News from Apple

On Wed, 16 Jul 1997 01:44:04 -0700 (PDT), Sam Ismail wrote: % %I think you're reading too much into this. Jobs wasn't against the II. %On the other hand, he WAS for the Mac. John Sculley killed the Apple ][. Zap me if you have to, but I have never been fond of Apple the company nor its products. The Apple II was great for the first few years. After that, it was over priced and under powered. They stuck with a 1MHz processor when other people did a 2MHz one (e.g. BBC Micro). Hell, even Ohio Scientific had 2MHz 6502 boards in the 1970s! Lots of people also had 4MHz Z80-based computers (which are faster than a 1MHz 6502 but not a 2MHz 6502). When people like Commodore had better sound and graphics systems, the Apple II was 'upgraded' to IIe and IIc which did not add anything much to the basic machine. I was not surprised when the Mac 128K was over priced and under powered too. That had been Apple's strategy for the II : get as much profit as possible for lousy hardware. If they had stuck with the basic promise of a computer for the common man (the initial marketing line for the Mac), they would have had a better long term success. The Ataris and Amigas were incredibly successful in Europe because they were cheaper than the Apple IIs at that time. Interestingly enough, a very old issue of Byte magazine mentioned that Apple was in serious trouble in 1985. I can't remember the exact details. If anyone's interested, I can look it up (read the article a week ago while going on a nostalgia trip). That apple is still in trouble (12 years later) does not surprise me at all. Just blowing off steam. Sorry if it's off topic. Ben