toddpw@tybalt.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel) (03/16/90)
In comp.sys.apple, Al Poy writes: >With all of the ideas about future Apple II products flying around >I thought maybe a different perspective should be looked at. Somebody already looked, and I'm going to answer yours too. I can and will answer the concerns you have because they are exactly what thought I had dealt with when I thought of the //f in the first place. >rumors of the ROM4 GS are encouraging. I've also read about the >Apple IIf proposal and there are some good ideas in there. However, >I question the necessity of this IIf to be the 'Amiga killer' that >many would like to see. The history of the Apple II line goes >back and takes its roots in the EDUCATIONAL field. Someone already pointed out that the II started as a hobbyist machine, which it did, and that it only migrated into schools after teachers realized what it could do for them. Apple positioned the II as education and home only because they were afraid to call it a business machine, after the failure of the Apple ///, which suffered more from overconfidence and bad design choices than anything else. They also didn't want it to compete with the Mac, but as I keep telling people that is the lamest excuse for doing anything... IBM didn't want the PCjr to compete with the PC and that's why it failed. > Sure, IIs are great hacking machines, but the odds are that you first had > exposure to the II in elementary or middle school. School is where you WANT the hacking machines, so that hackers learn to program on it, they get to know the machine and do more with it, maybe they buy one for themselves; but the point is you raise them on it and they tend to stay with it when they grow up. Right now the Amiga and the PCs are buying into this effect, and Apple pushing Macs everywhere doesn't help. Too many schools have gone PC or Amiga because they wanted more power but couldn't afford Macs, and less young hackers will be raised on Apple-built machines as a result. > This is where the strength of the II field >is, in the EDUCATIONAL market. It has the name recognition and the >standardization which has given Apple a monopoly in the market. Why don't you find an Apple education rep with a "Mac for education" shirt or "Macintosh -- part of every student's wildest dreams" shirt and tell them that. The real strength of the II is that it is a cheap general purpose machine which is easy to program. Period. The reason there is a lot of educational software out there is because the built in BASIC makes it ideal for introductory programming courses and the software vendors decided to capitalize on the interest educators already had in the machine. > This >is why I question the need for this 'super GS' machine. Don't get >me wrong, yes the GS needs more speed (7 MHz is a nice number), yes >it could use better graphics, but just exactly how much more do you >need to make the GS the 'decent' computer that it needs to be to >sell in its market? Quite a bit more than you realize, actually. The Amiga and the clones are eating away at the GS rapidly in all of its markets, and Apple has let things slide to the point where it will take a major improvement to fix things. My //f provides that -- read on. (Side note to someone else's reply: Powers of two of 1 mhz are BAD when you are doing NTSC color video. Powers of two of the NTSC Color Reference, 3.58 Mhz, are what the original Apple was built on -- 14.31818 Mhz / 4 is 3.58 Mhz, and 28.63636 / 8 in the GS. I would rather see the ASIC 65816 accelerators running at 14.31818 because it is much easier to deal with -- no metastability problems which is what randomly crashes the transwarp or any other system with two seperate time bases. Mac II NuBus would also exhibit this problem but they took the conservative -- i.e. lots of overhead -- approach to avoid it.) > I believe that Apple should produce a computer >that is inexpensive, which people (families?) can purchase without it >being a major financial setback. We've all complained about the price >of Apple products. Sure, the big profit margin is part of it, but >the amount of technology figures in there, too. This new GS should >contain a balance of technology which will allow it to perform its >functions in a respectable manner at reasonable cost. Exactly my point. All of Apple's recent manufacturing research has enabled them to reduce costs of CPU production more than they're letting on. They need it to make Mac II's, but for Apple //'s the new technology is all gravy. Whether or not Apple decides to charge us a reasonable price is the problem, and if they want the low end and the schools back, they will have to. And it will be about time, too. > Things like >blitter chips, built-in stereo, ultra-fast 20MHz processors, >640X400X265 graphics, built in scsi ports, and the like are all >technically desireable things but the bottom line is cost. Every >extra feature that you all to the machine also adds to its price >tag. If a user isn't going to *NEED* this technology, its just >another that you have to pay for "because its there", and that makes >people think twice about just how well the machine really fits their >needs. True; but many people do want a certain level of performance and the things you just mentioned are all the cheapest way of providing them. Blitters are dirt cheap (look at the Amiga 500 if you have any doubts). Stereo is dirt cheap (there's a schematic in the IIGS hardware reference which can and has been built for less than $10 in parts). The 20 mhz 65816 will use existing and industry-tested high density chip fabrication, and will be darn cheap and available in large quantity almost instantly because of it (Bill Mensch was an idiot for not trying this first). 