BluPhoenyx wrote:
David Wilson wrote:On Feb 19, 10:52 am, BluPhoenyx <bluphoe...@earthlink.net> wrote:Back on topic though, I never realized how much the II was cloned. What about IIe clones? It seems many were II and II+.My first "Apple II" was a IIe clone - the Multitech MPF-III.Curious.Was it standard IIe with 64k, 40 column? Compatible with expanded IIe such as DHR/128k?I like to think that the II series could have lasted longer if Apple had worked with at least some of the cloners. It might have increased the software/user base enough that companies could justify continued development. Granted that Apple would have lost the revenue from the unsold II but would have gained some back by rom licensing.
I strongly doubt that a move like that would have extended the life of the already hyper-extended //e. The machine lived for almost 11 years without significant enhancement by Apple, and both inherited and attracted the largest software base that the world had ever seen by the mid 1980s. Another 10% market share would not have significantly changed the situation for developers. What did change things was the wholesale acceptance of the IBM PC, even starting from zero. When you combine that with the relentless expansion of both processor speed and memory size in the PC market, evident by the late 1980's, it was clear to developers which platform was going to keep their families fed. If the PC had not been a runaway success, and Intel had not bet so heavily on the ROI of investments in faster x86 processors, and Microsoft had not signed a non-exclusive license with IBM, allowing clone makers to wrest design control from IBM, the PC might have been beaten in the market by another design, just as the Apple II was. -michael NadaNet networking for Apple II computers! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."