Battle of the Nostalgics

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Now that I have had a chance to use several different
generations of platforms, it seems clear why some
folks are so fascinated with the Apple ][+ and others
are so dedicated to the memory of the Apple IIGS.

For every great family of hardware, there is always
a battle between the most popular of the family and
the most advanced.  From a technical point of view,
it is self-evident that the Apple IIGS was the better
computer than the ][+.  In many ways, it was better
than the Macintosh at the time of its release (that
would be the Macintosh Plus before the IIGS and
the Macintosh SE slightly after for those who don't
remember) yet represented the last of a generation
and this is the reason there are two camps of
Apple II users.

Realizing that the IIGS was the last and greatest
of the Apple II family, many users simply skipped
it and jumped to the Mac.  That is why there are
a lot of us who do not know the true capabilities
of the IIGS and think of the entire Apple II family
in terms of the Apple II+.

I have seen this happen in other platforms.  The
last and greatest of the AMD K6 processors, for
example, was the K6-III+.  Scaling up to 616Mhz,
this chip ran twice as fast per clock as the K6-2,
the most popular of the CPU family.  It also
blew away the first Pentium IIIs before on-die
cache was integrated.  Yet except for those of
us who stuck with the CPU family, the K6-III+
is a footnote.  The K6-2 is the chip that is what
is remembered, a model that was always slower
than the equivalent Intel chip, a black sheep that
is thankfully forgotten thanks to the Athlon.  In
many ways, the Athlon was like the Macintosh.
The Athlon was the next generation processor
and it smoked the Pentium III.  More importantly,
the first Athlons were already around when the
K6-III+ appeared, just like the Mac arrived before
the Apple IIGS.  Like Apple, AMD didn't really
support the K6-III+.

The same thing has happened with Intel with the
Tualatin Pentium III.  Like the K6-III+, the Tualatin
overcame the limitations of the rest of its family
due to a die shrink to 0.13 microns.  This
advance enabled the Tualatin to outperform the
equivalent clocked P4 which had already been
introduced.  Like the K6-III+, the Tualatin also
owed part of its performance to a larger on-die
cache.  Yet the Tualitin was just a footnote
because it ware introduced after the P4, which
was the generation to replace it and Intel really
did not support the chip.

There would always be those of us, the ones who
first jumped ship to Macintosh, Athlon, and P4,
who snide at those who remember the IIGS,
the K6-III+, and the Tualatin PIII fondly.  Those
users will always see the past colored in the
view that their machines were always the kings
of the hill.  That the previous generation richly
deserved to be dead and burried.

Yet many of us have a more accurate view of
history.  Those of us that realize the truth know
that in order to truly remember the glories of
past technology, one must remember the best
of each generation.  One cannot truly understand
the Apple II until one understands the true nature
of the Apple IIGS.  One cannot truly appreciate
the K6 or PIII families until one understands the
K6-III+ and the Tualatin PIII.

So to all those who have chanced to discover an
old Apple IIGS, do more than play that old
Apple ][+ Defender on a DOS 3.3 5.25" disk with
it.  Take the time to put in a hard disk drive,
connect speakers to the audio port, find an RGB
monitor, get a copy the best version of GS/OS
and install it on the hard drive.  Install at least
4MB of memory and run the best software it is
capable of.  Do this not to try to beat the Mac
or PC of 2003.  That is not the point.  Do this to
truly enjoy and understand what a great machine
the IIGS was in its time. And above all, never
NEVER write Apple ][GS (yuck)!