More Macweek Rumors
Mark Munz
>Something that just struck me, sorry if MHO is a bit morbid:
>If Apple discontinued the IIe and IIc, the IIgs would be their
>only II. The GS could lose all it's compatability and gain
>performance (fast slots, etc..) I
Funny, it sounds like you've just described Apple's version of
a Low-Cost Macintosh..
raymond r rankins
Has anyone been able to run Music Studio 2.0 on a hard disk running
under GS/OS 5.0.2. I installed it following the instructions in the
manual (and also posted on America Online) and put the AppleMidi
driver in the drivers folder, and also replaced tool032 in the tools
folder with one on the MS2.0 disk(also tried it without putting these
two files in those folders) and whenever I try to start it up, it
drops to the text screen and displays the error message (Can't quite
recall what it says but I think it was some type of loader message)
and error $110A and I have to reboot.
If I run it off a floppy while under 5.0.2, it boots up and works
fine except for MIDI input hangs up the machine with a constant
beeping of the system bell and I have to reboot.
Is there an upgrade availble maybe to get MS2.0 to work under GSOS?
I have a IIGS Rom01 with 2.25 MB memory and 30MB Chinook hard drive.
DA's installed are File Manager NDA and Conch Shell CDA.
Thanks for any help
Ray
---
Ray Rankins |(518) 387-7340 (days)| INTERNET: ran...@zaire.crd.ge.com
2 Moonglow Rd. |(518) 583-3320 (eves)| COMPUSERVE: 71131,3236
Gansevoort, NY 12831| | AmericaOnline: RayRankins
<insert standard disclaimer here>
Doug Gwyn
>Is there an upgrade availble maybe to get MS2.0 to work under GSOS?
Yes -- if you sent in your registration card Triton should have sent
you an upgrade ordering form (something like $15). I have it installed
on a 5Mb ProFile accessed using System Disk 5.0.2 running off an HD20SC.
Seems to work fine.
raymond r rankins
I did send in my registration card, but apparently I am one of those
unfortunate persons who never seems to get upgrade info.
Could someone please give me the number and address needed to
get the upgrade?
Thanks,
Ray
---
cs1...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
With all of this flack about dropping the // line it seems like there
would be one heck of a ruckus if that indeed did happen. I can't see the
millions of people out there who already own a // just saying, "Oh well,
they don't make them anymore, guess we'll just have to buy a Mac!" :-)
(Atleast, I don't plan on doing it...)
After all, I haven't seen a darn thing in any Apple ][ magazine (of the
few that are there) mentioning the demise of the //. Look at it from a MacLeak
(I like that...!) point of view-- if all of those millions of Apple // users
get Macs, and decide to get a Mac-based magazine, wouldn't that make a hell of
a subscription drive? Just a thought...
At any rate-- it seems the only people who really know what is going to happen
are the only people we aren't hearing from-- Apple. And if someone from
Apple is out there-- let's hear about it. As for me-- I stand by my //e
because my //e stands for something.
/////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\
// Randy Vose \\
// cs1...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu \\
\\ University of Illinois //
\\ Champaign/Urbana //
\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////
Glenn C. Brown
>At any rate-- it seems the only people who really know what is going to happen
>are the only people we aren't hearing from-- Apple.
I hate to say this, but "Don't you think Apple would have contradicted the
romours of the demise of the // ifthey were not true? After all, the rumours
cannot be helping sales..."
--Uh, I don't know if I want to sign this. I can feel the heat already!
Todd P. Whitesel
>cs1...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
No heat from me or anyone else; this is what's always in the back of our minds
and it's what prompts me to write everything.
Apple seems to have things in mind but they've got to realize that their
unequal treatment of the II and the Mac in the past has been conditioned into
the public by now, and that they need to actively stir interest in the II
because it is still their best low end contender, and an excellent machine in
its own right, but has lacked certain resources that the 'trendy industry' sees
as necessary. Most of these are now available or will be shortly, and Apple
can't be soo short-sighted to not realize that they can make a IIGS compatible
Amiga killer.
I am sick of people who think that the II is a liability to the Mac. When the
Mac was first getting started, Apple would have gone under if not for the
steady //e and (later) IIGS sales that Apple enjoyed. Problem is, the rest of
the industry has moved on, and Apple hasn't done enough to keep the II current;
a major problem has been the loack of coordination with Bill Mensch. I claim
that Apple has long since had the clout necessary to get the 65816 mask made
to run faster reliably. Now that the ASIC guys are going to make their job
easy then there will be no excuse if Apple allows the Amiga to continue to
draw hackers away from Apple's machines.
I do see a coordinated strategy developing in the low end and mid range PC
markets which uses and (matter of fact) _requires_ both the inherent strengths
of the II and the Mac, and pretty much satisfies everyone (except the fanatics
who should be run out of town anyway).
I'm just sick of Apple not telling us anything when what we need is real
reassurance and not hollow-sounding promises.
Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu
MR.FANTASTIC
> I'm just sick of Apple not telling us anything when what we need is real
> reassurance and not hollow-sounding promises.
I agree Todd, but little tid-bits of news (rumors) that we get keep us hanging
on. Examples??? Hyper-card GS, ROM04, New SCSI card, System 6.0, I think it was
Linda?? that posted the news about hiring a new tech man for the II. Things are
not good and we are losing possible // users everyday. Now if these rumored
products would show up soon, like within the next three months, we might get
back on track as far as support from vendors, but as you said we need support
from Apple. If that does not come with these rumored new products then things
well continue to be the way they are.
All of that was sort of misc. rambling, but my main point is that we keep
getting signs that Apple is at least trying to give a little support even-
though its not enough. I also think that the re-structuring going on might
be good for the // line. Why? I am not exactly sure, but the things I hear
from news and rumors is that they were blamed for poor sales, and I don't
think that was just the Mac. I also think that if Apple dropped the // they
would also die. From everything I have heard the // is still their main
source of revenue.
One last ramble. Trying to push // users into a Mac anything after all thats
been happening looks like it would take an act of God. I had an argument/
discussion with a Mac user the other day, and he honestly could not see why
somebody would not like a Mac. We should not have had that discussion, but
we should have been talking about how to share information between our
machines better. Instead I had to explain to him why I could do everything
on my GS that he could do on his Mac. Maybe not as easy, but the main point
was that I could do it. I also had to tell him that I like the Mac, but I
Apple drops the // I doubt that I will buy a Mac. IBM is getting their PCs
up to speed as far a graphics. I would miss my S in my GS, which is the
best sounding computer off the market without enhancment, besides the NeXT.
(And from what I hear unitl the Amiga 2500) comes out. We have better sound
than the Amiga 2000 eventhough we don't have sterio. With a pair of self
emplified speakers we come out on top. This is not a guess, I am stuck here
with a bunch of Amiga users, and it sucks (Good thing I have GS friends
close to where I live.).
Well this got longer than I wanted too, but I suppect that I have wanted to
say a lot of this for a long time, but have not. I wish Big Apple people
would get on hear just to read what we say. A little light bulb might come
on in their heads. For us who are here right now, I guess we have to hang
on and support each other. I have six more payments left on my GS, that
gives Apple six months (September), and we will see whats happening then.
Apple //GS the power to be your best! Apple // 4 ever, or at least till the
beer runs out! :)
Robert Brown
BITNET: RXBROWN@UALR
America Online: ROBPHD Amiga? Just say no!
I.B.M = I've been mugged!
> These comments are subject to change if Apple does not get their SHIT stright!
Rick Fincher
Mac will have a new file format 'compatible with the rumored IIGS version of
HyperCard'. Good news! It sounds like they have also made a lot of neat
improvements in Hypercard.
Rick Fincher
r...@shumv1.ncsu.edu
c60c...@web-3a.berkeley.edu
MacWeek is contradicting itself. If they report that the II line is
dead, why would Apple be creating products for a machine it is no longer making?
If Hypercard isn't going to help them sell more II's, why make a II version?
It just doesn't make sense. They are mutually exclusive ideas, either dead II
or Hypercard GS. I think nay-sayers are wrong, and the II line will continue.
Financial analysts have pointed out that part of Apple's problem stems from
not giving enough attention to the low end products. They're not losing money
on the II's yet, so there's no reason to kill it now. I think they will try to
build up their weak spot, instead of cutting it off.
*******************************************************************************
c60c...@web-3a.berkeley.edu (Allen Kelton)
Paul Siu
one hand, Apple is actively pushing to push the Mac in place of the Apple II,
and on the other hand, the Apple II base is large enough that they don't want to
lost it. I suspect a sense of confusion here on what to do.
Yes, I like a low cost Mac, since I am a Mac owner myself, but I question
Apple's ability to do so. Who wants a black and white machine for under $1000
when you already have PC, ST, and Amiga with color for the same price? If they
add color to the Mac, then it would threaten the pricing of their higher
machines. This problem is also the same when it comes to the Apple IIGS.
What should Apple do? I don't know. May be some sort of bridge product between
the two lines.
nagendra mishr
why anyone would think so. There are programs available for the MII that
you wouldn't think of running on a GS.
I think the best strategy for Apple would be to promote both the II lines
(MII and apple II) there is no contest between them. Educators would
rather pay $1500 per system rather then $5000 and business want the high
quality programs on the MII.
nagendra
Larry Rosenstein
c60c...@web-3a.berkeley.edu writes:
> MacWeek is contradicting itself.
So? Rumors don't have to be self-consistent. Rumors are good for
entertainment, but not much else.
Larry Rosenstein, Apple Computer, Inc.
Object Specialist
Internet: l...@Apple.com UUCP: {nsc, sun}!apple!lsr
AppleLink: Rosenstein1
David A. Lyons
Public relations is not my job, and I try to stay out of nontechnical
discussions.
I just want to obvserve that if Apple *did* get in the habit of contradicting
every false rumor, then every interesting rumor that they *didn't* contradict
would be assumed true. I don't particularly *like* secrets, but if I were
running a company I don't think I would go around commenting on rumors.
--
David A. Lyons, Apple Computer, Inc. | DAL Systems
Apple II Developer Technical Support | P.O. Box 875
America Online: Dave Lyons | Cupertino, CA 95015-0875
GEnie: D.LYONS2 or DAVE.LYONS CompuServe: 72177,3233
Internet/BITNET: dly...@apple.com UUCP: ...!ames!apple!dlyons
My opinions are my own, not Apple's.
Glenn C. Brown
>>I hate to say this, but "Don't you think Apple would have contradicted the
>>cannot be helping sales..."
>>
>>--Uh, I don't know if I want to sign this. I can feel the heat already!
>Public relations is not my job, and I try to stay out of nontechnical
>discussions.
>I just want to obvserve that if Apple *did* get in the habit of contradicting
>every false rumor, then every interesting rumor that they *didn't* contradict
>would be assumed true. I don't particularly *like* secrets, but if I were
>running a company I don't think I would go around commenting on rumors.
>David A. Lyons, Apple Computer, Inc. | DAL Systems
>Apple II Developer Technical Support | P.O. Box 875
Well, I believe that if Apple were wise, It would step up some product
announcements, or do something to INDIRECTLY contradict the rumors: This
way Apple could keep up their image, and not fall into the trap of having
to deny every rumor that pops up.
Then again, It would be nice of Apple to let people's confidence in Apple
slide just before a new product is released: For example, when I got my
first Apple (a //+) the //e came out exactly one month later! If Apple
wants satisfied customers in the long run, maybe they SHOULD indirectly
discourage sales, so people will delay buying and end up with the //e rather
than the plus...
Hmmm... And it is reassuring that a Apple // DTS fellow would try to
be reassuring about this situation...
--Glenn
Joe Abernathy
> As far as I can see, the gs is no competition for the Mac II.
But of course you have no idea what you're talking about.
The Macintosh -- anything less than the $10,000 Mac, to be accurate -- is a
kinda sort of desktop publishing machine. It's useless for numerics, it's
useless for graphics, it's crippled with sound ... and it's handicapped by an
amateurish user base that's incapable of minimizing its inefficiencies.
If you'll take a moment to remember, the Macintosh was designed by a man whose
genius was marketing. He had a great idea in desktop publishing, and for that
he is to be commended. But don't try to pretend you can do quality desktop
publishing with an average Macintosh, and don't even try to suggest that it is
the proper solution for anything more strenuous.
I don't give a rat's ass about the computer label wars, but those owners of
any brand of computer who spread misinformation based on the latest press
releases give me a case of chapped lips. You guess which lips.
Why don't y'all go find a nice Red Ryder host and trade some rad wareZ. Take a
load off your overstrained mental capacities.
UUCP: crash!pro-houston!jabernathy | AOL: JOEA17
ARPA: crash!pro-houston!jaber...@nosc.mil | Clever comment
INET: jaber...@pro-houston.cts.com | goes here.
Andy Y.A. Kuo
> someone wrote:
> > As far as I can see, the gs is no competition for the Mac II.
>
>But of course you have no idea what you're talking about.
I think everyone knows who really has no idea what he is talking about!
>The Macintosh -- anything less than the $10,000 Mac, to be accurate -- is a
>kinda sort of desktop publishing machine. It's useless for numerics, it's
???????????????????????????????
>useless for graphics, it's crippled with sound ... and it's handicapped by an
????????????????????? ??????????????????? ???????????
>amateurish user base that's incapable of minimizing its inefficiencies.
????????????????????? ????????? ?????????? ??????????????
Could someone please comment on these points? :-)
>If you'll take a moment to remember, the Macintosh was designed by a man whose
>genius was marketing.
If you mean Steve Jobs, he didn't "design" the Mac. Depending on
your definition of "design", he is the person "designed" the NeXT.
Should I also post this article to comp.sys.next just to show
you something about him? :-)
>He had a great idea in desktop publishing, and for that
>he is to be commended. But don't try to pretend you can do quality desktop
>publishing with an average Macintosh, and don't even try to suggest that it is
>the proper solution for anything more strenuous.
Again, could someone please comment on these? :-)
>I don't give a rat's ass about the computer label wars, but those owners of
>any brand of computer who spread misinformation based on the latest press
>releases give me a case of chapped lips. You guess which lips.
Yep, that tells well about you!
If you don't know anything about a computer, keep your mouth shut.
>Why don't y'all go find a nice Red Ryder host and trade some rad wareZ. Take a
^^^^^^
>load off your overstrained mental capacities.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
For your own health and benefit, please do so. :-)
>UUCP: crash!pro-houston!jabernathy | AOL: JOEA17
>ARPA: crash!pro-houston!jaber...@nosc.mil | Clever comment
>INET: jaber...@pro-houston.cts.com | goes here.
I don't understand why AppleII users can't accept the Mac. If Apple
had not bothered with the GS but built a Mac that can run the 8bit
AppleII softwares, then the "GS" that you are praising for would be
the Mac. Why can't you think of the Mac softwares as GS specific
softwares -- since they can't run on a IIe anyway? Why can't you
think of the Mac as the "GS" -- since both are "new" architecture?
