Re: Future of the II line (???)

[fmlin@terapin.com (Frank M. Lin)]

It's pretty obvious Apple doesn't want to do any major R&D spending on the GS
anymore; except the EtherTalk board.  But still, some improvements would be
REALLY nice, such as a final ROM upgrade, 2.8mhz bus...

I would _really_ thank Apple if any of these two will happen.  Especially if we
can have 2.8mhz bus.  Even if it will be the _final_ hardware product for the
Apple, I wouldn't care.  2.8mhz bus will allow so much more...  And if someone
ever release a DSP board, it'll really be helped by it.

One interesting thing to look at too, is that all the major chip companies
wanted to kill 6502 like 10 years ago.  There must've been a reason.  WDC
picked it up because he loved this chip, the same way the Apple is trying to
kill the ][, but we still love it.

There has been many changes since 1991.  Apple has release a whole bunch of new
Macs, and has cut prices greatly.  Even the price of clones has dropped to rock
bottoms...  There is more competition in the clones area more than ever!  Whole
bunch of graphics chip makers, quite a few processors makers...  All these
competition makes technology fly!  We're now seeing 386/40mhz SX, 386/486
clones...  local bus standards were set quickly, next generation bus already
being design ( QuickRing, PCI ... ).  There's no way Apple will look back at
Apple IIs.  It's got big competitions comeing from everywhere, SUN and NeXT are
gonna make the PC wild with Solaris/NeXTstep ports...  Silicon Graphics has
enter the high-end micros, IBM/Compaq dropping prices.

And we the POWER/PC and P5 comes out, we'll see like 5-10x the performance
right now for about the same price.  How does anyone think the Apple ][ is
going to compete?  Of course, schools don't really need all that power, Apple
][ still works great in school.  I still use my GS for EVERYTHING, but I think
I might just trade up next year.

Honestly, I think Avatar will not be succesful.  It's too late.