Re: What specs would your Apple ][ clone have today?

["N.N. Thayer" <nnthayer@hotmail.com>]

On Apr 1, 2:35 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:

> Apple has been much criticized in the II world for abandoning the
> II line to focus on the Mac.  But if the choice is staying with your
> (past) customers or staying with (even leading) the market with a new
> competitive-technology platform, then I think we can all agree what
> must be done from a business perspective.
>
> I think that Apple was unusually supportive of an "old" platform--
> look at the production schedule and new peripheral introductions
> for the II line far past its actual competitiveness as a platform.
> Most companies show much less reticence about leaving their early
> adopters behind as they pursue the mass market.  I attribute this
> long-tailed support for the II line as a mixture of sentimentality
> within the company for the II and the _esprit de corps_ of the
> dwindling II team.
>
> -michael

I think it's something less romantic: the II line sustained Apple
financially through new product launches that did not go as
anticipated (III, Lisa, Mac) even after the II itself ceased to be
terribly competitive against the rest of the computing world.  The
only reason that the Mac even exists today is that Apple II revenues
were around to prop it up in the first few years after it was
introduced.  Apple was put in the paradoxical position of having to
support the one product that it knew to be a consistent breadwinner
(though perhaps one with a built-in expiration date) while at the same
time not cannibalizing sales from the new platform that it had decided
was the future of the company.  Interpreted in this light, its action,
or rather, inaction regarding the II line all the way back to the II+
is understandable - but seen purely from the perspective of a II user,
it's wholly unsatisfactory.  I love the Apple II, and mind-boggling
successful as it was, I can't help but wonder what might have been had
Apple simply decided to extend and build upon it technologically.  As
Woz himself said to BYTE in '84 regarding the Apple III:

"It was unfortunate the way things worked out, because we probably put
$100 million in advertising, promotion, and research and development
into a product that was 3 percent of our revenues. In that same time
frame, think what we could have done to improve the Apple II, or how
much could have been done by Apple to give us products in IBM's
market."

And in another interview:

"We'd have sold tons of [computers in the business market] if we'd
have let the II evolve ... to become a business machine called the III
instead of developing a separate, incompatible computer."

Also:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Apple_II_Mouse_Card.txt&topic=Technical&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium&showcomments=1

A GUI for the Apple II, in June of 1981.  I don't take Woz's word as
gospel but I think his point is excellent - there wasn't any good
reason to not use the II as the foundation for what Apple wanted to do
with the III and even the Mac.  Technological limitations?  As they
found to their own surprise, there was more - a *lot* more - that they
could get out of II-class hardware.  Think of what they could have
done had they decided to build on that... and even when they reached
the point where they had to make a hardware break to get the Mac-level
graphics of '84, I can't think that it would have been cost-
prohibitive, especially in the long term, to build in backward
compatibility which would ensure the machine's usefulness and bring
along an enormous customer base.  The II legacy would be a strength
rather than an albatross.