Another thing I don't understand is the idea that Apple isn't
supporting the AppleII line. There has been more OS upgrades
for the GS, no Mac user has ever complained about it. Apple made
the video overlay card for the GS, no Mac user has ever complained
about it. Are you just hard to please? Are you being reasonable
at all?
So please stop all these nonsense, are you are doing is scare
away new users.
Andrew Certain
(Andy Y.A. Kuo) writes:
>
> I don't understand why AppleII users can't accept the Mac. If Apple
>had not bothered with the GS but built a Mac that can run the 8bit
>AppleII softwares, then the "GS" that you are praising for would be
>the Mac. Why can't you think of the Mac softwares as GS specific
>softwares -- since they can't run on a IIe anyway? Why can't you
>think of the Mac as the "GS" -- since both are "new" architecture?
>
software if we ran on a Mac. The idea that GS-specific software is
like Mac software may, in some trivial way, hold some bit of merit, but
until you can run Apple II software on the Mac, the Mac and the GS aren't
both just "new" architectures. The GS is a "new" architecture with backwards
compatibility, while the Mac is as different from the Apple II as far as
software compatibility goes as a 386 machine. To say the Mac should be
thought of as a new Apple II is like giving you a Mac III that won't run
any of the current Mac software. How willing would you be to making the
switch?
> Another thing I don't understand is the idea that Apple isn't
>supporting the AppleII line. There has been more OS upgrades
>for the GS, no Mac user has ever complained about it. Apple made
>the video overlay card for the GS, no Mac user has ever complained
>about it. Are you just hard to please? Are you being reasonable
>at all?
>
Let's take stock here. WHen the GS came out in, I believe, 1986, the top
of the line Mac was an SE. That means there have been 5 new Mac models
(the II, IIx, IIcx, IIci and SE/30) relesed since then with NO new
Apple II models released. That sounds to me like a lack of support. Think
about how much you would complain if Apple didn't release a new Mac for
4 years while release 5 new models on another line. I don't think we're
being hard to please. I think you're not seeing both sides of the issue.
I really wish Apple would put out a card that would allow us to run our
Apple II software on a Mac II, and merge the two lines, but even though
there would be a hugh market out there, I don't see it happening.
Andrew Certain
cer...@cs.unc.edu
cs2...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
>> As far as I can see, the gs is no competition for the Mac II.
> But of course you have no idea what you're talking about.
> [much ranting about how worthless a Mac really is deleted]
If you carefully re-read the initial post, you'll probably see that the
line above is taken totally out of context. The author's intention
(I assume) was not to say the GS is to the Mac as a Timex is to a Cray.
Rather, I believe they were trying to say that the GS represents no
competition to the Mac market, as they are two very different machines
with different purposes and features. The Macs are used for desktop
publishing (you CAN do some reasonably decent stuff with even an SE),
not for the numerics, graphics and sound that it is "useless" for. Its
users don't need these features, so the "amateurish user base" that uses
the Macintosh is totally removed from the average IIgs user.
The IIgs therefore really IS no competition for the Mac. Their uses and
users are so different that the competition between the two groups should
be, and is, minimal.
> UUCP: crash!pro-houston!jabernathy | AOL: JOEA17
> ARPA: crash!pro-houston!jaber...@nosc.mil | Clever comment
> INET: jaber...@pro-houston.cts.com | goes here.
--rubio (rub...@uiuc.edu)
nrj...@lion.waterloo.edu
>In article <18...@boulder.Colorado.EDU> k...@boulder.Colorado.EDU
>(Andy Y.A. Kuo) writes:
>
>Let's take stock here. WHen the GS came out in, I believe, 1986, the top
>of the line Mac was an SE. That means there have been 5 new Mac models
>(the II, IIx, IIcx, IIci and SE/30) relesed since then with NO new
>Apple II models released. That sounds to me like a lack of support. Think
>about how much you would complain if Apple didn't release a new Mac for
>4 years while release 5 new models on another line. I don't think we're
>being hard to please. I think you're not seeing both sides of the issue.
The Mac SE and II were introduced at the same time, I believe, in
spring of 1987. So there have been six models since the IIgs came out.
Didn't they release a IIc+ since the introduction of the IIgs?
I think another problem is the 65816 itself. WDC is getting 12MHz
samples going. If you look at Motorola, they're sampling the 68040,
which gets about 20MIPS to the gallon. I don't think a 12 MHz 65816
will be close. Don't know about the ASIC chip. Then there's the
basic architecture of the 65816 - to me, it's only slightly better
than an 8086. If the '816 had come out 3-4 years earlier, it would've
helped the Apple II line a lot more, IMHO. A 65832 would've
helped a lot.
[Stuff deleted]
>
>Andrew Certain
>cer...@cs.unc.edu
Johnny Lee
jl...@orchid.waterloo.edu
Todd P. Whitesel
Mac any more than most of them understand the Apple II.
jaber...@pro-houston.cts.com (Joe Abernathy) writes:
>In-Reply-To: message from nage...@bucsf.bu.edu
>> As far as I can see, the gs is no competition for the Mac II.
>But of course you have no idea what you're talking about.
No, it's you who don't know what you're talking about. Have you ever used one
for what it was DESIGNED to do, and not for what your GS was designed to do?
>The Macintosh -- anything less than the $10,000 Mac, to be accurate -- is a
>kinda sort of desktop publishing machine. It's useless for numerics, it's
>useless for graphics, it's crippled with sound ... and it's handicapped by an
>amateurish user base that's incapable of minimizing its inefficiencies.
Desktop publishing packages on the Macintosh kick anything on the GS into the
ground, and the Mac's square pixels are one of the secrets of it. If you don't
know how easy it is to publish on the Mac I suggest you keep your mouth shut
until you find out for yourself.
The Mac II and up all have math coprocessors of the kind we get when we buy
the Floating Point Engine. Nothing beats a dedicated FPU for numerics, so I
suggest you shut up about this too.
Useless for graphics? The Mac was designed around graphics! That may have some
drawbacks but in many more areas it's a strength. There are awesome Paint, CAD,
and Page Layout programs for the Mac that the GS will never touch for simple
economic reasons -- nobody who wants a GS will want the extra power these
programs have or be able to handle their cost.
Crippled for sound? I don't think 8 bit stereo at 22 khz is crippled. It's more
than adequate for what most macintosh users do. The rest buy MIDI interfaces.
Besides, the GS's motherboard doesn't support it's own sound chip enough, but
at least we can get around it with stereo decoder cards like the Sonic Blaster.
The Mac user base was supposed to be fairly ignorant! The whole point of the
mac was that an computer illiterate could use it without having to know little
technical details! If you can't tolerate people who couldn't care less how
their machine actually works then I suggest you shut up and let them at least
get their questions answered. We're here to make computers more useful, not
spite at each other, and you ought to lighten up about machines that suit
other people's needs better than they suit yours.
>If you'll take a moment to remember, the Macintosh was designed by a man whose
>genius was marketing. He had a great idea in desktop publishing, and for that
>he is to be commended. But don't try to pretend you can do quality desktop
>publishing with an average Macintosh, and don't even try to suggest that it is
>the proper solution for anything more strenuous.
You simply don't know what you're talking about. The orginal idea behind the
Mac was to build a machine that was friendly enough and simple enough to use
that anybody could do the normal types of work (word processing, paint, draw)
on it with almost no training. The desktop interface is what made that possible
and I wouldn't bite the hand that fed your GS.
As for desktop publishing, we have two Mac labs here at Caltech and the #1 use
of them is desktop publishing. I use them to add fonts and run my papers off
the laserwriter because I don't have enough memory to use Appleworks GS.
The Mac has managed to handle some pretty powerful desktop publishing programs
all across its product line, and they have done a damn good job getting things
to run on any mac from the Plus to the ci. The speed and screen size are the
only real differences and for many 'more strenuous' things the Mac is currently
a much better solution than the GS.
>I don't give a rat's ass about the computer label wars, but those owners of
>any brand of computer who spread misinformation based on the latest press
>releases give me a case of chapped lips. You guess which lips.
Your misinformation is a hell of a lot worse. You obviously think that a Mac II
only has more memory and a color screen. Well it's got a hell of a lot more and
the last thing I want to see coming from an Apple II user is machine slandering
like the Amigeeks love to engage in. Every machine on the market today has its
own best uses and NONE OF THEM are perfect for everything. The mac is perfect
for desktop publishing, the GS is perfect for hacking and sound, the Amiga is
perfect for animation, the PC is perfect for cheap number crunching...
Don't base your opinion of a machine on what it wasn't designed to do, base
your buying decision on what YOU want it to do. Don't tell me somthing sucks
because you can't use it, it might be perfect for someone else. I may love my
GS but no way in hell am I going to feist one on somebody who wants do
something that another machine can do better. It's about time we ran the
fanatics out of town, and especially the ones at Apple who want to nuke the
Apple II for most of the reasons you've tried to heap on the Mac.
>Why don't y'all go find a nice Red Ryder host and trade some rad wareZ. Take a
>load off your overstrained mental capacities.
Don't treat us like BBS junkies. We grew out of that a long time ago.
You, however, don't sound like you have.
Alan D Danziger
>(Andy Y.A. Kuo) writes:
>>
>> I don't understand why AppleII users can't accept the Mac. If Apple
>>had not bothered with the GS but built a Mac that can run the 8bit
>>AppleII softwares, then the "GS" that you are praising for would be
>>the Mac. Why can't you think of the Mac softwares as GS specific
>>softwares -- since they can't run on a IIe anyway? Why can't you
>>think of the Mac as the "GS" -- since both are "new" architecture?
>>
>But Apple didn't do this, and we would have to abandon all our Apple II
>software if we ran on a Mac. The idea that GS-specific software is
>like Mac software may, in some trivial way, hold some bit of merit, but
>until you can run Apple II software on the Mac, the Mac and the GS aren't
>both just "new" architectures. The GS is a "new" architecture with backwards
>compatibility, while the Mac is as different from the Apple II as far as
>software compatibility goes as a 386 machine. To say the Mac should be
>thought of as a new Apple II is like giving you a Mac III that won't run
>any of the current Mac software. How willing would you be to making the
>switch?
I sold my Apple IIc which I had just bought a 3.5" drive for, along
with TONS of software, when I bought my Mac SE/30. I have never
missed it. At the time, I was just learning about the Mac, and like
it MUCH better than the Apple II line... Although I haven't done much
with the IIGS, it seems to be a (s)low-end Mac lookalike...
>
>>... Are you just hard to please? Are you being reasonable
>>at all?
>>
>
>Let's take stock here. WHen the GS came out in, I believe, 1986, the top
>of the line Mac was an SE. That means there have been 5 new Mac models
>(the II, IIx, IIcx, IIci and SE/30) relesed since then with NO new
>Apple II models released. That sounds to me like a lack of support.
There was a little thing called the IIc+ which came out I believe less
than a year ago... Sounds like a new model to me!
>I really wish Apple would put out a card that would allow us to run our
>Apple II software on a Mac II, and merge the two lines, but even though
>there would be a hugh market out there, I don't see it happening.
Why would there be a huge market? Think about it. How much was the
upgrade from a IIe to a IIGS? How big a market was it? Now think
about the Mac, which uses different chips, different bus, different
interface, even. I could imagine a Mac (Plus or SE) card for a IIGS,
but how many IIGS owners would WANT a Mac?
Besides, if you want to run your Apple II software on a Mac, you CAN
(not should) get a Mac and a program called ][ in a Mac ( I don't know
who the company is offhand) and USE IT! All you would need is a 5.25"
drive for your Mac, or if you had a 3.5" disk-based II (as I did) you
can directly use your files
Or if you use Appleworks on the II, get a Apple File Exchange file
called Works to Works, and Microsoft Works, and you can convert your
files automatically.
>Andrew Certain
>cer...@cs.unc.edu
Andrew, it seems to me that you are fixed in your belief, and that is
fine for you. But don't try to tell us what Apple should do. If you
feel you know, then it is your responsibility as an unsatisfied
customer to report your suggestions and comments to Apple.
--
-=Alan=-
al...@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu
Calvin Cheng
>>
>> I don't understand why AppleII users can't accept the Mac. If Apple
>>had not bothered with the GS but built a Mac that can run the 8bit
>>AppleII softwares, then the "GS" that you are praising for would be
>>the Mac. Why can't you think of the Mac softwares as GS specific
>>softwares -- since they can't run on a IIe anyway? Why can't you
>>think of the Mac as the "GS" -- since both are "new" architecture?
>>
>But Apple didn't do this, and we would have to abandon all our Apple II
>software if we ran on a Mac. The idea that GS-specific software is
>like Mac software may, in some trivial way, hold some bit of merit, but
>until you can run Apple II software on the Mac, the Mac and the GS aren't
>both just "new" architectures. The GS is a "new" architecture with backwards
>compatibility, while the Mac is as different from the Apple II as far as
>software compatibility goes as a 386 machine. To say the Mac should be
>thought of as a new Apple II is like giving you a Mac III that won't run
>any of the current Mac software. How willing would you be to making the
>switch?
>
Mac. On a Mac II, it's faster than a stock IIe. The IIGS is far more
difficult to emulate because of the Toolbox which is wholly controlled by
Apple. And as far as software emulation is concerned, the Mac can emulate
a PC AT with EGA in software too. Future 88000-based Macs will emulate the
680x0 in software as well. So if Apple had introduced a 68000-based IIGS,
it could have bridged the gap much more easily. You don't even need hardware
to emulate a IIe except for the slots.
>
>I really wish Apple would put out a card that would allow us to run our
>Apple II software on a Mac II, and merge the two lines, but even though
>there would be a hugh market out there, I don't see it happening.
>
>
2 different lines of machines, we can at least try to think of them as the
same machine for different purposes.
Calvin Cheng
>> someone wrote:
>> > As far as I can see, the gs is no competition for the Mac II.
>>
>>But of course you have no idea what you're talking about.
>
> I think everyone knows who really has no idea what he is talking about!
>
>>The Macintosh -- anything less than the $10,000 Mac, to be accurate -- is a
>>kinda sort of desktop publishing machine. It's useless for numerics, it's
> ???????????????????????????????
>>useless for graphics, it's crippled with sound ... and it's handicapped by an
> ????????????????????? ??????????????????? ???????????
>>amateurish user base that's incapable of minimizing its inefficiencies.
>????????????????????? ????????? ?????????? ??????????????
>
the street to be some dirt slime jerk who's got the brain the size of a
peanut? Before you put off such a statement, you should be aware that you
represent only a minority among the huge fold of computer users. How many
people you think out there has the capability, willingness, time and
interest to tweek the system for "performance"? Programming these days is
mainly the reserve of computer professionals and enthusiasts (namely the
people who bother to read mail in this column).
