mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon) wrote:
"Supertimer" <supertimer@aol.com> wrote
Indeed, it was political reasons at Apple more than anything.
Of course, there is also a business risk in not extending a product
line which is critical to the company's success. Evidently, Apple
executives did not consider the Apple II series to be critical to
their success...
Fortunately (for Apple), it appears that they were correct.
I do not think so. Apple lost a lot of customers because given
the choice between the PC and the Mac which was an EVEN
choice since there was no continuity between the Apple II and
the Mac, many Apple II users ended up becoming PC users.
I am not saying extend the Apple II as it was forever but provide
some sort of continuity between the two lines, similar to how
Macs got from 68k to PPC.
This is similar to how IBM lost customers with its PS/2 mess.
Users opted for the clones instead.
There is a right time and there is a wrong time. Apple (under
Steve Jobs apparently) seemed to have wanted to do away
with the Apple II starting as early as 1983. That was the
height of the Apple II's success and definitely the wrong time
to try to cut the legs out from under a successful product.
AMD had better timing. When Intel dropped Socket 7, AMD
continued supporting it and extended it to Super Socket 7.
Why? Because Socket 7 was a very successful platform
at the height of its success. AMD used the revenues that
the K6-2 generated to perfect the K7, the Athlon. Then
when interest in Super 7 started to wane, they released the
Athlon. Users happy for the support AMD provided to
existing hardware (while Intel abandoned them) felt loyalty
toward AMD and recognized a superior product in the K7
so they migrated to Slot A (then Socket A). THAT's good
timing.