mdavis@pro-sol.cts.COM (09/18/88)
Received from Morgan Davis <mdavis%pro-sol.cts.com@nosc.MIL>. Apparently
his route to brl.MIL has been "broken" of late (see end of message - the
problem may be heavy traffic; lots of APPLE2-L mailings result in "unable
to connect to host <something>.MIL <or ARPA> for 3 days" messages from the
gate at cunyvm.cuny.edu).
As a coda to Morgan's note, I've heard that Apple discontinued production
of the //e and restarted it only because they had promised school boards
all over that they'd honor //e orders for this Fall. Those orders
turned out to be MUCH larger than expected (schools, no doubt, would love to
buy IIgs's but they just don't have the $$$). Once Apple has fulfilled
their promise to honor those orders no more //e probably.
Schools and lots of others have LOTS of existing 5.25 inch software and
data disks. While it's hardly any surprise that developers would rather
write larger applications and put them on 3.5 inch disks, many (most?) of
those programs will be IIgs oriented. A 140K drive is sufficient for
a computer with a 128K memory.
Is it true that while a //c drive "honks" a //c+ drive gobbles?
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I totally agree with you about the new IIc+. I'm less than excited about it.
In fact, the IIc has more things kludged on it than any other Apple II -- and
I would have loved to see it just dry up and blow away from a developer's
standpoint. And when I got the beta unit for the IIc+, I was really hoping
Apple would have cleaned it up and de-kludged it. But, nope.
Here is why I think Apple even came out with it. The only machine that was
perpetuating 5.25" diskettes was the IIc. Every other Apple computer has the
ability use 3.5" disks. Even though the IIc is able to have a UniDisk 3.5
connected to it, the fact that it comes with a drive built in doesn't leave a
lot of impetus for a user to run out and buy a new drive. At least with the
IIe you have a choice between drive styles. And the IIGS without a 3.5" disk
is like a peanut butter sandwich without the jelly.
Obviously, if Apple really felt that having a faster Apple II was important,
they'd start selling IIe's with the same CPU as is being sold in the IIc+. I
very much doubt that Apple will continue to sell both the regular IIc and the
IIc+ at the same time. So forget the speed increase issue.
Is it really that important that the IIc+ must have new mini-DIN 8 connectors
for the modem and printer ports? No. If anything, it would have been great
if Apple would have canned the 6551 serial I/O chip and swapped it out for
something a bit more robust like the 8530 used in the IIGS and Macintosh
lines.
So while Apple has made a few changes to the basic design of the IIc, the only
significant signal I see from all this is the fact that now Apple can pretty
much turn its back on the 5.25" 140K floppy diskette once and for all. This
will affect the IIe market now -- trust me. More and more developers have
less pressure to try to cram an application onto a 140K disk, now that both
the IIc and IIGS can use 800K storage devices. More IIe owners will realize
that it is time to buy some 3.5" drives for the old vanilla machine.
And for those who are thinking of buying an Apple II machine these days, your
only real choices are the IIc or IIGS. With the price between the IIe and
IIGS so insignificant, yet with a dramatic rift in the kinds of features you
get for your money, the IIGS is the clear choice. I don't see much future
left for the IIe (sales-wise).
--Morgan
P.S. Forward this to info-apple if you want. I've had all posts going to
info-apple@BRL.MIL bounce throughout recent days. I don't know what the
trouble is upstream.
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