>>>I don't give a rat's ass about the computer label wars, but those owners of
>>any brand of computer who spread misinformation based on the latest press
>>releases give me a case of chapped lips. You guess which lips.
COme on, I think everyone of us is at fault. We like to compare and comment
without even knowing much about what's going on elsewhere. This appear to be
the reply to some equally overblown statement. That's the problem to it all.
Cool it man!
Keith Rollin
>(Andy Y.A. Kuo) writes:
>>
>> Another thing I don't understand is the idea that Apple isn't
>>supporting the AppleII line. There has been more OS upgrades
>>for the GS, no Mac user has ever complained about it. Apple made
>>the video overlay card for the GS, no Mac user has ever complained
>>about it. Are you just hard to please? Are you being reasonable
>>at all?
>>
>
>Let's take stock here. WHen the GS came out in, I believe, 1986, the top
>of the line Mac was an SE. That means there have been 5 new Mac models
>(the II, IIx, IIcx, IIci and SE/30) relesed since then with NO new
>Apple II models released. That sounds to me like a lack of support. Think
>about how much you would complain if Apple didn't release a new Mac for
>4 years while release 5 new models on another line. I don't think we're
>being hard to please. I think you're not seeing both sides of the issue.
>
I suppose it's all how you count. You are not counting the fact that since
September 15, 1986 - when we announced the Apple IIgs - that we've come out
with several different versions of the GS (new ROMs and RAM configurations),
the Apple //e (cost reduced, expanded keyboard, more RAM) and Apple //c
(the //c+ with a faster CPU rate).
However, many of the Macintoshes you mention above fall into the same category.
In March of 1987, we came out with the Mac SE and Mac II. I would consider the
Mac II to be different enough to be considered a major new machine. However,
the SE is just a faster Mac Plus. As is the SE/30. And the Mac IIx, IIcx, and
IIci are just minor modifications to the Mac II.
So, if you categorize things in a different - yet still valid - way, the only
new Macintosh we've come out with since the Apple IIgs was introduced was the
Mac II.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keith Rollin --- Apple Computer, Inc. --- Developer Technical Support
INTERNET: ke...@apple.com
UUCP: {decwrl, hoptoad, nsc, sun, amdahl}!apple!keith
"Argue for your Apple, and sure enough, it's yours" - Keith Rollin, Contusions
Doug McClure
>There's a program called II in a Mac that emulates a IIe (not IIGS) on any
An unenhanced IIe right?
>Mac. On a Mac II, it's faster than a stock IIe. The IIGS is far more
Interesting, never heard it was anything but slow as shit, and major
buggy and that was a review of it when I read about it, seems like about
1-2 years after the Mac finally came out. Course, with megadoses of
MHz, probably wouldn't run too bad. And gosh, the IIe manages it on
just 1something MHz. Totatlly forget copy protected stuff. Totally
forget your add-on boards.
>680x0 in software as well. So if Apple had introduced a 68000-based IIGS,
>it could have bridged the gap much more easily. You don't even need hardware
>to emulate a IIe except for the slots.
Too bad, they didn't so it's a moot point. I love arguements with these
"if Apple had intro'ed a 68000-IIgs". How about IF Apple had pursued
the Apple II market, if they had supported development for the Apple II,
if they had pushed Mensch for better/faster cpu's, or done it
themselves, we'd have a great, incredible machine that wouldn't be being
beat-up by most every other machine on the market. Or how about if the
AppleII hadn't paid for the Mac and hadn't totally fed it money to keep
development going, and had pumped it into AppleII development, all you
Mac "Kill the II by merging" folks wouldn't have much to spew about.
They didn't, so why even argue that. Time to do something about the
present.
>>I really wish Apple would put out a card that would allow us to run our
>>Apple II software on a Mac II, and merge the two lines, but even though
>>there would be a hugh market out there, I don't see it happening.
>That's what I've sincerely hope. Instead of seeing the Apple II and Mac as
>2 different lines of machines, we can at least try to think of them as the
>same machine for different purposes.
Yeah, right, I'm gonna go out and shell out the same amount of cash for
EVERYTHING I have with my IIgs (cpu, monitors, 4 drives, modem,
joystick, printer, boards) to get a Mac II? Forget it. I'll go buy a
NeXT or an Amiga where I'll be getting my money's worth. The Amiga is
cheap for the power it has, and the NeXT at least has all the bundled
software for it's price. The VERY least Apple would have to do is
emulate the IIgs ROM03 complete with hardware support for boards. Be
mighty interesting seeing a Mac II with NuBus slots and Apple II slots,
and whatever odds and ends needed to run both software. Boy, I really
wanna go out and pay for two machines!
Might be nice to have a board for Mac users who would like access to
AppleII but I sure don't see it as a replacement for the AppleII. They
ARE two different lines, they've ALWAYS been two different lines, I
don't see it changing anytime soon, if even ever. If anything, I vote
for merging the Mac into the AppleII vs. AppleII into Mac. After all,
we (AppleII's) paid for them so in essence, they exist only because of
AppleII's. Be funny seeing what Mac users thought about that! I don't
even wanna know, cuz I could care less, it ain't gonna happen.
-k
Todd P. Whitesel
> That means there have been 5 new Mac models
>(the II, IIx, IIcx, IIci and SE/30) relesed since then with NO new
>Apple II models released.
Not true; the //c+ was released in 1988. This is a 4 mhz 65c02 based Apple II,
with a built in 3.5 disk and disk port on the back that acts like a IIGS
disk port with one 3.5 on it -- this disk port has its own coprocessor too but
I don't know how much it helps since prodos drivers will wait for it anyway. It
does make the interrupt response during disk access a non-issue though.
The //c+ can be had mail order for $499 and some people have gotten it for $450
(I don't know where).
Except Apple Marketing doesn't seem to think they need to advertise it.
Or the new SCSI card, which dealers haven't reall been informed of either.
> That sounds to me like a lack of support.
It still is. Now that the 20 mhz 65816 is going through debug (heard they got a
few trial chips to work at a paltry 12-13) Apple will have no real excuse not
to make the IIGS into a real Amiga killer. They will need it, because not
everyone is going to want a Low Cost Color Mac. I won't, for example. I want my
Apple //f and I know Apple will build it IF we can convince them there is a
market for it. I think there is and it does not hurt the Low Cost Color Mac one
bit. People who want to run Mac applications buy the Mac; those of us who want
the Apple II software, BASIC, the monitor, and the ensoniq will buy a //f!
The last time a home computer was purposely kept from competing with another
product made by the same company it failed miserably because it was so
stripped down nobody could use it for anything. I'm sure you all remember the
PCjr. Apple needs to realize that the philosophy of non-intersecting product
lines is a mistake and is idealistic. Real markets have many subtle divisions
within them and the low end will embrace both a decent IIGS and a cheap Color
Mac. And when they both sell well, Apple should be pushing them side by side
for what each does best. That's how you take on the low end, by offering many
cost effective solutions to each portion of the market and letting the consumer
decide. You do NOT make only one offering and just expect everyone to buy it.
>I really wish Apple would put out a card that would allow us to run our
>Apple II software on a Mac II, and merge the two lines, but even though
>there would be a hugh market out there, I don't see it happening.
The engineering reality of such a board would mean that the card would
either (a) stink, or (b) be EXPENSIVE. At the price you'd end up paying it's
cheaper to buy two machines and be able to use them both, unless you really
have to save desk space; it would be an luxury option at best.
Why merge the two lines? We already use the same peripherals, many of the same
onboard as well as external. The CPU itself is determined by what you want to
run on it and the two lines differentiate themselves for all but the most
casual users.
I, for one, will never want whole Mac, and I don't feel a major need to emulate
one either though I respect the fact that many people do. I do want to see a
IIGS to nuke the Amiga, because I know it can be done. Read my //f paper if
you're interested (I'll mail it) and mail any comments you like. Many of the
features were really sketchy until I got some comments about the first version
of it, but the latest (third) writing is pretty bulletproof. The stated intent
is to produce the most cost effective general purpose low end machine. Period.
This machine would attract those who want what an Amiga or Clone does but would
rather have the Apple interface. Many of these people will not buy the Low Cost
Color Mac because the price of a full system will still be higher than the
alternatives. The fact that Apple hasn't supported the GS enough has already
lost many of these customers.
Todd P. Whitesel
[ about lack of new Apple II's versus the Mac ]
>I suppose it's all how you count. You are not counting the fact that since
>September 15, 1986 - when we announced the Apple IIgs - that we've come out
>with several different versions of the GS (new ROMs and RAM configurations),
>the Apple //e (cost reduced, expanded keyboard, more RAM) and Apple //c
>(the //c+ with a faster CPU rate).
The //c+ was the only truly new machine. The //e and IIGS updates were ok but
the GS still needs major work. Scrapping the Mega II and redoing most of the
chip set (heck, ALL of the chip set) to take over for it, not to mention
KILLING THE BOTTLENECKS, would do wonders for the machine. It might even get
some real software support from the big names! How about that.
And tell Marketing to advertise the //c+. Nobody knows it exists and that's a
real shame, because it's a great machine. Now if it were portable... we might
have a REAL notebook computer, and afforable too.
>However, many of the Macintoshes you mention above fall into the same category
>In March of 1987, we came out with the Mac SE and Mac II. I would consider the
>Mac II to be different enough to be considered a major new machine. However,
>the SE is just a faster Mac Plus. As is the SE/30. And the Mac IIx, IIcx, and
>IIci are just minor modifications to the Mac II.
I beg to differ again. The Mac SE had many major redesigns, not the least of
which was Mac II-style disk options and a CPU direct slot which the IIGS really
needed. The Mac IIx is more of a CPU upgrade that takes the whole motherboard,
true, and the IIcx has only three slots, but the IIci is a completely new board
with integrated video (they should have used VRAMs though, DMA video at that
resolution is murder on a ci's Bank A) and the SE/30 is also a completely
different board.
While your perspective has merit, the examples you've given don't proven your
point when you really look at the motherboards. A more accurate list would
be: Apple II, one machine and two logic board improvements; Macintosh, four
machines and two logic board improvements.
I personally don't care about the difference, it's just that Apple could have
done wonders to the IIGS years ago but they haven't invested the money to
fix the now-archaic and ill-fitting chip set. The Mega II was not originally
designed for the IIGS and its presence is the root cause of many common
complaints about the IIGS as a product, especially in comparison to simlarly
priced machines from Amiga and Tandy. Unless Apple addresses this specific
problem soon -- and the Low Cost Mac will NOT be enough -- they will lose
a permanent share of the low end market to the IIGS's competitors, most of
whom are not quite in the Low Cost Mac's league anyway.
Todd P. Whitesel
>The IIgs therefore really IS no competition for the Mac. Their uses and
>users are so different that the competition between the two groups should
>be, and is, minimal.
I suggest we take this to Apple Marketing and hang it over every door in
the building.
Freek Wiedijk
>thought of as a new Apple II is like giving you a Mac III that won't run
>any of the current Mac software. How willing would you be to making the
>switch?
You mean the _NeXT_?
--
Freek "the Pistol Major" Wiedijk Path: uunet!fwi.uva.nl!freek
#P:+/ = #+/P?*+/ = i<<*+/P?*+/ = +/i<<**P?*+/ = +/(i<<*P?)*+/ = +/+/(i<<*P?)**
Tracy S Myers
>Too bad, they didn't so it's a moot point. I love arguements with these
>"if Apple had intro'ed a 68000-IIgs". How about IF Apple had pursued
>the Apple II market, if they had supported development for the Apple II,
>if they had pushed Mensch for better/faster cpu's, or done it
>themselves, we'd have a great, incredible machine that wouldn't be being
>beat-up by most every other machine on the market. Or how about if the
>AppleII hadn't paid for the Mac and hadn't totally fed it money to keep
>development going, and had pumped it into AppleII development, all you
>Mac "Kill the II by merging" folks wouldn't have much to spew about.
>They didn't, so why even argue that. Time to do something about the
>present.
>
[Stuff deleted]
>
>Might be nice to have a board for Mac users who would like access to
>AppleII but I sure don't see it as a replacement for the AppleII. They
>ARE two different lines, they've ALWAYS been two different lines, I
>don't see it changing anytime soon, if even ever. If anything, I vote
>for merging the Mac into the AppleII vs. AppleII into Mac. After all,
>we (AppleII's) paid for them so in essence, they exist only because of
>AppleII's. Be funny seeing what Mac users thought about that! I don't
>even wanna know, cuz I could care less, it ain't gonna happen.
>
>-k
Every product line has a limited lifetime. The apple ][ line is
nearly 15 years old. In 1983 I went with my father to buy a computer
for his office. The salesperson tried to sell him a ][e. I persuaded
him to buy a PC-XT. It was one of my better pieces of advice. The ][
series is a dead line. It was killed long ago by MS-DOS which squeezed
it out of the business market, and by Commodore 64's
and the like (which were far cheaper) that squeezed it out of the home
market. All the talk about what Apple should have done 10 years ago
won`t change market reality. Even if Apple had made substantially
more powerful ][-series machines, it seems unlikely they would have
been able to overcome either the market's perception of the ][ as a 'home'
computer or the perception that `IBM`( meaning the IBM name) legitimized
the personal computer in business. The only people buying the ][ series
in any numbers in recent years are schools. I don't want to start
a Apple ][ is better than MS-DOS or Mac or other such war. I merely
want to point out that for better or worse, the ][ is dead for reasons
which do not neccessarily concern the machine or its capabilities.
Wake up and take a hard look at reality. I used to have an Apple ][e, and
was very fond of it. In its day it was a very nice machine, but no
amount of upgrading and patching up will help the ][. It's dead so let
it rest in peace.
Calvin Cheng
>
>>There's a program called II in a Mac that emulates a IIe (not IIGS) on any
>
>An unenhanced IIe right?
>
>>Mac. On a Mac II, it's faster than a stock IIe. The IIGS is far more
>
>Interesting, never heard it was anything but slow as shit, and major
>buggy and that was a review of it when I read about it, seems like about
>1-2 years after the Mac finally came out. Course, with megadoses of
>MHz, probably wouldn't run too bad. And gosh, the IIe manages it on
>just 1something MHz. Totatlly forget copy protected stuff. Totally
>forget your add-on boards.
>
insist that the IIe is better than stick with it. Nobody is asking you to
change!
>Yeah, right, I'm gonna go out and shell out the same amount of cash for
>EVERYTHING I have with my IIgs (cpu, monitors, 4 drives, modem,
>joystick, printer, boards) to get a Mac II? Forget it. I'll go buy a
>NeXT or an Amiga where I'll be getting my money's worth. The Amiga is
>cheap for the power it has, and the NeXT at least has all the bundled
Then why buy an Apple in the first place....
>for merging the Mac into the AppleII vs. AppleII into Mac. After all,
>we (AppleII's) paid for them so in essence, they exist only because of
>AppleII's. Be funny seeing what Mac users thought about that! I don't
>even wanna know, cuz I could care less, it ain't gonna happen.
>
This is the f* attitude that piss people off... As if there's an us against
you battle going on... Be realistic, be open-minded!
You can go on blasting till the end of the world... nobody's going to give
a damn.
Andrew Certain
al...@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Alan D Danziger) writes:
>In article <12...@thorin.cs.unc.edu> cer...@washington.cs.unc.edu
>than a year ago... Sounds like a new model to me!
I admit it: I forgot about the //c+; however, if you want to think that
Apple has put equal amounts of R&D into each line (or even proportional
to the user base -- which is much larger for the Apple II), and that
the new Apple II machines (if you count ROM 03, etc.) are as much an
improvement over the previous machenes as the new Macs, I guess I'll
have to admit that I can't convince you since all I can do is look at
the machines and draw conclusions.
I wrote:
>>I really wish Apple would put out a card that would allow us to run our
^^^^^^^^^^^ emphasis added
>>Apple II software on a Mac II, and merge the two lines, but even though
>>there would be a hugh market out there, I don't see it happening.
>
>
>Besides, if you want to run your Apple II software on a Mac, you CAN
>(not should) get a Mac and a program called ][ in a Mac ( I don't know
>who the company is offhand) and USE IT! All you would need is a 5.25"
>
>Andrew, it seems to me that you are fixed in your belief, and that is
>fine for you. But don't try to tell us what Apple should do. If you
>feel you know, then it is your responsibility as an unsatisfied
>customer to report your suggestions and comments to Apple.
>
I didn't know that we weren't supposed to express our opinions in such
harsh, commanding words as "really wish." This newsgroup, then, should
be free of any disgruntled words for fear of offending somebody? We should
only communicate privately with Apple? I disagree. If "I really wish"
offends you, I guess you'd better filter all article written by me.
The ][ in a Mac only emulates an unenhanced //e and not even that in
every mode.
Andrew Certain
cer...@cs.unc.edu
stu...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
the mac may have been designed around graphics, but not putting a graphics coprocessor in it was AWFULLY stupid.
i agree that one of the strong points of a mac is that it requires alomst
no training to begin to be productive. I have personally introduced
secretaries and other types of usually-noncomputer jobs to word-processing
and office work on the macintosh. in less than an hour most of them were
able to create, print and save documents, and do simple tasks that are
much of getting something done. later we worked on literacy in the true
sense.
Anthony J. Stuckey, stu...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
dent
I've been an Apple fan ever since the ][+ (which is still running fine, thank
you, with the expansion chasis, Rana drives, etc etc etc etc... :-), and I'm
a Mac-lover now. So, all of this discussion got me thinking (look out).
The Apple // -vs- Mac debate (war?) has been going on for a very long time,
and it seems that by doing next-to-nothing to "finalize" the outcome of that
battle, Apple may have stumbled across the solution to it all. Let me
elaborate:
The appeal of the Mac, (at least back in 1984, when Apple had DAMN GREAT ads..
[anyone got 1984 on VHS, btw?] :-) is not (at first), the hardware, but the
user interface. In fact, the Macintosh User Interface has had such a huge
impact on the entire industry (by virtue of actually being sucsessful
at it), that nearly all of the functionality of it has been copied to other,
sometimes radically different, archtechtures. If you have been asleep for
the last 7 years, some examples would be: GEM for the PC, "TOS" (i.e., GEM
for the Atari ST), Amiga "Intuition", MicroSoft Windows (how could we
forget, right?), and more recently, NeXT STeP, IBM's SAA (The Sleeping Giant
moved!), and the rash of Interfaces that "The X Window System" brought on :
DECwindows, Motif, Open Look, and on and on....
Case 1:
A little closer to home, witness the Apple IIgs. "Coincidentally", it has
also adopted a Mac-style user interface (but without fear of litigation :-).
The IIgs is not going anywhere, folks. Apple would probably not have released
System 5.0 for it if they weren't expecting it to last a little while longer.
So given that the IIgs will be around for a while (the fate of the //e and
//c is less certain, however.. ), let's press on.
Case 2:
System 7.0 for the Mac can just barely be seen on the horizon now, and some
of the major developments for it weren't entirely for the Mac. Apple and
Microsoft (kind of a love-hate relationship there :-) have joined Presentation
Manager running on OS/2 with the Mac, by using a consistant font format:
TrueType. In exchange, Microsoft provided the means to more inexpensively
keep compatiblilty with the good old PostScript LaserWriters (as well as non-
Apple printers) in the world. So, another part of the Mac Interface has
expanded beyond the confines of a single architecture.
Case 3:
AU/X 2.0 is on the horizon as well, and with it, MacX. This is perhaps one
of the most exciting developments of all, IMHO. From the rumors, MacX allows
X Windows applcations to display on the Mac, which is what you would expect.
What it additionally does is provide those X Windows applications with the
"Mac Look". The implications of this are that the industry without a
standard interface may get one, if MacX can be expanded to "MacWM" (for lack
of a better name). If this is done, the Mac Interface could be used on
even more dissimilar architectures.
Case 4:
The 68xxx series Mac is not going to last forever, and it's no secret that
Apple has been playing with the idea of an 88000-based machine. This new
machine does not, however, mean that the users of the old machine will be
abandoned. The Mac /Interface/ can run on /any/ architecture. Sure,
assembly language programmers will be a little upset :-), but C and Pascal
programmers should be able to just link with a new library, tweak a little,
and go. [Yes, this is oversimplifying the case dramatically, I realize.]
Ok, let's wrap it up:
The entire point of this rambling article is that the "Macintosh" is really
more than simply the hardware by the same name that does the work. (Kind
of like "AppleTalk", huh?) Steve Jobs was correct in a sense when he talked
of the impending doom of the Mac. Sure, the 68000-based Mac is eventually
going to be ancient technology (how many new 6502-based machines do you see
today? :-) But the essence (look&feel if you like) of the Macintosh will
outlive it's 68000-based "body" (I can't beleive I'm talking about Meta-
Physical Macintoshes here.. :-)
Similarly, certain Apple II machines will probably die. The //e and //c lines
really should be replaced with something similar to what the //gs is now (but
for considerably less I hope!!). The //gs will also be replaced, but not by
a "Low Cost Mac" in the Hardware sense. An "enhanced" //gs that runs the
Mac-like Interface is really enough. There's no need for over-engineered
Apple-II compatibility boards in every Mac. There /is/ a need for the Mac
functionality on the Apple II architecture, so the two lines can merge in
that sense.
There is only one way that this all is going to work, however: The Macintosh
Toolbox has got to be freed from the Macintosh Hardware. I have no idea
how similar the GS Toolbox is to the Mac Toolbox, but I hope they are nearly
identical. Only by making the Macintosh Toolbox the standard programmers'
interface to hardware, can the same source code be used to generate machine
code for various kinds of architectures. Programmers shouldn't really need
to know what specific machine their program is going to run on. (well,
the ones writing the toolboxes obviously should, but.. :-)
This is *NOT* going to happen overnight, however. :-) The current state of
programming on the Mac seems to be filled with minor inconsistencies that
require the /programmer/ to correct for. Is this machine an SE? Do this...
is it a Mac II? HasColorQD is TRUE.. but then it could be an SE/30 too, so
better check for that... This is pure nonsense. The toolbox already is
designed to be generalized. You can have any size display you want on a Mac;
it makes no difference to your applications. This same generality needs to
be perfected, and expanded to the other areas... what we'll wind up with
is the "Macintosh Virtual Machine", and if /only/ toolbox calls are used to
access hardware, and dynamic linking could be used to link in the machine-
specific implementations of the toolbox, the same applications /will/ run
on different architctures, and not even know it.
The preliminary steps have been made; file transfer has almost become trivial,
and hopefully future support for Foreign File Systems will make it moreso.
I know I'm asking for a lot here, but I don't think I'm asking for the
/impossible/. I suppose we'll have to wait around to see if /any/ of this
occurrs (what a let-down ;-)... but it should be fun to watch if nothing
else. (It'd be even more fun to participate in, but what do I know. I /liked/
the Apple ///+. :-)
-/ Dave Caplinger /---------------------------------------------------------
Microcomputer Specialist, Campus Computing, Univ. of Nebraska at Omaha
de...@zeus.unomaha.edu ...!uunet!unocss!dent DENT@UNOMA1
Bill Taroli
I used a //e for 5 years and then moved over to the Mac.
Generally, I agree with your sentiment that it would be nice to have some
sort of IIgs emulation on a Mac (probably a NuBus card, with supporting
software) for those IIgs users who would like the extra functionality of the
Mac without having to dispose of all their II software. However, I (and I
believe Apple) differ in your opinion that this effort should be undertaken
by Apple. It is my understanding that Apple, throughout its history, has not
developed such products, leaving them to third party developers. If you want
to scream at someone for such hardware, scream at them.
I really don't understand why such bickering persists between these two "camps."
As you point out so nicely, these are two very different machines. Thus, it
should come as no surprise that they develop differently. Granted, I can
identify with your (and other II users') feelings that they have somehow been
cheated. But consider the viewpoint of the Mac users... How would you like it
if, a week after your purchased the latest and greatest of the Mac world Apple
introduces a newer, more expensive model that you like even better (and may have
purchased had it been available)? Granted, this exaggerates things a bit, but
then quite a bit of that goes on in these discussions. I'm sure you wouldn't
be too pleased. In addition, this creates a nightmare as far as new users are
concerned... "which one of these is the right one for me??" So, while we have
benefitted (in one sense) from more product development, we suffer from a bit
of confusion surrounding the "improvments" in the different models available.
In contrast, the II line benefits via third parties in that there is one stable
hardware platform to work from... versus a shaky software platform (try cleaning
up the System Apple!!!) and a myriad of hardware configurations.
I think that all this arguing between II users and Mac users serves no purpose
and is generally a waste of effort. If you really want to have an impact,
complain to those people who can change this situation.... those wonderful,
bureaucratic folks at Apple! :-)
--
"I'm sorry, you'll have to call your local Apple dealer."
-- Apple customer "service"
Bill Taroli
WWTA...@RODAN.acs.syr.edu
--
*******************************************************************************
* Bill Taroli (WWTA...@RODAN.acs.syr.edu) | "You can and must understand *
* Syracuse University, Syracuse NY | computers NOW!" -- Ted Nelson *
*******************************************************************************
Chun-Yao Liao
>Mac II to be different enough to be considered a major new machine. However,
>the SE is just a faster Mac Plus. As is the SE/30. And the Mac IIx, IIcx, and
>IIci are just minor modifications to the Mac II.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Keith Rollin --- Apple Computer, Inc. --- Developer Technical Support
>INTERNET: ke...@apple.com
> UUCP: {decwrl, hoptoad, nsc, sun, amdahl}!apple!keith
>"Argue for your Apple, and sure enough, it's yours" - Keith Rollin, Contusions
HaaaChuuu... excuse me, I hate flames, and I hope we can vote to form a
new newsgroup called Comp.flame.ap2mac so all the flames go that way, but
I can't resist to post this one so sorry for others flame-haters (me included)
You call Mac IIci is just minor modification to the Mac II? As far as I've
been read, The Mac IIci is a completely redesign from the original Mac II
lines. The heavyly use of VLSI made it possible..... all the stuffs deleted.
Or, the publisher made it up?
--
|I want Rocket Chip 10 MHz, Z-Ram Ultra II, UniDisk 3.5 | cyl...@wam.umd.edu |
|I want my own NeXT, 50MHz 68040, 64Mb RAM, 660Mb SCSI, | Chun Yao Liao |
| NeXT laser printer, net connection. | Accepting Donations!|
/* If (my_.signature =~ yours) coincidence = true; else ignore_this = true; */
Chun-Yao Liao
>for his office. The salesperson tried to sell him a ][e. I persuaded
>him to buy a PC-XT. It was one of my better pieces of advice. The ][
>series is a dead line. It was killed long ago by MS-DOS which squeezed
>it out of the business market, and by Commodore 64's
>and the like (which were far cheaper) that squeezed it out of the home
>market. All the talk about what Apple should have done 10 years ago
>won`t change market reality. Even if Apple had made substantially
>more powerful ][-series machines, it seems unlikely they would have
>been able to overcome either the market's perception of the ][ as a 'home'
>computer or the perception that `IBM`( meaning the IBM name) legitimized
>the personal computer in business. The only people buying the ][ series
>in any numbers in recent years are schools. I don't want to start
>a Apple ][ is better than MS-DOS or Mac or other such war. I merely
>want to point out that for better or worse, the ][ is dead for reasons
>which do not neccessarily concern the machine or its capabilities.
>
>Wake up and take a hard look at reality. I used to have an Apple ][e, and
>was very fond of it. In its day it was a very nice machine, but no
>amount of upgrading and patching up will help the ][. It's dead so let
>it rest in peace.
Wake up you! I guess you wrote this when your body temperature is over
100 degree fahrenheit...
Don't make me wrong, not many people at my working place like to use an IBM
or MeSsy-Dos oriented computer. Every single person who I suggested to try
out a Mac II or an Apple //gs never go back to IBM again unless using the
IBM is part of their HW assignment. Hey, I am not talking about elementary
school, I am talking about adult education technology center! Forgot to
mention that we have Mac IIs, a few Mac SE, Apple //gses, Apple //es, and
IBM ps/2s in a separate small and "hotter" room while the number of IBMs is
practically the same to the number of Mac IIs or to the Apple //s.
Excuse me for my use of languages.
Keith Rollin
>In article <39...@apple.Apple.COM> ke...@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) writes:
>
>>Mac II to be different enough to be considered a major new machine. However,
>>the SE is just a faster Mac Plus. As is the SE/30. And the Mac IIx, IIcx, and
>>IIci are just minor modifications to the Mac II.
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>been read, The Mac IIci is a completely redesign from the original Mac II
>lines. The heavyly use of VLSI made it possible..... all the stuffs deleted.
>Or, the publisher made it up?
I was talking from the user's (i.e., _functional_) point of view. As you
correctly pointed out, from the technological point of view, the Mac IIci is
a totally new machine. As someone else pointed out, the same can be said of
the Mac SE and even more for the Mac SE/30. But for the most part, all you
get out of them is a faster CPU rate.
Anyway, if anyone wants to follow up on this, I suggest we take this private.
After all, this IS comp.sys.apple2, not comp.sys.mac.merits.
--
Todd P. Whitesel
>The entire point of this rambling article is that the "Macintosh" is really
>more than simply the hardware by the same name that does the work.
