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Re: The apple 2, the PC, and the clones
Supertimer wrote:
Exegete <millers@noneofyourbusiness.com> wrote:
Supertimer opined:
What has really driven
innovation and an explosion in the PC market that has driven
Apple down below 10% market share in recent years has
absolutely nothing to do with business. It is the home market.
Yup, the market that Apple had, could have kept, but ignored.
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.
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?
There were other products that did similiar things on the Atari and
Commodore 8 bit platforms.
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.
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.
The Commodore 128, which competed with the IIe, had 80 columns, built in.
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.
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???
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.
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?
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.
No, but Apple had to keep the Mac expensive and so it was
eventually the IBM compatibles that captured the home market.
Apple II or Mac it does not matter. Apple missed the boat
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.
Even Maximum PC
magazine noted this.
So? It isn't the first time they were wrong.
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.
Seems that Maximum PC is wrong, four times over.
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.
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.
The PC captured the home market when the "clones" did what IBM tried to
do with the Junior. A machine that allowed you to bring home your work
and finish it off in the surroundings of your family, and also offered
great color and sound for games. Once the VGA and SoundBlaster was
there, the PC was a game machine as well as a productivity box. And ID
is the company that saw that and took off on it.
This is what IBM wanted to do with the Jr. granted. But is
this really the case with the PC? Think about it, you can
run Microsoft Office in a Mac today and share files but does
that make the Mac as popular in the home as the PC? Of
course not. Not when it is expensive and offers less power
than the PC.
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?
On the other hand, Macs have a larger share of homes than they do of
corporate office suites.
Yes, power. CPU and GPU power are not really very
imporant in the office but it IS important in the home setting
where games and multimedia rule.
The strange thing is, that the Tandys, Compaqs and Dells of the day took
exta hardware to be the great game machine that the IIgs could have
been, if it only had two things: software, and more speed.
I agree. I could never understand why Apple could not take
the concept of the IIGS and merge it with what they felt
about the Mac. Either continue with the IIGS and make
it faster and throw your support behind it OR take the Mac
and make it into a machine with the IIGS' knack for sound
and the Amiga's knack for video. And of course, lower the
price.
Another option would have been to build a faster IIGS and
actively support it and support the Mac at the same time.
One for the home, one for business.
What Apple did was ignore the home market. Remember,
the IIGS was left to sell itself. You can count the number of
IIGS commercials and advertisements throughout its 6 year
life span on one hand.
It started several years ago when AMD became a player in the
PC market. Lesser CPU manufacturers like Cyrix and IDT and
Rise had come and gone but when AMD introduced the K6-2,
decent sub-$1000 PCs with good gaming capabilities became
available and the home market exploded.
You're off by about 10 years here.
No I am not. The K6-2 dropped the price of the PC and the
PC market DID show an explosion of PC sales in the late
1990s.
As I showed above, you are off by about 10 years. The Tandy 1000 was a
sub $1000 in the mid 1980s.
I owned a sub $1000 PS/1 in several years before the K6 came out.
What caused a huge mushroom growth of home PCs wasn't the CPU, or color,
or sound, but rather the Internet.
Roy
Once this happened,
Intel had to re-evaluate its strategy and competitive pricing
between the two has kept PC prices low. But the K6-2 was
only the beginning. When the Athlon was released and climbed
to 1Ghz and the Pentium III could not match it, AMD and Intel
started to battle it out for the speed crown and the home user
benefitted. Powerful computers sparked advanced gaming
which fueled development of powerful graphics cards.
The PC is where it is today because of the HOME users NOT
corporate America.
Exactly. But it took IBM creating a great corporate machine (386 PC plus
VGA) to give a base to create a great home machine.
Actually, Compaq created the first 386 PC and released it
months before IBM. ;-)
When the Mac clones did the same thing a decade later
and embarassed Apple, Apple killed them by pulling the
licenses.
After all, why do you need an Athlon
XP 2200+ or a Pentium IV 2.5Ghz to access Outlook, Excel,
Word, and Powerpoint when really a 200Mhz Pentium could
do (and slower in some companies).
The home market is the driving force of PC technological
innovation and Apple really missed the boat when it failed to
deliver an affordable yet powerful home computer.
The IIgs was that machine, but it didn't have the needed productivity
and game software to make it.
The IIGS had tremendous potential to be this machine but
it was Apple that prevented it from being so. They kept
prices high, dropped advertisement, witheld support to third
parties who made software and hardware for it and directed
all their energies to the Mac.
If they had taken the Mac of the day and merged it with
the IIGS then lowered the price, they would have had a
winner. Or keep them separate but devote more effort to
supporting the IIGS so you could have two markets. The
truth is, Apple never saw the promise of the home market.