Re: What is the quintessential Apple II?

["Charlie" <charlieDOTd@verEYEzon.net>]

"N.N. Thayer" <nnthayer@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
1168284528.499248.245960@q40g2000cwq.googlegroups.com">news:1168284528.499248.245960@q40g2000cwq.googlegroups.com...
>I ran across a photo set of someone's platinum IIe, and they had
> referred to it as "the quintessential Apple II."  The platinum //e
> epitomizes Wozniak's creed of chip reduction - it has the fewest chips
> of any Apple II, although some of them are custom, not-off-the-shelf
> units.  It has a built-in numeric keypad, which some might say the II
> should've had from the start, but at the same time, not everyone used
> their computers for programming or heavy data input, and it raised
> production costs (granted, not so much by 1987, when Apple had
> economies of scale).  Seems to me the chief idea behind the II was to
> build as you like.  The platinum IIe was also introduced during the
> latter half of the II line's life cycle.
>
> Personally I think the Apple II+, while not the seller in sheer numbers
> that the IIe was, fits the bill a little better.  It came at the height
> of Apple's influence over the computer industry as a whole, not just in
> educational or desktop publishing markets.  According to Woz, from
> 1980-1982 it was the best-selling personal computer worldwide; games
> and many apps were written first and foremost for the Apple II
> platform.  Any microcomputer mag from that period reinforces this,
> especially Computer Gaming World.  It had the basics that you'd expect
> from a modern II - Autostart, the full color palette in hi-res, plus
> plenty of ways to bring it close to IIe-level functionality if you
> wanted to.
>
> Discuss!  It's a fun exploratory question if nothing else, I'm sure we
> all have different criteria.
>

This probably isn't going to sit well with many here but I believe the Apple 
IIgs is the quintessential Apple II because it is more compatible, both in 
hardware and software, with all the other models than any of them are with 
the all the others.

Charlie