This and all the bit about the Mac interface being largely hardware independent
is true. Apple has been trying to keep the O/S hardware independent from day
one of the Mac and the GS.
Problem is, they haven't been doing that hot a job of it.
>Similarly, certain Apple II machines will probably die. The //e and //c lines
>really should be replaced with something similar to what the //gs is now (but
>for considerably less I hope!!).
Why bother? 65c02 based systems can be made for VERY CHEAP with Apple's latest
technologies and they could make a very nice 8 bit // that would do what most
people buy XT Clones for but for substantially less.
The 8 bit //'s are actually adequate for a lot of things but because they are
old nobody seems to realize that they would still have a market if they cost
about half as much (more like a third) or what they do now.
Especially when you consider what you really buy a portable for, I realize that
a portable //c+ would be a MUCH better deal than the Mac Portable.
> The //gs will also be replaced, but not by
>a "Low Cost Mac" in the Hardware sense. An "enhanced" //gs that runs the
>Mac-like Interface is really enough.
True, but we'd rather see some head-to-head competition with the Amiga -- the
IIGS is already an NTSC machine, and the extra features (DMA controller, video
Blitter / coprocessor) would assist so many toolbox routines (like QuickDraw!!)
that the machine would give wonderful performance levels for the price. The
"Apple //f" that I proposed to Apple works on precisely this principle. When
Apple realizes that the Toolbox gives them the freedom to make REAL hardware
upgrades without fear, then maybe they will do it!
> There's no need for over-engineered
>Apple-II compatibility boards in every Mac.
There is a need. It's just that it is NOT the ultimate future of the Apple //,
as some would have us believe. The Apple // is a fine computer in its own right
and Apple is throwing money down the drain by not keeping it competitive with
the Amiga and the PC clones. many of these computers will still outsell the Low
Cost Color Mac because of price differences and because they are establishing
themselves in the market while Apple lets the GS rot. Expecting everyone to
drop everything for the Low Cost Mac A YEAR FROM NOW is ludicrous.
> There /is/ a need for the Mac
>functionality on the Apple II architecture, so the two lines can merge in
>that sense.
This I agree with most wholeheartedly. The GS more or less does, but the most
recent release is almost fast enough to be reasonable. Unless system 6 is yet
another order of magnitude faster (and I bet they could do it) the desktop
applications will still be about as fast as a Mac plus. The real solution is to
introduce a faster GS so that software developers will feel confident that the
base machine can handle their newer software. A 7mhz transwarp GS is already
known to be adequate; this can be the upgrade option for current machines.
>There is only one way that this all is going to work, however: The Macintosh
>Toolbox has got to be freed from the Macintosh Hardware. I have no idea
>how similar the GS Toolbox is to the Mac Toolbox, but I hope they are nearly
>identical.
They're close, but not identical. It isn't that hard to port a Mac Application
to the GS if you use MPW IIGS (or so I'm told). The GS toolbox does have a
couple things that the Mac toolbox doesn't (yet, I hope) because they managed
to put a little hindsight into it. There are also the sound tools which are
DOC specific, but these are like the Slot Manager in the Mac II.
> Only by making the Macintosh Toolbox the standard programmers'
>interface to hardware, can the same source code be used to generate machine
>code for various kinds of architectures. Programmers shouldn't really need
>to know what specific machine their program is going to run on.
This is possible: at worst a new toolset could be created to act as a standard
toolbox interface. Yuck, I know, but that may actually be the easiest way to
do it. There are markets for both generic applications that are easy to
develop for many machines and for specific applications that really push a
particular machine. Both have their own merits.
>This is *NOT* going to happen overnight, however. :-) The current state of
>programming on the Mac seems to be filled with minor inconsistencies that
>require the /programmer/ to correct for. Is this machine an SE? Do this...
>is it a Mac II? HasColorQD is TRUE.. but then it could be an SE/30 too, so
>better check for that... This is pure nonsense.
Ouch, I didn't know it had gotten that bad. The GS doesn't have enough software
for it that will break because of considerations like that; it's pretty ironic
really that we can take the neglect Apple has given the machine and turn it
into an advantage... I hope they get the system straight and THEN promote the
hell out of it, so that developers will not have to worry about that kind of
thing.
> The toolbox already is designed to be generalized.
In theory. In practice...
> You can have any size display you want on a Mac;
>it makes no difference to your applications. This same generality needs to
>be perfected, and expanded to the other areas...
Hear Hear! I heard a rumor that the 640x400 graphics mode on the Video Overlay
was supported by a patched version of QuickDraw; I wish they'd release that and
drop the VOC to $300 so people will actually buy it. If someone can find a
monitor that interlaces OK then we will have a 640x400 desktop! (My monitor
does but it's kind of expensive if you buy it. I grubbed it from a prof)
>what we'll wind up with
>is the "Macintosh Virtual Machine", and if /only/ toolbox calls are used to
>access hardware, and dynamic linking could be used to link in the machine-
>specific implementations of the toolbox, the same applications /will/ run
>on different architctures, and not even know it.
Bravo! This is what I would like to see. For a couple years now I've been
wondering how we might actually do this. If Apple can pull it off then they
will have something that they can tout as a standard and that will shatter
the 'proprietary' image Apple has -- which will be good.
>The preliminary steps have been made; file transfer has almost become trivial,
>and hopefully future support for Foreign File Systems will make it moreso.
The GS has support for foreign filesystems already; I can't wait until the
get it on the Mac because it is too good a thing to deny to anyone.
>I know I'm asking for a lot here, but I don't think I'm asking for the
>/impossible/.
NO, you're asking for the next generation in operating systems. If Apple
doesn't do it first, then somebody else will...
> I suppose we'll have to wait around to see if /any/ of this
>occurrs (what a let-down ;-)... but it should be fun to watch if nothing
>else. (It'd be even more fun to participate in, but what do I know. I /liked/
>the Apple ///+. :-)
The ///+ _was_ a nice machine, but the reputation of the /// was so horrid that
Apple couldn't do anything about it. A pity, really. If the /// hadn't been so
rushed and flopped so badly, the IIGS might have had the Amiga's chipset and
there never would have been an Amiga...
Wouldn't mind if Apple made up for that mistake of not buying the Amiga chipset
when they had the chance. Their Low Cost Mac will be a flop if it doesn't have
a blitter to assist QuickDraw.
The GS is not doing too hot for exactly the same reason!
Tracy S Myers
>
>>I don't want to start
>>a Apple ][ is better than MS-DOS or Mac or other such war. I merely
>>want to point out that for better or worse, the ][ is dead for reasons
>>which do not neccessarily concern the machine or its capabilities.
>>
[Keep this excerpt from my previous post in mind]
>>Wake up and take a hard look at reality. I used to have an Apple ][e, and
>>was very fond of it. In its day it was a very nice machine, but no
>>amount of upgrading and patching up will help the ][. It's dead so let
>>it rest in peace.
>
>Wake up you! I guess you wrote this when your body temperature is over
>100 degree fahrenheit...
>
>Don't make me wrong, not many people at my working place like to use an IBM
>or MeSsy-Dos oriented computer. Every single person who I suggested to try
>out a Mac II or an Apple //gs never go back to IBM again unless using the
>IBM is part of their HW assignment. Hey, I am not talking about elementary
>school, I am talking about adult education technology center! Forgot to
>mention that we have Mac IIs, a few Mac SE, Apple //gses, Apple //es, and
>IBM ps/2s in a separate small and "hotter" room while the number of IBMs is
>practically the same to the number of Mac IIs or to the Apple //s.
>
>Excuse me for my use of languages.
>--
>|I want Rocket Chip 10 MHz, Z-Ram Ultra II, UniDisk 3.5 | cyl...@wam.umd.edu |
>|I want my own NeXT, 50MHz 68040, 64Mb RAM, 660Mb SCSI, | Chun Yao Liao |
>| NeXT laser printer, net connection. | Accepting Donations!|
>/* If (my_.signature =~ yours) coincidence = true; else ignore_this = true; */
If you read my previous post, you would see that I make no claim that MS-DOS
machines are better or worse than Macs or Apple II machines. Maybe Joe
Montana should go on tv and challenge the IBM mime to come and take a
taste test of MS-DOS vs Mac. But, that is NOT my point. What I am
talking about is not homework assignments, but money. Whether you (or I)
like it or not the overwhelming majority of businesses buy MS-DOS. MS-DOS
is the standard (however lousy a standard it is). The mac has done quite
well, because it offers cababilities which are still hard to get with
an MS-DOS machine. No amount of whining about the Apple II and what
a nice machine it is will change the reality of the market.
Calvin Cheng
>
>I've been an Apple fan ever since the ][+ (which is still running fine, thank
>you, with the expansion chasis, Rana drives, etc etc etc etc... :-), and I'm
>a Mac-lover now. So, all of this discussion got me thinking (look out).
>
>The Apple // -vs- Mac debate (war?) has been going on for a very long time,
>and it seems that by doing next-to-nothing to "finalize" the outcome of that
>battle, Apple may have stumbled across the solution to it all. Let me
>elaborate:
>
>The appeal of the Mac, (at least back in 1984, when Apple had DAMN GREAT ads..
>[anyone got 1984 on VHS, btw?] :-) is not (at first), the hardware, but the
>user interface. In fact, the Macintosh User Interface has had such a huge
>impact on the entire industry (by virtue of actually being sucsessful
>at it), that nearly all of the functionality of it has been copied to other,
>
It's important to look at what they are trying to sell in a machine rather
than the hardware alone viz-a-viz. That's why Commodore isn't doing as well
as it should.
>The 68xxx series Mac is not going to last forever, and it's no secret that
>Apple has been playing with the idea of an 88000-based machine. This new
>machine does not, however, mean that the users of the old machine will be
>abandoned. The Mac /Interface/ can run on /any/ architecture. Sure,
>assembly language programmers will be a little upset :-), but C and Pascal
>programmers should be able to just link with a new library, tweak a little,
This clearly marks the point. No single machine is going to survive for a
long period. Not the 680x0 nor the 658xx. We must open ourselves to new
architectures as and when they come. That's what people in the mini/mainframe
and now workstation market have been doing for years. It's about time the
same thing happen for the mass market, "low-technology" personal computer
market.
>The entire point of this rambling article is that the "Macintosh" is really
>more than simply the hardware by the same name that does the work. (Kind
>of like "AppleTalk", huh?) Steve Jobs was correct in a sense when he talked
>of the impending doom of the Mac. Sure, the 68000-based Mac is eventually
>going to be ancient technology (how many new 6502-based machines do you see
>today? :-) But the essence (look&feel if you like) of the Macintosh will
>outlive it's 68000-based "body" (I can't beleive I'm talking about Meta-
>Physical Macintoshes here.. :-)
>
The name game is totally irrelevant. How would you compare a PC to a PS/2?
What if they chose to call the Mac II by some other name (or maybe even
an Apple II) or the IIGS a Mac? It's entirely possible. But u still have the
same machine in front of u! Why that rambling about names?
>
>This is *NOT* going to happen overnight, however. :-) The current state of
>programming on the Mac seems to be filled with minor inconsistencies that
Apple sure has lots of creb to beat up... they've partially dug a grave for
themselves when they tore down all the great aspects of the Lisa to produce
the Mac. It takes time...
The essense of this all is that the debate that has been rambling on is
really quite senseless like the bloodshed in Northen Ireland, Lebanon or
Sri Lanka. People can't get along just because they try their best to
make themselves feel different when they are very similar.
Dave Haynie
>cer...@washington.cs.unc.edu (Andrew Certain) writes:
>It still is. Now that the 20 mhz 65816 is going through debug (heard they got a
>few trial chips to work at a paltry 12-13) Apple will have no real excuse not
>to make the IIGS into a real Amiga killer.
Yeah, right. You're going to grow very old waiting for 65816s that can compete
with the latest 680x0s. Way back in '85, when I was looking around for a follow-up
for the C128 for Commodore, I looked at 65816 chips. We had actually received
specs on them from WDC several years earlier. At that time, they had fully speced
8MHz parts, yet in '85, GTE (the only company actually MAKING 65816s) had all they
could do to make enough 4MHz parts. Rumor is that Apple managed get enough for
the IIGS by actually having a special 2.8MHz version tested. I needed 4.08MHz
parts, but enough of that.
It really doesn't matter if WDC eventually comes out with a 20MHz part (neat trick;
with a memory cycle time of 60ns, you'll need about 35ns-45ns SRAM to talk to the
thing), it's not going to compete with newer machines. It's just going to lose
based on architecture -- each instruction does so little work compared to a 680x0.
Same reason you aren't seeing serious competition from fast 8088s anymore.
>They will need it, because not everyone is going to want a Low Cost Color Mac.
>I won't, for example. I want my Apple //f and I know Apple will build it IF we can
>convince them there is a market for it.
Thing is, it's going to cost more to build your 20MHz Apple //f, significantly more,
that the el-cheapo color Mac. Way back in '85, a 4MHz '816 cost noticably more than
an 8MHz 68000. Things are going to be even more skewed now. And which direction
is Apple really heading, as if I needed to ask? While they certainly aren't moving
downscale in either line, yet, they do seem to be spending most if not all their
time on their 680x0 lines. Pretty much the same thing that other companies with old
65xx lines and new 680x0 lines are doing. Compatibility is a nice goal, but there
are times when it can wind up costing more to stay compatible than to dump all the
compatibility and start over fresh.
>>I really wish Apple would put out a card that would allow us to run our
>>Apple II software on a Mac II, and merge the two lines, but even though
>>there would be a hugh market out there, I don't see it happening.
>The engineering reality of such a board would mean that the card would
>either (a) stink, or (b) be EXPENSIVE.
Actually, you could build a card to run Apple II software fairly cheaply. A
good deal of any machine's cost is for stuff other than the PC board. The
problem is that you'd have to stick this in a color Mac with slots, making it
a rather silly Apple II-only solution. Though having dealt with a similar
65xx to 680x0 upgrade myself, I found that I really didn't want to run any
of the old software once I had new software for the same functions. The most
useful thing I found was a way to read the 65xx machine data file on the
680x0 machine.
>I, for one, will never want whole Mac, and I don't feel a major need to emulate
>one either though I respect the fact that many people do. I do want to see a
>IIGS to nuke the Amiga, because I know it can be done.
It can't be done. Period. And that has nothing to do with Apple and everything
to do with what the 65816 is and always will be compared to the 680x0 line. As
well as considering that Apple has never shown themselves to be stupid -- any
Apple II machine that really looks better than an Amiga will also look better than
a Mac. The cost of your //f is going to put you up against the Amiga 2500 and
Amiga 3000 lines -- 68030 machines that run about as fast as a Mac IIci. The
current //gs already costs more than an equivalently set up Amiga 500. Or a similar
low-cost Mac, should Apple want to introduce one.
