mmcnew@pro-freedom.cts.COM (Monty McNew) (10/05/88)
I think that if any of us take an _HONEST_ look at anything that could be considered faults with the IIgs, lack of any kind of speed in 16 bit 'Mac' like applications is by far the largest glaring problem with the IIgs -- to the point of being ridiculed by most any other brand of computer owner ad nauseum. Dropping open a window in front of an Amiga, ST or Mac owner can (and has) caused fits of hysterical laughter. Highlighting a block of text to edit stifles them to a polite head turned aside snicker. Manipulating multiple windows on the desktop becomes a chance to turn to them and begin a conversation, hoping they won't notice the agony of screen updating. A third party speedup such as AE's Transwarp GS won't help. Sure, things will happen a lot faster for the user and you'll feel better about showing off your IIgs to those people. All your applications will just zoom along. Neat stuff I'll admit -- on the surface. Let's take a look at what third party accelerators did for the //e and //+. They performed as advertised. Yet they did _NOTHING_ towards getting new and improved software taking advantage of increased processor speed. Why? Because software developers cannot take the risk of writing new applications counting on the fact that everyone is going to have a $350 third party addition to their machine. I owned a Transawarp in my //e. All I did was get to run Appleworks faster (it ran pretty good at 1 Mhz anyway) and show my friends how funny games looked at 3.6 times normal speed. Now that _APPLE_ has a souped processor in the //c -- watch out. Within one year you will begin to see new software hit the shelves taking advantage of the new speed. New animation is possible in games, higher powered spreadsheets etc. Something that Zip Technologies would never have been able to do on their own for the //c, nor mighty AE. _APPLE_ had to do it. Same thing will happen for the IIgs. When AE comes out with the GS accelerator, you'll get to enjoy the superficial benefits of operating your current level of software quickly. I doubt you'll ever see a package of IIgs software the label stating "Applied Engineering Transwarp GS required" touting new and never before seen power. The point is -- _APPLE_ has to speed up the IIgs first, just in order to get it to run the defacto 'Mac Interface' at an acceptable level of speed. Not Applied Engineering or Zip Technologies. After that, AE and ZT can have at it all they want. Maybe AE and ZT know something we don't. Maybe that's why they are spending big R&D money on their own accelerators -- confident that Apple is not going to speed up the IIgs. BTW, I am thankful to Apple for working on and passing around GS/OS. At long last I can boot faster than a Commodore 64. I expect at least that kind of performance out of an Apple product ;). In all seriousness, GS/OS is nice and I am happy to have it. The IIgs is a neat little computer -- Apple did a great job on it -- with one tweak (speed by Apple) I'd be totally happy with it. UUCP: crash!pro-freedom!mmcnew ARPA: crash!pro-freedom!mmcnew@nosc.mil INET: mmcnew@pro-freedom.cts.com ProLine: mmcnew@pro-freedom SLBM: 45 37 N / 122 36 W