Subject: Re: Apple vs IBM From: supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2.programmer Lines: 337 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder07.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 25 Jun 1999 06:25:14 GMT References: <930200069.26228@www.remarq.com> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Message-ID: <19990625022514.23870.00000541@ng-fj1.aol.com> Hrothgar Daneking wrote: >I agree with BluPhoenyx: the GS *was* too far removed from >its 8-bit forerunners, at least for me. Initially, I didn't >like the GUI idea (gasp!). The text interface did >everything I needed with a lot less overhead, and besides, I >*like* typing! I regarded the Mac as the sort of machine >that was built for and bought by people who didn't know how >to use computers, and didn't *want* to know how to use them >either. I always figured that such people would be better >off without computers altogether, and as such, the Mac an >abomination. But the IIGS has both a GUI and the ability to use CLIs. Either the old 8-bit Apple IIe CLI under emulation or native 16-bit CLIs like GNO/ME. Granted, GNO/ME is not exactly a full version of UNIX, but had Apple continued the Apple II line using the IIGS as a starting point, the IIGS architecture and power would have continued to evolve and so would multitasking CLIs like GNO/ME. I consider the IIGS as combining the advantages of the Mac (of its day), the Apple II (8-bit models), and the flashy 4096 colors of the Amiga plus the uniquely powerful (even compared to the Amiga) 32-channel Ensoniq wavetable synthesizer chip. It was really a computer ahead of its time because business and education markets be damned, what finally catapulted PC and clones into the undisputed winners of the computer war? It was not the business market. It was not education. It was the home using multimedia PCs. Think about when PCs REALLY started becoming INSANELY (pardon the Steve Jobs reference) popular? It was in the early 1990s when the PCs adopted the MPC standard and then went WAY beyond that. Multimedia, the importance of good graphics and sound, was what finally got the PCs to the top. After that, there was no stopping them. The Amiga shrivled up in the North American market as did the Atari ST. I think of Apple (IIGS), Commodore (Amiga 1000), and Atari (520ST), the 1986 multimedia machines were forward thinking. But Commodore and Atari never did have the clout to make their machines dominant. Apple was the only one of the three that could take IBM and clones head on and you know what? They dropped the ball by neglecting the IIGS to death. At least Commodore and Atari gave a good fight with newer models after the Amiga 1000 and Atari 520ST, but the IIGS was left unchanged. Later, they boosted the graphics and sound of the Mac, but Apple never again did have a computer that could exceed the best sound and graphics of the PC world. The IIGS was their one time lead and they wasted it. >Then, when the GS came out, my first thought was, "Great! >Now the Apple II gets some power!" Then a friend got one, >and when he showed it off to me, with all its Super-Hi-Res >and Ensoniq-sound-chip glory, and my thought was, "Okay, >this is nice; where's the Apple II?" When he showed me the Boot up a ProDOS 8 disk and there's the old Apple II, so what's the problem? If the idea of an emulation mode is a problem, isn't that sort of what you get when you run an old DOS disk on a Windows PC or, even more extreme, an old Mac Plus program on a PowerPC? >GUI, I almost gave up on the Apple line altogether. I kept >wondering why Apple ever made the thing in the first place, >if it was going to be so close to the Mac. If you *wanted* >the Mac features, why not just get a Mac? I know, I know: >software compatibility. But still, I always felt cheated by >the GS being such a departure from the Apple line. Never >mind Apple's rude treatment of its once-loyal user base: it >was (to my mind, at the time) dropping a mammoth hint in >what it *did* produce! Not necessarily, Apple could have took the IIGS and ran with it instead of dropping it for the Mac. Given that at the time the IIGS outsold the entire Mac line (in its first year before Apple stunted it by cutting virtually all marketing and R&D from the IIGS), the IIGS was the logical choice. Integrate the Mac's innovations into the IIGS, add killer sound and good graphics, and you've got an unit with the interface of the future (same GUI as the Mac) but you would have done so without alienating the user base. >Now, of course the GS had a far superior GUI to anything the >PC was able to produce, and in the fullness of time I have >come to see both the GUI in general and GS/OS in particular >as Good Things. I have a GS now, and I like it. However, I GS/OS was a most impressive OS. Still is in the way it handles extensions and FSTs. In fact, I've never come across an OS quite like it. Drop in FSTs that remain as separate files in its own folder and get to use new file systems. No patching. No .ini files to modify. Almost everything else worked the same way. Not even MacOS handles file systems as cleanly and GS/OS had font and DA folders where fonts and DAs remained as separate files back when the Mac still had Font/DA mover and Windows was still a primitive OS (was until 1995 with Windows 95 actually). >have always seen the GS as a separate platform from the >8-bit Apples, just one with very good Apple II emulation. Isn't that what the PowerMac really is, though, a new platform with very good Mac emulation? Isn't a Pentium III Windows 95 unit simply one with very good 8086 emulation for running old