I'm not talking here as some Amiga zealot, either. I actually design the
hardware, I know what I'm talking about.
>Todd Whitesel
--
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests"
{uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy
Too much of everything is just enough
Kurt D. Baumann
If you folks (and probably most of you do think this) think that the IBM-PC
is old outdated equipment, then what does that make the Apple II?
At some point in time, you must give up the old software you have and move
onto a new machine with new software. The arguement that you need to be
compatable with the old software holds weight as long as there is software
that is worthwhile and up to current software standards available. At some
point though it just isn't going to be there.
By the way, this isn't a poke at Apple II owners. I was one.--
Todd P. Whitesel
> No amount of whining about the Apple II and what
>a nice machine it is will change the reality of the market.
No, but whining about how Apple is throwing away their low end position by
not keeping the II competitive just might -- especially when I've practically
dropped an Amiga-killer in their lap. Only Apple has the technology to build
the computer described by my //f paper (available by Email from me) and to do
it inexpensively enough to compete with the Amiga and the PC clones because
their Low Cost Mac is looking to be too little, too late, even if it borrows
technology from the //f (a fine idea). The two machines will still have their
own markets and I see that as a market reality Apple must exploit if they want
to take back the low end.
Chan Wilson
>
>The appeal of the Mac, (at least back in 1984, when Apple had DAMN GREAT ads..
>[anyone got 1984 on VHS, btw?] :-) is not (at first), the hardware, but the
>user interface. In fact, the Macintosh User Interface has had such a huge
>impact on the entire industry (by virtue of actually being sucsessful
>at it), that nearly all of the functionality of it has been copied to other,
Interesting point here. While the Apple ][ was the personal computer that
defined the term "personal computer", the Macintosh was the computer that
defined the term "graphical user interface." Much in the same way that
the Model T define the term "automobile." But anyway...
>System 7.0 for the Mac can just barely be seen on the horizon now, and some
>of the major developments for it weren't entirely for the Mac. Apple and
[slurp]
>AU/X 2.0 is on the horizon as well, and with it, MacX. This is perhaps one
>of the most exciting developments of all, IMHO. From the rumors, MacX allows
>X Windows applcations to display on the Mac, which is what you would expect.
>What it additionally does is provide those X Windows applications with the
>"Mac Look". The implications of this are that the industry without a
>standard interface may get one, if MacX can be expanded to "MacWM" (for lack
>of a better name). If this is done, the Mac Interface could be used on
>even more dissimilar architectures.
<Head scratching here> Well, that's a close description. From a quick scan
of the latest issue of Unix world (or whatever it's called), what Apple
has done is merged the power of unix with the ease of the Mac GUI. From
what it looks like, you'll start up your mac ii[fc][xi] into A/UX 2.0, which
starts up Multifinder. You'll be able to run 32bit clean Mac applications
from the finder, and run Unix programs from a shell window. You want X?
Start up MacX, a modified version of X windows that runs concurrently with
the Mac GUI.
So, there's the screen shot they had. A standard Macintosh (color) screen,
running multifinder. A couple finder windows were open, an X window with
a graph was open, and a standard terminal window was open, speaking to
A/UX.
Wow. That's impressive. What they've just done is eliminate the last
major obstacle for Mac workstations. Not that I'm a macintosh fanatic, but
I can see the enormous appeal this has. Why buy a SparcStation, when for
approximately the same amount you can buy a Mac IIfx running A/UX, MacX, and
Mac GUI? It's one of those 'have your cake and eat it too' scenarios.
>abandoned. The Mac /Interface/ can run on /any/ architecture. Sure,
>assembly language programmers will be a little upset :-), but C and Pascal
>programmers should be able to just link with a new library, tweak a little,
>and go. [Yes, this is oversimplifying the case dramatically, I realize.]
Hmm. One wonders how hard it would be to write a converter betwixt 65K
and 68K assembler.
>The entire point of this rambling article is that the "Macintosh" is really
>more than simply the hardware by the same name that does the work. (Kind
Ah. Good point. Hmm... I wouldn't be too all amazed if Apple came up with
a translator library of some such that lets (for example) a sparcstation
run Macintosh programs.
[slurp]
>for considerably less I hope!!). The //gs will also be replaced, but not by
>a "Low Cost Mac" in the Hardware sense. An "enhanced" //gs that runs the
>Mac-like Interface is really enough. There's no need for over-engineered
>Apple-II compatibility boards in every Mac. There /is/ a need for the Mac
>functionality on the Apple II architecture, so the two lines can merge in
>that sense.
Well, it's getting there.
[slurp]
>identical. Only by making the Macintosh Toolbox the standard programmers'
>interface to hardware, can the same source code be used to generate machine
>code for various kinds of architectures. Programmers shouldn't really need
>to know what specific machine their program is going to run on. (well,
>the ones writing the toolboxes obviously should, but.. :-)
I can see it now: "MacC, the portable graphical programming language."
Although, I'd prefer a different name..
>designed to be generalized. You can have any size display you want on a Mac;
>it makes no difference to your applications. This same generality needs to
>be perfected, and expanded to the other areas... what we'll wind up with
>is the "Macintosh Virtual Machine", and if /only/ toolbox calls are used to
>access hardware, and dynamic linking could be used to link in the machine-
>specific implementations of the toolbox, the same applications /will/ run
>on different architctures, and not even know it.
...opening the door for "Mac-in-the-Cray" :)
>The preliminary steps have been made; file transfer has almost become trivial,
<snicker, snicker. Define trivial.>
>and hopefully future support for Foreign File Systems will make it moreso.
speaking of such, where's our FSTs?
>I know I'm asking for a lot here, but I don't think I'm asking for the
>/impossible/. I suppose we'll have to wait around to see if /any/ of this
>occurrs (what a let-down ;-)... but it should be fun to watch if nothing
>else. (It'd be even more fun to participate in, but what do I know. I /liked/
>the Apple ///+. :-)
Hoh yes! If we can't join the party, at least we've got a front row seat...
>-/ Dave Caplinger /---------------------------------------------------------
> de...@zeus.unomaha.edu ...!uunet!unocss!dent DENT@UNOMA1
--Chan
................
Chan Wilson -- cwi...@nisc.sri.com <!> I don't speak for SRI.
Janitor/Architect of comp.binaries.apple2 archive on wuarchive.wustl.edu
"And now, the penguin on top of the television set will explode."
................
Stephen Brown
Keith Rollin writes:
>I suppose it's all how you count. You are not counting the fact that since
>September 15, 1986 - when we announced the Apple IIgs - that we've come out
>with several different versions of the GS (new ROMs and RAM configurations),
>the Apple //e (cost reduced, expanded keyboard, more RAM) and Apple //c
>(the //c+ with a faster CPU rate).
Sorry Keith, Flame on.
Rom (and VGC) upgrades were as much to eliminate bugs as they were to improve
performance. That hardly consitutes a new machine, just the same old one with
fewER bugs.
I suppose by "new ROMs and RAM configuration" you refer to ROM 3. Well, if it
was a new machine, why is it so close that Apple itself admits that you can
get 90% of the improvements that the machine offers, just by running System
Disk 5.? Selling the GS with 256K, then with a memory card to bring the
system to 512K, then with a motherboard with 1 meg HARDLY constitutes a new
machine. It shows that Apple is awake to the fact that NO IIGS specific
software can run with a 256K machine, that you can can't even boot GS/OS
without 512K, and that most graphics/sound intensive programs require at least
a megabyte. Please turn it off. It costs Apple less to make 1 megabyte
motherboards than to make 256K motherboards and throw in a memory card.
The Apple IIe with a new case is not a new CPU. Its functionally identical,
isn't it??? That makes it a new machine in a new case, doesn't it? A new
keyboard is hardly worth writing home about, especially in a machine which is
so pitifully wounded by its speed. And Apple IIe's have been sold with 128K
for quite some time. So what's the diff?
The Apple //c+ is an Apple IIc with a 4 Mhz clock. That *is* a new CPU. But
please tell me why 4 Mhz when 65C02's are available to 16 Mhz? And Rocketchip
and Zipchip technologies (ie. caching) exists to 10 and 8 Mhz, respectively.
But... why are you (ie. Apple) developing 8 bit technology (which is, by
industry standards, obsolete) instead of your 16 bit technology.
This bovine faeces may wash with some people, but it CERTAINLY doesn't wash
with me.
FLAME OFF.
Stephen Brown
UUCP: crash!pro-generic!sb
ARPA: crash!pro-generic!s...@nosc.mil
INET: s...@pro-generic.cts.com
David I Seah
taken from a certain perspective, consists of only two basic machines.
In today's serial, Chun-Yao Liao writes:
>You call Mac IIci is just minor modification to the Mac II? As far as I've
>been read, The Mac IIci is a completely redesign from the original Mac II
>lines. The heavyly use of VLSI made it possible..... all the stuffs deleted.
>Or, the publisher made it up?
From a user's standpoint, I'd say that Keith's perspective is stunningly
accurate. The Mac Plus/SE is analogous to the classic Apple II, while the
Mac II family is like the IIGS. Even though the hardware was redesigned
from scratch for the IIci, the machine acts just like a faster, slightly
more capable Mac II. The difference, of course, between their story
and ours is that they RELEASED a faster Mac II while the GS Plus exists
as rumor. :~(
--
Dave Seah | O M N I D Y N E S Y S T E M S - M | Internet: ds...@wpi.wpi.edu
| User Friendly Killing Machines | America Online: AFC DaveS
..............................................................................
// Infinitum! // Infinitum! // Infinitum! // Infinitum! // Inifinitum!
Todd P. Whitesel
[ in response to stuff I wrote ]
>Yeah, right. You're going to grow very old waiting for 65816s that can compete
>with the latest 680x0s.
Why should I wait for a CPU that does more than I need when I will be able to
buy a 20 mhz 65816 in a month or two? I don't do anything that requires the
raw power of a 68030/040, and I'm not going to pay for one because I'd be
wasting my money on features I won't use. Most of what I do are jobs best
done by coprocessors, and you'll notice that Apple has been devoting quite
a bit of research into them lately. I and many others don't pay for a CPU, we
pay for a system, and Commodore of all companies should understand the value
of that because it's the secret of the A500. Apple's finally learned to exploit
that secret and the Apple II has been crying for more of it for years.
>It really doesn't matter if WDC eventually comes out with a 20MHz part
They might or might not. But ASIC Technologies (two college students) reverse
engineered a 65816 state machine. On rented supercomputer time they silicon
compiled it onto a gate array and the prototypes are due in silicon Real Soon
Now.
We have 12 mhz capable accelerators already just waiting for faster chips, and
Applied Engineering is probably working overtime on a 20 mhz capable redesign.
Mensch, however, appears to be screwing around with a mask that is the same
one his wife (or daughter, I forget which) laid out years ago... His main
business these days is embedded microcontrollers anyway, so he's probably given
up on Apple. They shafted him from them start, anyway; Apple requires two
second sources and "won't buy from design companies" so after WDC licensed
VLSI technologies and California Micro Devices, Apple quit ordering from WDC.
>(neat trick; with a memory cycle time of 60ns, you'll need about 35ns-45ns
>SRAM to talk to the thing)
No problem, it'll be running on a cache anyway. The Transwarp GS accelerator
seems to do a mighty fine job of that already.
> it's not going to compete with newer machines.
Like I said, if they CPU isn't what's being used for everything, then who
cares, especially if price is a major concern? Most people are going to be
using the graphics performance which should be taken care of by a cheap
blitter and NOT the CPU.
> It's just going to lose based on architecture -- each instruction does so
> little work compared to a 680x0.
Hold it, you're talking like a power user, and not like your typical Apple II
customer. People who buy Apple II's want a cheap, reliable machine that does
what they need and doesn't give them any trouble. Try to corner one with the
sacred word "MIPS" and they'll ask you why you care. They already know that
the software will run acceptably fast, and that their friends will help them
use it -- that's how real people choose a system, by using it and not by
reading the spec sheet.
>Same reason you aren't seeing serious competition from fast 8088s anymore.
Serious competition? Do you care about low end price/performance or just wicked
fast machines? Many of us care about getting a reasonable computer for the
price.
>>They will need it, because not everyone is going to want a Low Cost Color Mac
>>I won't, for example. I want my Apple //f and I know Apple will build it IF
>>we can convince them there is a market for it.
>Thing is, it's going to cost more to build your 20MHz Apple //f, significantly
>more, that the el-cheapo color Mac.
I really doubt that, after seeing what Apple can do when they acutally pour
a little money into the Apple //. Right now the Low Cost Mac sounds like it
will be about as powerful as a Transwarped GS but will run 'professional'
Mac programs if you force it to, and for about the same price.
> Way back in '85, a 4MHz '816 cost noticably more than an 8MHz 68000.
> Things are going to be even more skewed now.
Not really; Bill Mensch won't be doing the production anymore.
Now it'll be large gate array houses and they shouldn't have a problem
with quantity or price.
> And which direction is Apple really heading, as if I needed to ask?
> While they certainly aren't moving downscale in either line, yet, they do
> seem to be spending most if not all their time on their 680x0 lines.
That's because they've been waiting for a faster 65816 and Bill Mensch hasn't
been able to give them one. Meanwhile, Apple Marketing has gotten it into their
heads that the Mac is the only computer Apple sells and so they've been trying
to strangle the Apple // without realizing what it's costing them in customers
or customer support. Their Mac support is not that hot either; the Mac
magazines have been pummeling Apple about it for years. Apple's hurting all
over right now, except in revenue; Commodore is lucky that it didn't grow too
fast too soon the way Apple appears to have done.
> Pretty much the same thing that other companies with old 65xx lines and new
> 680x0 lines are doing. Compatibility is a nice goal, but there are times
> when it can wind up costing more to stay compatible than to dump all the
> compatibility and start over fresh.
Agreed, except I don't think the 65816 deserves a burial just yet. It's still
darn simple for what it *can* do, and the cost-effectiveness of that gives it
a market in the low end if someone dares to exploit it, as Nintendo is rumored
to be doing with their Super Famicom system.
Apple II compatibility is disgustingly cheap -- don't let the current IIGS
fool you, it used the worst possible method because of budget constraints (or
worse, but I couldn't make any serious claims) and the entire machine suffered
as a result. Apple's failure to give it a real update after all these years
is another symptom of their indecision about the low end.
The IIGS system software is also a LOT cleaner than the Mac's because no new
CPUs have forced it to be patched all over yet. The GS toolbox has some good
hindsights in it and is constantly improving now that they are letting it.
It's a real shame that the big name software companies have abandoned the GS,
because System 5.0 is actually worth using, and system 6 (unannounced) is
rumored to be genuinely good even on a stock GS.
[ comment about Apple II NuBus card feasibility deleted by accident ]
Even if it is cheap, it's not going to be cheaper than a used //e and educators
often go for the cheaper solution. Not everybody has gobs of money to spend on
the latest technology, just because it is the latest. People would rather pay
less money to do the same things once they know what their needs are. When they
want something new, they go for it in steps as their budget permits. I don't
mean to bore you with this but with all the Mega-mongering going on it is easy
to forget that to most people computers are a tool and an investment and not a
toy to be bragged about.
>>I, for one, will never want whole Mac, and I don't feel a major need to
>>emulate one either though I respect the fact that many people do. I do want
>>to see a IIGS to nuke the Amiga, because I know it can be done.
>It can't be done. Period. And that has nothing to do with Apple and
>everything to do with what the 65816 is and always will be compared to the
>680x0 line.
Let me be more specific. I want a IIGS to nuke the 500. A great home machine
that fufills the original purpose of the IIGS and that complements the Low Cost
Mac. Something which is easily possible when you look at how Apple makes CPUs,
and what the two would be used for. Many of us are sick of Apple's insane fear
that the Mac and the Apple II might (horrors!) _compete_ with each other!!
There will always be markets for both machines and if Apple doesn't realize it
soon then they will have abandoned the low end to CBM and Tandy. The Low Cost
Mac isn't going to arrive soon enough to fix things all by itself.
Besides, most of us buy for reasons OTHER THAN THE BLOODY CPU, so please don't
assume that everyone wants a 68K based machine just because it is a 'better'
CPU. It is also much more expensive and I for one am happy paying less for less
because the 65816 suits me just fine.
> As well as considering that Apple has never shown themselves to
>be stupid -- any Apple II machine that really looks better than an Amiga will
>also look better than a Mac.
Oh, now we can't have that now can we? Who's to say the low cost mac won't
inherit some of the technology from //f research? It probably will get the
disk coprocessor that first went out in the Apple //c+, if they haven't made
a better one yet. It'll probably have the ADB coprocessor from the GS, too.
And if it doesn't have at least a blitter then it will flop real bad. In short,
it'll have to look better than a similarly priced Amiga too. So what's to
worry about?
> The cost of your //f is going to put you up against the Amiga 2500 and Amiga
>3000 lines -- 68030 machines that run about as fast as a Mac IIci.
I doubt that. The Apple // stuff which has come out in recent years has been
artificially inflated in price because Apple hasn't bothered to care that they
are selling to a more competitive market now. Why else do you think Amiga and
the PC clones are cleaning up in the low end? If Apple hadn't been so intent
on cranking the Mac into solid competition with IBM, they wouldn't have gotten
so far out of touch with their entire distribution network.
> The current //gs already costs more than an equivalently set up Amiga 500.
The 'current //gs' uses five year old gate arrays and a ten year old
architectural structure but with major beef-ups. It also hasn't been given
any real subsequent development other than analog motherboard fixes and more
reasonable amounts of memory, although it has been given vastly better software
which is now deemed adequate; simply doubling the CPU speed (with a Transwarp)
transforms it into a viable machine.
In other words, it doesn't reflect Apple's real cost-cutting power by a long
shot. It doesn't have a fully new chipset (less than half have been changed at
all, and those were convenience upgrades) and this is where the problem is.
By doing to the //gs what Apple did to the Mac IIfx (and don't try to tell me
that designing the system intelligently costs that much money) they will save
gobs over the current design even after adding the bare essential new features.
> Or a similar low-cost Mac, should Apple want to introduce one.
Oh they do, you can count on that. But they seem to be having a lot of trouble
figuring out how to make a machine that will actually sell, and at the price
they want it to cost...
>I'm not talking here as some Amiga zealot, either. I actually design the
>hardware, I know what I'm talking about.
I don't doubt that. But let me say that I've delved deep enough into the GS to
know how inefficent its current implementation is, and from talking to Apple
employees how cheaply it could be done if it REALLY used the most recent
manufacturing technology, which it does not.
The Mega II "Apple II on a chip" is the Ball and Chain of the GS -- it was
originally designed for a low cost //e but wasn't cheap enough to make the //e
any cheaper. (to Apple, apparently. Certainly not to us.)
When they get rid of it and implement the logic where it belongs (i.e. all
over the machine and integrated into the custom chips that handle each part
of the system already) it will blow away the performance limitations of the
current design and cost a hell of a lot less.
Do not assume that the IIGS is the best that the Apple II can do. You would be
doing the machine a serious injustice, and there are a number of specific
examples which are so trivial to fix that they would have done so long ago had
they been given more than miserable funding for the project.
>Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests"
Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu
Tracy S Myers
>@athena.mit.
>Sender: ne...@spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu
>Organization: California Institute of Technology
>Lines: 17
>>a nice machine it is will change the reality of the market.
>
>No, but whining about how Apple is throwing away their low end position by
>not keeping the II competitive just might -- especially when I've practically
>dropped an Amiga-killer in their lap. Only Apple has the technology to build
>the computer described by my //f paper (available by Email from me) and to do
>it inexpensively enough to compete with the Amiga and the PC clones because
>their Low Cost Mac is looking to be too little, too late, even if it borrows
>technology from the //f (a fine idea). The two machines will still have their
>own markets and I see that as a market reality Apple must exploit if they want
>to take back the low end.
>
>toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu
Here we go again! I don't doubt that you have the plans for one
whizbang machine. But, that is quite irrelevent. Who will buy this
machine? Who will write software for it? Will anybody make money
if this machine is built?
To build such a machine would require a large investment on Apple's
part. Would this be the best use of their resources? You comment
that only Apple can build this Amiga and PC clone killer and they can
do it cheaper. Cheaper than the Koreans and Taiwanese can crank out
'286 clones? I doubt it. What advantage would there be in buying this
machine, and paying more for it than a PC clone? Will anybody write
software to take advantage of it? Why would anyone who does not currently
own a II series machine buy it? Is there any software for the II that
does not already exist on another similarly priced platform?
Remember the technical merits of a machine are only a small part of its
success or failure. Bolting on additional capabilities to a 15 year
old product line does not make sense. Other products already exist with
these capabilities and are availible cheaply. It would make little
sense to enter a crowded market packed with competitors when the product
will have such a low profit margin. Apple could make much more money
by investing their resources elsewhere. As I said before, the Apple
II product line is at the end of its useful life. It is naive to think
that Apple would or should make such a large investment in this product
line.
X years from now people will be whining about Apple's
lack of investment in the Mac.
Todd P. Whitesel
>In-Reply-To: message from ke...@Apple.COM
>But... why are you (ie. Apple) developing 8 bit technology (which is, by
>industry standards, obsolete) instead of your 16 bit technology.
I'm not an Apple employee but I've got something to say about that anyway.
BECAUSE 8 BIT TECHNOLOGY IS DAMN CHEAP AND IT SATISFIES A MARKET NEED.
NOW IF THE DEALERS WOULD ACTUALLY TRY TO SELL THE BLOODY THING,
THEN IT MIGHT MAKE SOME WELL-DESERVED MONEY!
Loudspeaker off.
Todd P. Whitesel
>Hmm. One wonders how hard it would be to write a converter betwixt 65K
>and 68K assembler.
Don't bother. C compilers are supposed to do this for you.
Software emulation of CPUs is a bitch and is a real performance waster, unless
you're primarily after the occasional convienience. Most of the time it isn't
worth the trouble and cross-development systems work much better.
UN10...@wvnvaxa.wvnet.edu
Todd,
I missed the paper on the //f. Could you send it to me?
Thanks,
Chaz (un10...@wvnvms.wvnet.edu)
Dave Haynie
>da...@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes:
>[ in response to stuff I wrote ]
>>Yeah, right. You're going to grow very old waiting for 65816s that can compete
>>with the latest 680x0s.
>Why should I wait for a CPU that does more than I need when I will be able to
>buy a 20 mhz 65816 in a month or two? I don't do anything that requires the
>raw power of a 68030/040, and I'm not going to pay for one because I'd be
>wasting my money on features I won't use.
My point being that, at any level of performance, the 65xxx solution these
days costs more than then 680x0 solution, for general purpose computing.
We still use 65xx-family parts where they make sense. Commodore's 7 port
serial card is managed by a slow (3.5MHz) 4502. But 4502s cost pennies,
all serial ports deal with are interrupts and byte pumping. Real computers
with GUIs need more performance. Which is exactly the reason you're
concerned with 65816s.
>Most of what I do are jobs best done by coprocessors
Specific purpose jobs are done well by coprocessors, as long as the
coprocessor can do the job better, or at the same time the CPU is doing
something else. But if the CPU can't run in parallel and could do the job
nearly as well as the special purpose unit, than that extra hardware is a
waste of money. Just to keep things in prespective.
>>It really doesn't matter if WDC eventually comes out with a 20MHz part
>They might or might not. But ASIC Technologies (two college students) reverse
>engineered a 65816 state machine. On rented supercomputer time they silicon
>compiled it onto a gate array and the prototypes are due in silicon Real Soon
>Now.
We'll see. Most chip design isn't generally done on supercomputers, and
especially something as simple as a 65816 core. The CSG 4502 I mentioned
was a redesigned CMOS version of the 6502 that brings in all the Rockwell
instructions and a mess of new ones, and goes up to 10MHz or so. The
redesign was pretty simple at the gate level, as a gate array. Also, you
don't use silicon compilers on gate arrays -- gate arrays and standard
cell chips are automatically routed from a gate description. Pretty
standard stuff, anyone can bop on over to LSI Logic or Motorola, plunk down
about $10K NRE, and get their own gate array made. The first Sparc chip
was done this way, that's just a tad more complex than any 65xxx you
might dream up.
But if you have any hope for the future of the 65xx family, getting away
from WDC is a good idea. Far as I know, WDC never made production
quantities on their own -- like I mentioned, GTE was the first to make any.
But everyone did count on WDC and Mr. Bill for new designs. Throwing a
few new ideas at the thing, cache, a wider data bus, etc. would keep it
competitive for another few years at the low end. But more than likely
give software compatibility the big one-two. Most 65xx code is extremely
bad and intolerant, in modern terms.
>They shafted him from them start, anyway; Apple requires two
>second sources and "won't buy from design companies" so after WDC licensed
>VLSI technologies and California Micro Devices, Apple quit ordering from WDC.
When the GS came out, the only company making '816s was GTE. The main
reason I couldn't get any 4MHz '816s in quantity was that Apple bought them
all. They could make a real deal on 2MHz parts, since the yield on 4MHz
was so low, they had more of those than they knew what to do with. That
was back in '85, I haven't kept up-to-date on who's cranking these babies
out now. Back then, at least, WDC didn't have a production volume foundary
anyway. And "buying from design companies" certainly didn't scare Apple
away from the 68030, only available from Motorola. Though I do believe
that no one would have trusted any production item on WDC as a single
source had they been the one and only '816 vendor.
>Like I said, if they CPU isn't what's being used for everything, then who
>cares, especially if price is a major concern? Most people are going to be
>using the graphics performance which should be taken care of by a cheap
>blitter and NOT the CPU.
Even a rather complex blitter like the Amiga's requires a good CPU behind
it. The blitter does a good bit of work for you, but there are many
graphics issues that are handled much better with the CPU. In general,
they work together.
>Hold it, you're talking like a power user, and not like your typical Apple II
>customer.
Does it really show? True, the Apple II is plenty fast enough for lots of
people. But here you are proposing a more extensive implementation of that
architecture, to go much faster. Yet even the current GS isn't on a par
with something like the A500, speed-wise. It doesn't seem very likely that
you can do all that much to build a faster, more powerful GS for any less
money than the current one (while, of course, keeping up against any desire
on Commodore's part to build a faster, more powerful A500 for less money
than the current one). The GS is in what I would call a techological
bottleneck. Same place the C64 is. My suggestion for the C64's future was
to put the whole thing on a single chip or so and sell it in
cardboard/shrink wrap packages in the checkout lines at K-Mart for $25.00.
Or something like that. Same principle applies to the Apple II, if Apple
even wants it to stay around.
>>Same reason you aren't seeing serious competition from fast 8088s anymore.
>Serious competition? Do you care about low end price/performance or just wicked
>fast machines?
Personally? I think speed is the ONLY thing that matters. That's what they
pay me for. But seriously, the 8088 machines are a good example -- they're
getting cheaper, but not faster. You brought up the speed issue, talking
about killing A500s with a faster Apple GS.
>>Thing is, it's going to cost more to build your 20MHz Apple //f, significantly
>>more, that the el-cheapo color Mac.
>I really doubt that, after seeing what Apple can do when they acutally pour
>a little money into the Apple //. Right now the Low Cost Mac sounds like it
>will be about as powerful as a Transwarped GS but will run 'professional'
>Mac programs if you force it to, and for about the same price.
Apple must, of course, decide to build a low-cost color Mac. But they're
already well on the way to it -- the video controller in the Mac IIci, or
something like it, is the first step. This uses cheap memories. Apple is
capable of doing a cheap Mac. They might have to bend the rules. The GS
doesn't have the traditional Apple 5x cost to retail markup like the Macs
do; the cheap Mac wouldn't either.
>> Way back in '85, a 4MHz '816 cost noticably more than an 8MHz 68000.
>> Things are going to be even more skewed now.
>Not really; Bill Mensch won't be doing the production anymore.
It doesn't matter. There are all kinds of companies making the basic
68000, and this has driven the price way, way down, at least in volume.
You can't get a small-to-medium gate array from LSI for less than a 68000.
>That's because they've been waiting for a faster 65816 and Bill Mensch
>hasn't been able to give them one.
If Apple really wanted a faster Apple II, they could have banged out a
clone in about a year, at the rate they're cranking out new gate arrays.
Sure, it's easier for them if Mensch does the work, but it also could
wind up costing much more if they looked at this as a real product with
a chance at making them some money.
>Marketing has gotten it into their heads that the Mac is the only computer
>Apple sells and so they've been trying to strangle the Apple // without
>realizing what it's costing them in customers or customer support.
Nobody feels good if their computer is apparently abandoned by the parent
company. But you can't expect altruism from Apple or anyone else either
(nice if you get it, but don't ever expect it). If the IIGS isn't making
them enough to justify the II's continued existence, at least Apple's
bean counters will want to dump it.
>The IIGS system software is also a LOT cleaner than the Mac's because no new
>CPUs have forced it to be patched all over yet.
The 680x0 series was designed pretty much from the start to allow painless
updates. At least to a certain extent, Apple didn't follow the guidelines
necessary to follow through with that. I really don't know how badly that
affects Mac stuff today. Updates SHOULD have been completely transparent.
>Besides, most of us buy for reasons OTHER THAN THE BLOODY CPU, so please don't
>assume that everyone wants a 68K based machine just because it is a 'better'
>CPU. It is also much more expensive and I for one am happy paying less for less
>because the 65816 suits me just fine.
As I've pointed out several times, the 68000 costs less than the 65816.
>> The current //gs already costs more than an equivalently set up Amiga 500.
>The 'current //gs' uses five year old gate arrays and a ten year old
>architectural structure but with major beef-ups.
The current A500 is using four custom chips designed in '85 or earlier, and
two finished in 1986. Heck, even the 68000 has been around much longer
than the 65816. New architecture can sometimes lower a system's cost, but
you have to pay for that new architecture. By the time you've been making
a part, any part, for 5 or 10 years, if you're paying for more than plastic,
metal, and sand, you're paying too much.
>By doing to the //gs what Apple did to the Mac IIfx (and don't try to tell me
>that designing the system intelligently costs that much money) they will save
>gobs over the current design even after adding the bare essential new features.
It costs quite a bit of money for Apple to build the new stuff in the IIfx, no
doubt. In some respects, the very successful Mac II line may have already
funded that R&D. Apple makes lots of money on Mac IIs, they have a very high
markup. Only Apple knows for sure, but I doubt they could fund a major Apple
II revamp project with the current profits from the Apple IIs they still sell.
>Do not assume that the IIGS is the best that the Apple II can do.
I've never assumed that about any Apple II machine -- they're always had too
many parts. But Apple only started getting serious about gate arrays near
the end of the Apple II's current history, and applied the best of that
new (to them) ASIC capability to the Mac II. You can always do better, like
the "C64 on a chip" I joked about up above (though it has moved that way
over time -- today's C64 board is less than 1/2 the size of the original).
Somebody has to justify that "doing better". Back before the A500 was done,
the C128 group I was working with wanted a similar cost reduction and feature
improvement, to build a new C256 or some-such. No matter what we came up
with, the PC board was only a small part of the cost for either machine.
Casework, power supplies, keyboard, floppy disk drives, etc. are essentially
the same for both. It doesn't take a marketing wizard to figure out that
"16/32 bit, 7MHz, Blitter, Copper, 880K, 68000" are easier to sell than
"8 bit, 2 or 4MHz, 360K, 65/85/45-something-or-other" at the same price.
>Todd Whitesel >toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu
--
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests"
Todd P. Whitesel
>Here we go again! I don't doubt that you have the plans for one
>whizbang machine. But, that is quite irrelevent. Who will buy this
>machine?
A significant portion of the Apple II user base (I know, I know).
People who want a machine that has all the spiffy coprocessors of the Amiga
but want the hands-on-ness of an Apple II or the GUI of a Mac.
People who want a machine that their kids use at school but will still be
competitive enough to last.
People who want to run small business software but still let their kids play
great games.
And people who want something as friendly as a Mac but don't need a true
Mac and would rather pay less for color.
> Who will write software for it?
Anybody who already has written software for the GS -- that's what it will
run. Apple's toolbox stategy makes that possible. Every application already
uses the toolbox routines which would now have the hardware support they
need to fly.
> Will anybody make money if this machine is built?
Apple, obviously. Especially because they will be taking away market share from
people who would have bought an A500 or PC Clone instead of a color Mac.
>To build such a machine would require a large investment on Apple's
>part. Would this be the best use of their resources?
That's a darn good question. From the glimpses I've got of their resources
I'm convinced they could pull it off if they were convinced they could market
and sell it. The design I suggested has high-bandwidth direct slots on the
CPU, video, and sound systems, so the major upgrades can be done by third
parties and with minimal glue, saving everybody time, trouble, and money.
> You comment that only Apple can build this Amiga and PC clone killer and
>they can do it cheaper. Cheaper than the Koreans and Taiwanese can crank out
>'286 clones? I doubt it. What advantage would there be in buying this
>machine, and paying more for it than a PC clone?
Note: this thing doesn't have to take on the entire breadth of the PC and the
Amiga, to do that would be a death wish. But to address a specific portion of
their market better than they do, and a portion that the Mac does not for its
own reasons -- that's why I think it's viable.
I also don't think it would cost significantly more than a 286 clone because
the current GS is no indicator of how cheap Apple can make things. You can
choose to believe that or not but there is so much logic duplication on even
the 1 meg GS motherboard that it isn't funny how much they could save
by giving the chip set a full redesign. They do that for every mac anyway,
so what's the problem?
> Will anybody write
>software to take advantage of it? Why would anyone who does not currently
>own a II series machine buy it? Is there any software for the II that
>does not already exist on another similarly priced platform?
Apple's GUI. In color.
Software for the Ensoniq. Now that we have decent MIDI tools we need to
get the big name software support back to exploit them.
Appleworks, which does have competition but is powerful enough for a lot
of people who buy on budget and nothing else.
Vast library of educational software which is still in schools.
A built-in BASIC that is easy enough to use that ordinary people can and do
write day-to-day custom programs in it -- this doesn't replace real software
packages but does complement a fair number of them. how many people wrote
Basic programs to custom process their spreadsheet's DIF files? The convenience
of a built-in programming language that normal people can use is largely
underestimated, IMHO.
>Remember the technical merits of a machine are only a small part of its
>success or failure.
Agreed.
> Bolting on additional capabilities to a 15 year old product line does not
>make sense.
That's not what the GS did from the software's point of view. In hardware, yes,
but that's what I want them to fix. The GS system software is actually easier
to work with than the Mac's because less glitches have been able to accumulate
in it over time (no development until recently, you see, and by that time they
knew what they were doing).
> Other products already exist with these capabilities and ... cheaply.
True. I am putting a little faith in Apple's ability to take their cost-of-
manufacturing technology and produce some real low end winners. I see a market
which can accept both a proper GS and a low cost Mac.
> It would make little sense to enter a crowded market packed with competitors
>when the product will have such a low profit margin. Apple could make much
>more money by investing their resources elsewhere.
I'm not so sure. If they want to take back the low end they will have to
sacrifice some of their sacred profit margin but the volume can potentially
make up for it. Their low cost Mac will have to make the same sacrifices,
and they've had no problems committing to that.
> As I said before, the Apple II product line is at the end of its useful
>life. It is naive to think that Apple would or should make such a large
>investment in this product line.
You do the machine a severe injustice by assuming it has done its best and
failed. The new GS is nowhere near the improvement I want to see, and with
what they _have_ done I am convinced they just aren't market driven enough
to realize what they can accomplish.
>X years from now people will be whining about Apple's
>lack of investment in the Mac.
Only if they let it rot to death for five years in favor of another machine.
I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Brian WILLOUGHBY
>Might be nice to have a board for Mac users who would like access to
>AppleII but I sure don't see it as a replacement for the AppleII. They
>ARE two different lines, they've ALWAYS been two different lines, I
>don't see it changing anytime soon, if even ever. If anything, I vote
>we (AppleII's) paid for them so in essence, they exist only because of
>AppleII's. Be funny seeing what Mac users thought about that! I don't
>even wanna know, cuz I could care less, it ain't gonna happen.
>
The main reason that I still find my Apple ][ and //e useful is the
variety of hardware that I can plug into it. EPROM programmers and
Analog to Digital sound recording just don't work with ][-in-a-Mac.
Personally, I don't find a computer very useful unless it can interface
to the physical world.
Actually, merging the Mac into the Apple ][ would be easier than the
reverse. The 'Classic' Mac (I prefer 'Mac-in-a-box') doesn't have any
slots anyway. So it would be quite easy to put a handful of chips on a
card to give Mac Plus compatibility on an Apple ][. But you can forget
any kind of useful Apple ][ in a Mac, because the lack of Apple ][
compatible slots would render such a product useless to many Apple ][
users.
Brian Willoughby
UUCP: ...!{tikal, sun, uunet, elwood}!microsoft!brianw
InterNet: microsoft!bri...@uunet.UU.NET
or: microsoft!bri...@Sun.COM
Bitnet bri...@microsoft.UUCP
nagendra mishr
and on the other side of the cable would be the slots which sit in a case
outside the computer.
nagendra
Chan Wilson
>
>>Hmm. One wonders how hard it would be to write a converter betwixt 65K
>>and 68K assembler.
>
>Don't bother. C compilers are supposed to do this for you.
That's not very helpful if you don't program in C, now is it? Besides,
that'd be a good project for this 68000 co-processor board I'm looking at..
>Software emulation of CPUs is a bitch and is a real performance waster, unless
>you're primarily after the occasional convienience. Most of the time it isn't
>worth the trouble and cross-development systems work much better.
Now, I never said that I was going to emulate a 68K cpu in software. That
would be a bitch. I'm talking about translating the source code somehow.
(not that it would be any easier, mind you...)
>Todd Whitesel
>toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu
--Chan
Todd P. Whitesel
But your executable will be about twice as big -- because 68000 opcodes are
all two bytes long.
Philip R. Lindberg
===============================================================
> ( Todd's are the single >'s and Tracy's are the double >>'s )
===============================================================
> tmy...@athena.mit.edu (Tracy S Myers) writes:
>
>>Here we go again! I don't doubt that you have the plans for one
>>whizbang machine. But, that is quite irrelevent. Who will buy this
>>machine?
>
> A significant portion of the Apple II user base (I know, I know).
> People who want a machine that their kids use at school but will still be
> competitive enough to last.
Granted, a lot of the people who would purchase this machine are current
Apple II owners (GS's, and other II's wanting to upgade), but you have
forgotten a large market that Apple is currently letting go down the tube:
Education.
A) K-12 Schools are backing away from Apple because they can get I*M's
cheaper and easier. If there was a future in the Apple II they would stay
with it since they have such a large s/w & h/w base (and investment) there.
(Don't tell me the MAC is the solution. Only a few K-12 schools are going
to it. At least of the ones I know around here.)
B) Don't discount all the Apple II owners who didn't upgrade to the GS the
first time. I know of at least two in this building, (out of 4 Apple II
owners), who are ready for a machine that runs what they have, only faster.
(Note: I said, "Runs what they have (ie. Apple II s/w) only faster". Also,
don't forget. Apple marketing tried the GS/MAC and the schools said they'd
rather have two machines instead of one for the same price.)
C) I know of several parents in our PTA who want to buy an Apple II for
their kids just because it's compatable with what is currently in the
schools. When I asked about a MAC, they said they would rather buy an
I*M.
From my perspective, this translates into a lot of sales that are currently
going to the competition, (and I don't mean, the MAC. ;)
>> You comment that only Apple can build this Amiga and PC clone killer and
>>they can do it cheaper. Cheaper than the Koreans and Taiwanese can crank out
>>'286 clones? I doubt it. What advantage would there be in buying this
>>machine, and paying more for it than a PC clone? [...]
>> Bolting on additional capabilities to a 15 year old product line does not
>>make sense.
You keep saying this forgeting those who already have an investment in
Apple II software and peripherals. To us, starting over will never be
cheaper, no matter how much less the cpu costs, (both individuals and
schools.)
>> As I said before, the Apple II product line is at the end of its useful
>>life. It is naive to think that Apple would or should make such a large
>>investment in this product line.
>
> You do the machine a severe injustice by assuming it has done its best and
> failed. The new GS is nowhere near the improvement I want to see, and with
> what they _have_ done I am convinced they just aren't market driven enough
> to realize what they can accomplish.
>
> Todd Whitesel
I have to second Todd's statement. This is EXACTLY what MACWeak would have
us to believe. However, it is totally untrue. In a K-12 class room we
don't need a CRAY. Why pay the price for half as many MAC's when an Apple
II will not only do the job, but, if improved, will to it more than
adequately.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|If my IIgs 'll just hold out for a few more months 'til ROM 04 |
| Phil Lindberg snail mail: 13845 S.E. 131 ST|
| UUCP: ..!uunet!bcstec!tahoma!prl3546 Renton, WA 98056|
| Disclaimer: I don't speak for my employer. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
Bob Church
> From article <1990Mar21.0...@spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu>, by tod...@tybalt.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel):
> ===============================================================
> > ( Todd's are the single >'s and Tracy's are the double >>'s )
> ===============================================================
>
> first time. I know of at least two in this building, (out of 4 Apple II
> owners), who are ready for a machine that runs what they have, only faster.
> (Note: I said, "Runs what they have (ie. Apple II s/w) only faster". Also,
> don't forget. Apple marketing tried the GS/MAC and the schools said they'd
> rather have two machines instead of one for the same price.)
>
run my software but faster. I put a rocketchip in my //c and added memory.
Granted, the rocketchip is not available just now (we can hope for it's return)
but the 8 mghz zip-chip is still here. I can understand people moving to the GS
for GS inherent features but if you only want to run the software you already have (and is still being produced) why would you pay more for a machine that runs
much slower than an enhanced //e/c? Even with a TWGS the GS is slower than
and accellerated e/c. I can load Enhanced Appleworks with several Timeout
enhancements, Publish-it!2, the Utility section of CopyII+ and a few other
programs onto my /ram drive from my 800k drive in less time than it takes to
boot the GS system. At ten mghz I can switch from program to program so
quickly that they seem like subroutines of the same package. For that
matter a stock $600 dollar //c+ will outrun a stock GS when running 8 bit
software. I think that the machine these people are waiting for is here
but just doesn't generate enough sales and aftersales revenue (that is,
they already work) for the dealers to push them.
********************************************************************
* *
* bob church bch...@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu *
* *
* If economics isn't an "exact" science why do computers crash *
* so much more often than the stock market? *
* bc *
********************************************************************
Brian WILLOUGHBY
Well, no one seems to think that the original Apple bus is very fast, but
it is fast enough that the extra cable you are talking about would render
the majority of the Apple ][ peripherals useless. Electricity travels
very quickly compared to us land animals, but a few inches of cable can
cause serious delays.
For example, the Apple ][ is rated to use 200ns RAM on the motherboard.
Most of the JameCo 16K cards come with 200ns RAM, but in a few
installations the RAM card will not work unless you switch to 150ns RAM.
In fact, every ][ Plus that I've put a RAM card in has needed 150ns RAM
because of the ribbon cable to the motherboard that it part of the
language card. Just a short 6 inches of cable is enough to require
speedier parts than the design calls for.
Also, I had a lot of trouble with my Laser UDC trashing 3.5" disks during
a write. It only happened when the computer was on for a long period of
time, but once it quit I would have to wait for the machine to cool down
before it would work again. Applied Engineering suggested that the chips
on my motherboard may have slowed with age and wear (my machine is about
8 to 10 years old), and I replaced them with newer parts. This fixed
things up by bringing the timing back into original specifications, but I
don't see how the UDC would work over a cable of any significant length.
P.S. Laser had no clue as to what could be wrong with my UDC - they simply
claimed that the Apple ][ Plus was no longer supported...
Bob Church
> accurate. The Mac Plus/SE is analogous to the classic Apple II, while the
> Mac II family is like the IIGS.
I'm glad I found that out! I was actually going to buy a Mac II.
WAIT!!! That was a joke!