hm0$lg7@newsbf02.news.aol.com,
	rubywand@aol.com (RUBYWAND) said:
>     The 'hardware scene' has changed much since the last great New Apple
>II debate in 1989. More than ever, Speed and other performance
>considerations favor an integrated platform.
>
>     At the same time, slumping home market sales point to a growing
>dissatifaction with PC. It has become "the old platform". Many '486 and
>slower Pentium owners are standing pat, waiting for something more than
>just another MHz boost.   

You apparently run with a different crowd of PC users than I do.  Most that I know are waiting for performance to become available at the price they want to pay, and/or can't justify buying an expensive mew system when their present machine is doing an adequate even though it is a little slow.

>     Today's PC comes nowhere near efficiently harnassing the power of
>available hardware. The fact that critical subsystems-- chiefly Video and
>Sound-- must be plugged into Slots is a major weakness. That the platform
>must support a wide variety of such cards is another. 

A major weakness?  That is a major strength!  You aren't locked into aging, obsolete video and audio hardware.  A 33mhz slot is nothing to sneeze at, either, and sooner or later Intel will give in to the demand for 66mhz slots.

>     PC's flexibility is a strength: the same basic machine can be
>produced in vast numbers. It is also a curse: absence of a well-defined
>standard end product makes it nearly impossible to design a glitch-free
>user-friendly interface. Despite the addition of costly options, makers of
>leading edge software are unable to deliver reliable performance on many
>machines.

Yup. People that want security should get Macs.  No question.

>     In the battle to match PC, Apple IIGS-X's high level of integration
>could recover the cost of implementing full downward compatibility.
>On-board Video and Sound alone represent both a major cost advantage and
>an opportunity to leap-frog PC capabilities. Since major systems are
>well-defined and standardized, a user-friendly interface is assured and
>IIGS-X developers need design for just one machine.

I don't know that it's =that= much of a cost advantage to put the hardware on the motherboard instead of a card.  A few hundred dollars, at best.  And then what do you do when, two years down the road, the GS-X is now boat-anchor slow and is missing many state of the art hardware capabilities?  Will it have the ability to disable on-board stuff and use a slot card instead?  Or will we have to buy a new motherboard?

TomZ