DOS apps? >As far as I was concerned, back when the GS was made, and >even now to a certain extent, the only *real* Apple II's >were the 8-bit machines. Then the real Mac is a Mac 128k and a there are no real PCs beyond the IBM XT. >Now, obviously these are my personal opinions, and of course >these are destructive opinions to hold. The original Apple >II was a great design, but since it was not designed from >the start to be expanded into the likes of a GS (or indeed a >//e), any attempt at developing it into something beyond its >original specification would require some sort of >compromise, sometimes of a very messy nature: the 80-column >adapter comes to mind as an example, and others have pointed >out how awkward the bank-switching could be. This was the But the IIGS provided a transition platform to bridge these deficiencies. Yes, it was different, but so is every other evolutionary model of every platform. When PCs first came out with PCI slots as well as ISA slots, they were different than IBM XTs too. Similarly, the PowerMacs were clearly different than the 68k Macs, but because early PowerMacs could run PC software, you have your bridge. You keep your user base. And that's what is important. >result of shortsightedness on the part of Woz. Yes, I'll >admit it: I'm actually claiming that Woz made mistakes! But >Woz was a hacker, and he wasn't looking to the future. That >was Jobs's strong point: he was the visionary. Even the >most reasonable and stable of visionaries are frustrated >with the status quo, and whether or not Jobs was jealous of >Woz is beside the point. The Apple II was a brilliant >machine in its time, but it was very much an ad-hoc design. > Woz didn't have a clear plan for what he wanted when he put >it together (he's said as much), but he put together a >beauty of a machine that Jobs saw as an exciting thing. I >still regard it as a beauty of a machine, but every step of >its subsequent development has shown the lack of foresight >in its original conception. The //e and //c are reasonable >developments of that original design, but they do show its Actually, Apple IIGS design team originally wanted a completely "GS" motherboard with a IIe coprocessor card in a slot (which could be used to bridge other platforms like MS-DOS later). At this time, Woz returned to Apple for a brief time. It was Woz who proposed the overall design that kept the "II" in Apple IIGS. He was the one that came out with the idea of the FPI (fast processor interface) sitting between the Mega II and the 65C816. He was the one that proposed the idea of 128k of "slow RAM" to keep IIe compatibility. He was the one who gave the IIGS a split personality by integrating the IIe emulation so tightly into the motherboard that it was invisible. It was my impression that Woz wanted a machine that II users could trust. Had Apple supported the IIGS and Apple II users kept migrating to the IIGS rather than pushing the Mac and causing users to defect to the PC, Woz idea was that future IIGS models could have more and more of a pure "GS" side and eventually the old 8-bit II would be relegated entirely to emulation. This is sort of how the PC migrated from ISA to PCI. By giving a 5 year window when PCs had both ISA and PCI slots, eventually when all PCI motherboards hit the market, they would be accepted. Apple IIGS meant a TRANSITION to new technology, taking Apple II users with it. Macintosh meant incompatibility from day one and leaving a loyal user base behind. Given, perhaps from an engineering point of view the Mac could be "cleaner" from the first day, but I think LATER IIGS models could be "cleaned up" by phasing out the 8-bit side. If done after a five year transition period, few users would mind. Change is good, but give it time and provide a transition period for users. >age. I can understand (and to a certain extent I sympathize >with) Jobs's annoyance that everybody didn't see this so >glaringly and thus want to move to something more advanced, >planned from the start to feature elegantly what the older >design had to kludge, and incidentally better designed from >the start not to look so clumsy when expanded. The GS was >another such compromised design, and yet it tried at the >same time to take a radical departure from that design. I >don't know that it would have been practical to develop a >16-bit //e (as opposed to a GS): the new features of the >65816 would be stifled by the already messy system >architecture. Perhaps from a design perspective the >departure was necessary after all, if the system was to have >any potential future. I see you didn't like the GUI in the IIGS. But I liked it that the IIGS was going the GUI route and moved toward a Mac orientation. To me, such things are not bad at all. They provided an "out" for the Apple II user base to move into the future. The IIGS provided an upgrade path while the Mac slammed the door in our faces. I think it was great what Apple was doing with the "Mac" GUI and all. I just wished they did it with the IIGS rather than the Mac. And yes, I know that if they went with the IIGS, in a few iterations of new models, the 1999 PowerIIGS would probably run the 8-bit stuff only in emulation. You would ask me, "what difference is that from a PowerMac?" There is a lot of difference, the main one being that by keeping each model compatible with at least the last two or three while advancing forward, Apple would have taken the Apple II user base with them. The Mac was incompatible from day one and THAT was wrong. They did not need to have slammed the door in our faces. The IIGS proves this. No doubt. I think my definition of "Apple II" is different than that of other people. I consider the IIGS' 16-bit side as "Apple II" too. I do in fact agree that the old 8-bit Apple II design is limited and what I actually would have liked happened to the IIGS would have been an end product not much different from a PowerMac (ok, maybe with an Ensoniq chip, a more modern one, thrown in). But what makes a computer an Apple II? I believe that you are arguing for the original 8-bit Apple II architecture. For me, I've actually grown away from it on the IIGS. All my software and most of my hardware is IIGS 16-bit native. But I still consider myself an Apple II user because I started out with the 8-bit IIs. Basically, I think Apple was right. There needed to be an exit strategy to the old 8-bit design. I just think going to a Mac, which was incompatible from day one, was not the way to do it. The IIGS, which straddles the 8-bit and 16-bit worlds, was the way to go because it provided an upgrade path. I wouldn't have cared if Apple released a ROM 4 IIGS that was no longer 8-bit compatible. I would have got my 5 years of transition and been ready to move on. But the Mac, the Mac was not II compatible from day one. That's not right, in my opinion. So, when I say "the Apple II could have evolved" I meant Apple could have taken US, the II users, with them when they moved forward. They could have moved us all forward, first through the 16-bit IIGS, and then beyond. If at some point along the way, the oldest 8-bit legacy needed to be abandoned, that's ok. But give it some time. And keep it "Apple II" by keeping the "link," each new unit compatible with at least the last two or three. Mac broke the link. >Of course, the GS as a platform in its own right is still a >pretty impressive thing, and I don't mean to deny that >further developments could have been even more impressive. >But Apple was right in that the GS (as its own platform) and >the Mac *were* very similar outwardly, and perhaps that was >the problem as much as anything else. In retrospect, I >think there is was a lot of potential to develop the GS as a >Mac competitor, eventually going to a 32-bit CPU and further >enhancing its sound and video capabilities; but with all it >had done with the Mac, combined with the fact that the Mac >was the first successful platform Apple had built since the >Apple II, the reluctance on Apple's part to threaten the >success of the Mac is understandable. Anybody with an eye But the IIGS was more successful in its first year, outselling the entire Mac line. Bells should have rang at Apple! >for engineering aesthetics would have a hard time making >decisions as the head of a company making simultaneously the >elegant Mac and the kludged but promising and popular GS. I felt the same way. Like I said above, I'm not against their pursuit of progress or the GUI, but looking back, it just bugs the hell out of me that they could have done the same with the IIGS. The IIGS had the GUI of the Mac. It had the 8-bit compatibility to move old Apple II users forward. At the time, the II was more popular. The IIGS beat the sales of the entire Mac line in its first year. Logically, they should have come out with newer IIGSes. Yes, for the sake of progress, the third or fourth model IIGS may have left the oldest 8-bit design in the dust and been more of a 32-bit computer compatible with the original 16-bit IIGS native software. And today, maybe a "PowerIIGS" would only run 32-bit software. But this is progress with transition. Each model compatible with the last two or three models. The user base thus has the ability to migrate. The Mac cut off the entire user base of the company! That's a crime and like you, I went PC. >I don't think there could have been any reasonable decision to >make. To favor the Mac, as we have seen, resulted in an >alienated and disillusioned user base; to favor the GS would >be to reject a clean design in favor of a compromised one; >to continue and actively to promote both would be to compete >with oneself; to foster compatibility would compromise both >systems. Admittedly, from a corporate viewpoint, one should >go with the winner -- namely, the GS -- and keep the market >share as big as possible. But even the business-oriented >types at Apple have tended to be influenced by the >idealists, and so here we are. In contrast, the PC world >has always been dominated by the business-oriented types, >and as a result we have technology with a lifespan of about >two years before it's considered obsolete. Technical >innovation aside, I don't think this is a Good Thing, >especially when it tends to trample any attempts at >producing good software that takes advantage of all the >potential inherent in the hardware. Unfortunately, the >general public are too gullible to realise this, and so the >businesspeople ultimately win. Ordinarily, I'd advocate >idealism on the part of the business world, but perhaps if >Apple's businesspeople were less idealistic, they'd have a >lot more business. I submit that they could have had the best of both worlds. Go with the transition IIGS first, then after 5 years, phase out its 8-bit side and relegate that to emulation. Now you have your "clean" 32-bit IIGS design. With 5 years of transition, your user base would have switched to native IIGS software. At the same time, processor speed would have gone up, making software emulation of old 8-bit software possible. The end point would have been the same as the Mac path, maybe better given the sound and graphics head start of the IIGS, but how Apple got there (taking the users along) is the important part with the IIGS route.