640x400x256 graphics deserves to be an expansion option, true, but the capability should be there so that you only have to buy the more expensive chips and plug them in. The motherboard and its chip set are fairly fixed in cost; it is my opinion that they should be designed with the already obvious future in mind. The features which are expensive today will be a lot cheaper tomorrow as chip prices come down, and you could save everybody a lot of time, trouble, and money by doing things that way. Why more companies don't do this is beyond me, because the third-party hardware support is more than sufficient. > I would rather see equipment that could be added on when >the user desires (this is the strong point of the II line, when you >want it, you can add it) rather than forcing everyone to buy things >they don't really need. For example, a built-in scsi port would be >nice, but not everyone is going to need it ( besides, with this >rumored new scsi card coming out anyway, why re-invent the wheel :-). Did you read the newer //f proposal (TOTAL REWRITE in the subject line), and did you read the whole thing? The major expansion options (CPU, video, sound) should have their own dedicated 'direct' slots, each tailored to allow easy expansion without a lot of workaround circuitry such as that required by hefty expansions like the Transwarp or (eventually) the TurboRez. The built-in SCSI port is cheap enough to be standard. If somebody pays for a GS (as opposed to a //e or //c) then they probably want the desktop, right? Applications are big enough so that you WANT a hard disk if you can afford one, and since 10-20 meg hard disk prices are pretty far down ($300 or less) then HD's become a realistic option for many people. As for the new SCSI card, just integrate it into the motherboard; it costs a lot less than you might think. Remember, the new SCSI card will retail for $129, so how much do you think the guts of it really cost? Once they put out for the motherboard, adding a few square inches doesn't affect the cost that much and the built-in capability will be well worth the price. >It all boils down to the fact that Apple **needs** a 'low end' >machine. Right, it may not match the performance of other competitively >priced machines, but given Apple's mystic consumer loyalty (if you had >a II+ or //e, did you even think twice before purchasing a GS?) they >can easily regain their monopoly in the educational market (are real >people really buying Amigas anyway? :-). Unfortunately, they are; a lot of them would have bought a //f had it been available. But now they are developing the next generation's software on a different machine and Apple has lost their future expertise to the competition. > If the survival of the >Apple II line means getting consumers to purchase II's, and getting >consumers to purchase II's requires low prices, and if low prices >dictates having a 'basic' model computer, then I'm all for it !!!!! Getting customers to purchase II's requires low prices, but it also requires more performance for that price. If you compare performance/price between the Apple, the Amiga, and the PC, you will find that ever since 1985 the Apple II (and the Mac I might snicker) has remained fairly constant but increasing a little every year and with occasional jumps, while the Amiga and PC have been steadily rising as they compete with each other for consumers. Apple has the technology and the hard-earned experience to enter this market and knock it dead but a low cost color Mac only grabs part of the market. A 'super-GS' grabs more of the Amiga and Clone shares. If they remanufactured the 8 bit //'s into super-cheap workhorses then I bet we could find plenty of uses for them. (My father would have something to replace the ][+ with when it dies. He'd still be able to run his taxes on VisiCalc and his BASIC checkbook balancer, and since that's all he wants from the machine you aren't going to sell him on a PC, Mac, or Amiga, or even a GS, anytime soon. He'd buy a used //e instead.) We could find a lot of uses for a REAL portable based on the //c+ but with a quiet keyboard and Appleworks in ROM. A friend of mine (owns a Mac II) says he'd love one of them to take notes on (as well as play starblazer in class) and I have to agree. >Thanks for your time. Thanks for yours. If you can blow holes in any of my arguments, by all means do so. The realities of selling to the low end are largely misunderstood, but I think Apple is best prepared to deal with them if they'd realize what they've done for themselves. And if I'm wrong about something, I'd rather find out now, because I get a chance to come back with something better. Todd Whitesel toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu