Re: A.P.P.L.E and others

[dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <110946@hydra.gatech.EDU> gt2011a@prism.gatech.EDU (gt2011a Sheldon Simms) writes:
> 
> 1. What happened to A.P.P.L.E.? Is it still around? If so, what does it do?

A.P.P.L.E. renamed themselves as "TechAlliance", and continued for a
while (in much reduced form).  I don't know if they're still in
existance.

Their Call-A.P.P.L.E. magazine was terminated (and it is greatly
missed).  I'm not sure about their Macintosh publication (or any
others they had).

TechAlliance started up a newsletter, but I didn't renew my membership
so I haven't received one for well over a year.

> 2. When did Apple Coputer, Inc. take over APDA from A.P.P.L.E.?

About 1990.  This was probably the nail in the coffin for A.P.P.L.E.

I can't answer your questions about other groups.

> 5. Why is it that back in 1979-1980, there were probably fewer Apple II
>    users than there are right now, but the Apple II scene was vibrant -
>    lots of peripherals and programs available, lots of little companies
>    advertising, all with a smaller base of customers than exists now.
>    What's the deal? Why does it now require practically a million users
>    of a computer to make the market worth a companies time?

There aren't as many dead keen people who are prepared to do things for
the Apple II on the smell of an oily rag...

[Ramble mode on; donning flame-resistant suit.]

Its all a simple matter of economics.  Why spend a lot of money
developing software for a small market (Apple II or especially Apple
IIgs), probably for a low return, when you can make bundles selling
software for platforms such as the PC.

I'm sure that the Apple II's lack of computing power and poor
development tools hasn't helped encourage big developers.  The 6502 is
not a good processor for running a high-level language like Pascal or
C (there are C and Pascal environments for the Apple II, but they are
generally slow, memory hungry, and are rather old implementations).
This means that assembly language is the most common language for major
applications, which means long development times and lack of
portability.

The IIgs has probably suffered from this as well (somewhat unjustly,
IMO - it is a faster machine, and high-level languages are manageable
on the 65816).

The main problem with the IIgs is that although there a lot of them
out there (over a million, from what I've heard), the majority are
being used in schools as a fast IIe, running 8-bit software.

I don't know how many IIgs's would be in the "powerful" category
(extra memory and hard drive), but I'd be surprised if it was more
than 50,000 world-wide.
-- 
David Empson                                                               
dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz                                                
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand