Re: The apple 2, the PC, and the clones

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Exegete <millers@noneofyourbusiness.com> wrote:

>>Supertimer wrote:
>>
>>> Exegete <millers@noneofyourbusiness.com> wrote:
>> 
>>>Supertimer opined:
>>>
>>>I agree with your first sentance, but your second is nonsense. While 
>>>Apple had a presence in the home, don't forget that the home is where 
>>>the cheap computers ruled: Commodore, Atari, and where TI, Coleco, and 
>>>Radio Shack sought to rule.
>> 
>> What I am saying is that those other cheap computers sucked.
>> Of all the non-PC computers, only Apple could deliver productivity
>> software like AppleWorks, WordPerfect, SuperCalc 3a, and VIP
>> Professional.  
>
>Apple delivered only one of those products.

Apple only produced AppleWorks but what did IBM produce?
It is irrelevant who produced the software, all four of the above
products ran on the Apple II.

>WordPerfect was on the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga. Both of those 
>were "cheap" computers (compared to the Mac and a similiarly outfitted 
>IIgs). And frankly, WordPerfect fan that I am, WordPerfect was just too 
>slow on a standard 8 bit Apple II. It's great on a IIc+, or a turboized 
>IIgs. You did know that Atari 800s ran at 2 mhz didn't you?

Sure, and WordPerfect was slow on an 8086 XT which I used
at the time.  By the time the IIGS came out, there was a IIGS
specific version, WordPerfect IIGS and it was the IIGS version
that was similar to the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga
versions.  They worked quite well.

I thought we were talking pre-IIGS, pre-Amiga.

>There were other products that did similiar things on the Atari and 
>Commodore 8 bit platforms.

Sure.  For the Commodore 128, JaneWrite was quite nice but
its productivity apps were never quite comparable to that of
the Apple II.  When I was in college, I had an Apple II while
my other two roommates had a 286 clone and a Commodore
128.  

>The Commodore and Atari machines had great software, and superior 
>graphics/color, sound and speed to the IIs that they competed against. 
>The IIs had slots, and so the ability to be expanded. The IIs had more 
>software, but in the area of games, for instance, Apple versions usually 
>were poor commpared to the Commodore or Atari versions.

Sure, but in terms of productivity apps, Commodore and Atari
suffered.  Even the Amiga had few productivity apps.  It is
easy to forget the Apple II had the largest body of software
until 1986 when it was surpassed by MS-DOS' library.

The IIGS changed everything.  Superior graphics to the Atari
and Commodore (except for Amiga) and superior sound when
compared to ALL computers including the Mac and PC (with
available sound cards) at the time.

>> While the other computers were doing 32 and 40
>> columns and using TVs as monitors, the Apple II had 80 columns
>
>My Apple II and IIe documentation talks about using TVs. And even the 
>IIe was a 40 column machine without extra hardware. At an extra price.

In 1984, I got my first computer, the Apple IIe Professional
system.  It came with ProDOS 1.0.1, a built-in extended 80
column card, 128k of memory, and a (then) high resolution
green phosphor monitor.  Not long after, I got AppleWorks
followed by expanding the memory to 1MB with a patch to
enable early AppleWorks to access it.  Later upgrades to
AppleWorks 3 supported extended memory natively.  It was
great.

Except for the extended memory (to 1MB) all the other
hardware was part of the package, no extra costs.

I don't know when you got your IIe.  Maybe it was the time
during the Apple III.  The Apple IIe Professional system was
released after the fall of the Apple III.

>The Commodore 128, which competed with the IIe, had 80 columns, built in.

The Commodore 128 was not released until after the Apple
IIe Professioan system.  The Apple IIe Prefessional system
was configured that way to be compatible with the Apple
IIc which had 80 columns and 128k built in.  The C128 was
built to compete against the IIc.

I liked the Commodore 128.  But even the 1571 floppy
drive was S-L-O-W compared to the Apple drives.  The
Commodore 64's 1541 drives were even more slow.  It was
nice that the C128 could run CP/M software though but
it was even more rare to see a C128 running CP/M than
to see a C128 running C128 software.  It was sad but the
C128 was eclipsed by the success of the C64 and C64
software could not compete against Apple IIe software.

>> and software that actually made use of 1MB expansion (like
>> AppleWorks). 
>
>Not at first. At first, all Appleworks used was 128K. AtariWriter's 
>later version used all 128K of the Atari 130XE. The C-128 had software 
>that used up to 640K of RAM.

First, all AppleWorks used was 128k natively but even then
patches came with expansion boards that allowed it some
more.

>It seems to me that you don't know a lot about the hardware and software 
>of Apple's 8 bit rivals. Ever hear of GEOS???

Dude, I lived during the time of those computers.  I owned
Apple II GEOS and found it unimpressive.  It made sense for
the C64 and the C128 which did not have native GUIs but
the IIGS' GS/OS of course blew it away.  On the 8-bit Apples,
GEOS programs were simply no good.  In contrast, third
party GUI programs like Publish-It!, Springboard Publisher,
BeagleWrite, and II Write were superior.  Couple those
programs with the 8-bit Apple II Desktop "Finder" program
and you have a much better GUI environment.

Before I got my IIGS, I tried GEOS but I was so fed up with
it that I configured my hard drive with Apple II Desktop and
the other ProDOS based GUI programs.

Then I got the IIGS and GS/OS and never looked back.

>> Apple could have captured the home market at
>> this time by dropping the price of the Apple II below $1000 but
>> it didn't.
>
>But then, that's the point, Apple would have had to sell with the thin 
>margins that Atari and Commodore had. Power, without the Price, was 
>never Apple's slogan. Apple had always been Computers for the Yuppies, 
>not the Masses. They have always made BMWs, not VWs. And that's why they 
>NEVER had control of the home market. IBM failed in the home for the 
>same reason. The Tandy 1000 was the success that IBM's Junior failed to be.

Tandy 1000 never catapulted the PC into the home.  The first
MPC spec never catapulted the PC into the home.  It was not
until a few years ago when the sub-$1000 PCs hit the market
fueled by rivalry between AMD and Intel and the graphics chipset
wars that this happened.

>> The next opportunity came with the Macintosh.  Ok, so Apple
>> deep sixed the Apple II and users like myself were abandoned
>> and we went PC.  
>
>Mac was introduced in 1984, and wasn't a success until 1986, when the 
>IIgs came out. When did you move to the PC?

The Mac wasn't a success until a few years after that.  Mac
was losing money and Apple was using Apple II series sales
to keep it alive until it could take hold.

I was using PCs for a long time.  I had an XT, an AT, and a
486 but I always used my Apple IIs and later my Apple IIGS
primarily until a few years after Windows 95 when I began
building AMD based PCs.  That was when I considered I
"moved" to the PC in terms of moved to the PC platform as
my primary computer.  It was not worthwhile to move to it
before then.

>> But at least provide a cheap Macintosh IF
>> you wanted it to capture a market not held by the PC, right?
>
>But Apple wanted the market that the PC held, because that was the 
>market when the money was. As Jobs said in 1984, the II would make a $1 
>billion company, but it would take the Mac to make Apple a $10 billion 
>dollar company. But then, the Mac didn't take the corporate suite by 
>storm, and neither had the II.

Apple missed the boat.  The greater market was in the home,
not the coporate suite.

The surge in PC sales during the tech boom?  That was home
PC sales not business PC sales.

>>>Commodore and Atari lost the home market, but not to Apple. The home 
>>>market was lost to the PC, and it was in the days of the 386 that it was 
>>>lost.
>> 
>> Absolutely not.  Sure, some 386's ended up in the home.  In
>> college, one of my roomates had a PC compatible and the
>> other a Commodore 128.  I had a Apple II.  That was the
>> situation in the home market.  The market was split.
>> 
>> The home market did not get truly inundated with PCs until
>> the K6-2 was released by AMD.
>
>LOL - that's bullshit! When did ID release Wolf3d? It ran on 286s (fast 
>ones, slowly.) There have been PCs in homes since before the Junior 
>(1984), and with the Junior and Tandy's 1000, the PC home market started 
>to expand. I bought my first PC for the home in 1987, and my children 
>ran games and educational game (Carmen Where Are You?) at that time. 
>Lot's of games! When we bought a 486 PS/1 we added SoundBlaster and 
>CD-ROM, a couple of extra megs and an Overdrive chip, and had the 
>hottest home computer there was with lots of games (I had to fight to 
>get time to use it for work!)
>
>The K6-2 was a fine chip, but it didn't create a home market for PCs, 
>nor did it "inundated" that market with PCs.

Sure, you got your PC in 1987 and you could run those
programs but you had terrible sound a CGA (maybe EGA) graphics.
The Apple IIGS was out by then and my IIGS had better graphics
and better sound.  I went through college using my IIGS and it
never failed me.  Equipped with a hard drive and the right drivers,
I used the same printers as you would use for the PC, ink jet
ones, and the same TrueType fonts as Macs so the output was
always indentical.

Like I said, when I went to college I saw a mix of computers.
The PC did not own the home market.

I am not saying it was just the K6-2 and I am certainly not saying
it was software rendered Wolf 3D that enabled the PC to capture
the home market much later on.  It was the combination of low
price and high graphics power made possible with the CPU and
chipset wars set off by the K6-2 and the 3dfx Voodoo graphics
chipset.  There was an explosion of PC sales with most units
going to the home.  I am sure the Web helped fuel the boom
too.

The K6-2 was a fine chip but it was obviously rushed to the
market.  Based on the Nextgen 686, AMD had to remove the
L2 cache to release the chip early.  This hurt its performance
something painfully realized when you compare the way it
works to the performance of the K6-III which came later.  But
it was a cheap chip released at the right time to help fuel the
home PC boom.

>> The K6-2 made sub-$1000 PCs not
>> only possible but expected and nothing has been the same
>> since.
>
>The Tandy 1000 was a sub $1000 machine in 1986, and it used an 8088.
>My 1986 Franklin 8000 cost $800.
>My Laser Turbo PC that I bought (1989? 90?) cost about $800, and used a 
>10 mhz 8086.
>My 1994 PS/1 cost $800.

Sure but plug in a sound card and you go over $1000.  LOL,
I am referring to sub $1000 home PCs and as a home PC
a good graphics and a decent sound card are absolutely
required.

> 
> Let's not forget that even up to the mid-90's the Apple IIGS
> had superior sound to any PC sound card...the standard
> PC card was the 4-voice SoundBlaster with FM synthesis.


Sound blaster had 11 voices. The SoundBlaster 16 had 22 voices. Both 
used Yamaha chips.


>> When I bought a PC in 1997 it had a crappy Yamaha card
>> that was similar.  And even Commodore computers like the
>> Amiga had superior graphics to the PC.  In 1995, those
>> VGA screens looked pretty but try to move anything across
>> them and they were terrible.
>
>VGA came out in 1987. Not 1995. By 1995 SVGA was long the standard. And 
>let's face it, 640x480 looks a lot nicer than 640x200. And, frankly, 
>Wolf3D on a 12 mhz 286 with VGA looks better than on my 10 mhz Zipped IIgs.

Who is talking about Wolf 3D?  We must be talking about two
different things.  I am talking about the revolution that made
PCs competitive with game consoles.  Hardware based
acceleration with low cost RISC x86 architecture and the
dawn of SIMD multimedia instructions sets (3DNow!).

Wolf 3D looks terrible on both the VGA PC and the IIGS.  I
played with Wolf 3D both on my 486 and the IIGS.  The PC
version was a bit better but still sucked.  No wonder the PC
could not compete against the likes of Nintendo.

PCs were better suited to play 2D games and the 2D games
of my IIGS certainly sounded better than my roommate's
286 PC at the time.

When did you first see PC graphics competitive with the
game consoles?  The era of K6-2 and 3dfx Voodoo.  Game
and multimedia performance was a big selling point in the
latter PC boom.

>> No.  Price was one factor.  Manufacturers like AMD and
>> 3dfx targetting the home was another.
>
>AMD was simply doing to Intel what Atari did to Apple.
>With similiar results, if you look at the profits.

No.  Did Atari force Apple to cut its prices?  Did Atari fuel
competitive innovation of Apple?  No.

AMD's battle with Intel has done both.  PC performance
has increased much faster than if Intel had been the only
player.  The year and a half that AMD was in the lead
resulted in unprecendented price/performance ratios in
home computers BOTH AMD and Intel based.

And 3dfx.  Without 3dfx, would nVidia be the powerhouse
it is today?

The CPU and GPU wars were largely targeted at capturing
the home market and my point is that this was the correct
strategy, one that Apple should have realized a long time
ago.


>Macs aren't really more expensive. And they do offer more power. Which 
>is why they have regained some market share. However, you have noticed 
>that they don't have as many games, and that games come to the Mac AFTER 
>they are on the PC? That there are still several office suits for the 
>PC, but only one for the Mac?

Macs are a lot more expensive.  I can find an Athlon XP 2200+
system with DVD burner for less than the price of an iMac.
The PC system thus equipped will blow away the Mac in
terms of performance.

>On the other hand, Macs have a larger share of homes than they do of 
>corporate office suites.

Only comparing Macs to Macs.  Compared to most of the large
PC OEMs, Apple can't compete.  Hey, if you compare PCs to
PCs, you will also find PCs have a larger share of homes than
coporate office suites.  The home market is simply larger.

If Apple had realized this sooner, they might have captured the
home market.

>What caused a huge mushroom growth of home PCs wasn't the CPU, or color, 
>or sound, but rather the Internet.
>
>Roy

Both really.  If the iMac were much cheaper, the iMac could
have become the internet appliance.

I mean, you can access the internet just as easily on a Mac
as a PC but if you are a gamer or even if you like to tinker
with hardware like I do, there is no substitute for the PC.

As for PC graphics and sound, you better believe that I have
more fun now with an $80 Athlon MP CPU and a $60 ATI
Radeon 7500 graphic card than the days when the CPU was
$400 and the graphics card was $200.  We have the CPU
and the GPU wars to thank for that.