Re: ANN: Retiring from A2 world - Good Bye All!

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <3d07a958@news.svn.net>, Paul Grammens <grammens@svn.net> wrote:
 
> You give Tom WAY too much credit.  The root cause was obsolete hardware.
> People don't write software for obsolete hardware- at least not if they
> want to make money. People don't invest a lot of money in obsolete
> hardware with a declining market share.  For example, today the Mac
> survives only because the hardware is cutting edge.
 
And why has the Mac cutting-edge hardware while the Apple II didn't?
After all, the first Mac arrived only some 5 years after the Apple
II, yet the Apple II died 10 years ago.  If the Mac had had the same
lifetime as the Apple II, the Mac would have died some 5 years ago.
The answer is of course that Apple Computer decided to focus on the
Mac, and to neglect the Apple II.  Now, the Mac was Steve Jobs'
machine, while the Apple II was Steve Wozniak's machine, and Jobs
remained at Apple Computer much longer than Wozniak -- I think there
you'll find a large part of the reason why the Apple II hardware was
allowed to grow obsolete instead of being developed further.
 
Interestingly, the Apple II "spirit" was, during the late 80's and
the 90's, carried on -- by the IBM PC family of computers!  The early
PC models came with a thick manual containing, among other things,
curciut diagrams and a ROM BIOS listing -- just like the Apple II
did!  "But the IBM PC just copied the Apple II concept!" I hear you
cry......sure!  Just too bad Steve Jobs wasn't smart enough to do the
same thing with the Mac.  Had he done so, then the Mac could have
been a mainstream computer today, instead of a niche computer.  But
then the Mac would have been an evolved Apple II of course....
 
-- 
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