Was the Mac LC what the Apple IIGS should have been

[DesertJets]

Bear with me on this one as I am working with a headache that won't quite break. Since getting into retro computing I have been puzzled by the Apple IIGS. Spec-wise the GS is an under-performer (well perhaps under-speced) when compared to the contemporary Amiga and Atari ST. This is puzzling given the far more extensive resources Apple had at their disposal.

 

Which leads me to a few questions. Was the GS down-speced so not to out do what the Macintosh could do (at the price it cost)? Were there considerable cost issues if Apple went with the Mac/68k architecture to built a color home computer in the same vein as the Amiga/ST/GS? How much of this was due to the clash between the Jobs philosophy vs. the Wozniak philosophy?

[desiv]

I don't think so..

I honestly think, after seeing what the IIgs could do, that it was an impressive 16-bit machine that should have been received better than it was.

I'm not sure I'd call it underspec'd for it's time.

...

er..

...

Actually, never mind..

Just went to Wikipedia to remind myself of the clockspeed and apparently, that's precisely what happened.

2.8Mhz because Apple didn't want it to compete with the Macs of the time.

 

I was going to say that it got a LOT out of much less CPU, but apparently they could easily have done more...

 

Too bad really..

 

desiv

[+Gemintronic]

So, it was a case of Apple avoiding competing with themselves (and thus failing the Apple II crowd)? Kinda like what IBM did with the PCjr?

[+wood_jl]

The IIgs is an interesting machine - to be sure. I never knew anybody who owned one, and I knew LOTS of kids with computers back in those days. I knew TONS of people with Apple IIe, and this is the machine I think of when I think of Apple II. When I think of what the IIgs was capable of, I think of Amiga or Atari ST. Hell of a sound system in the IIgs. Too bad it didn't get more support.

[JamesD]

I think the IIgs needed to be clocked at least at 4MHz as it's a little sluggish running the GUI as is. At 8MHz it runs pretty well and can run some pretty impressive games.

Apple didn't optimize a lot of the GUI until the last ROM release and I'm sure there was still room for improvement. With more optimizations I'm sure 4MHz would have been sufficient for gui based apps.

 

When Tandy consulted Motorola about building the CoCo 3 or a 68000 based machine, Motorola engineers assured them a 2MHz 6809 would compare favorably with a faster MHz 68000.

I'm not exactly sure what the 6809 vs 68000 clock speed ratio is for the same speed but I think it was probably 1 to 3 or slightly better. So a 2MHz 6809 would be around the speed of a 6MHz 68000 maybe?

Now, the 65816 borrows a lot from the 6809 but it's not quite as efficient from a coding standpoint.

So to take a swag at it... the IIgs would be pretty competitive with the 68000 machines once it's clocked over 4MHz. Maybe not quite as fast but close enough to run the majority of the same games. I think the 65816 would be slower in 32 bit math and floating point so 3D would probably be weaker than on 68000 machines.

 

I keep hearing how Apple intentionally neutered the IIgs to keep it from competing with the Mac but I don't know if that was the sole reason for the 2.8MHz clock speed.

It's certainly possible and I wouldn't put it beyond Steve Jobs.

When the IIgs was in development, Apple supposedly had trouble getting working CPUs from the manufacturer and they may not have been able to clock them any faster than that.

And I recently learned from the developer docs that the custom chips in the IIe were actually slower than the separate chips in the II+. They actually had to use faster 6502s to respond quicker to the delayed signals. It's possible that the custom chips in the IIgs couldn't be clocked any faster without a more expensive design/production.

So I think there was more than one possible reason for the clock speed.

 

One thing that clearly looks like Apple neutering the IIgs was the lack of a stereo output sound jack. The difference in cost might have been less that $3.

[The Usotsuki]

The Mark Twain apparently had stereo onboard, but it never was released. A shame.

[Tempest]

Once you get an accelerator board in it, it's a very nice system. I have mine running at 7 MHz and it's so much nicer to use than the stock configuration. With an accelerator and stereo card the IIgs is on par with the ST and Amiga (OCS Amiga anyway), but has the benefit of a kick butt GUI and the ability to run Apple II games.

[DesertJets]

Thanks for the feedback so far.

 

I have been reading that even with the Classic, LC and IIsi there was a lot of push back from the executive level about the notion of a low-cost Mac -- especially a low-cost consumer oriented model. Frankly Apple struggled with that all throughout the 90s with only the introduction of the iMac in 1998 being the final success. So perhaps in the mid to late 80s a low-cost, 16bit machine would have only been possible (in Apple's corporate culture) under the II line. But I do really wonder if it was possible to built a 68k based machine, running whatever version of the MacOS was current at the time, with color support, for a price that a consumer of higher end home consumers could have swallowed in the late 80s. All without making the $2500+ Mac Plus/SE look bad. Especially with how cheap an A500 or an ST was.

[Arkhan]

Overpriced and dopey?

 

I don't think so!

[+save2600]

a thought I've always had revolves around why the Mac was the tiny screened b/w joke that it was. IMO: Original Mac should have never happened and the ][gs (faster processor, more RAM, et al) should have been the obvious and exploited successor in their evolution. A color Mac starting with an '020 could/should have happened later, but only after it made sense to kill off the ][ line - which they ended up doing prematurely of course. Strange times and odd decision making for computing companies in the 80's for sure as they all ended up competing with themselves.

Edited March 5, 2013 by save2600

[JamesD]

The Mark Twain apparently had stereo onboard, but it never was released. A shame.

Every IIgs has stereo onboard, they just don't output stereo.

There is an internal header where you can grab signals and convert it to a stereo output and a few stereo upgrade boards were released for the IIgs.

I read what type of signal comes out of the header and I think it was a digital signal with channel info. Been a while so I can't be sure.

Maybe $3 was a bit optimistic on my part but by the time the IIgs came out a DAC and supporting circuit would have been pretty cheap.

[JamesD]

Thanks for the feedback so far.

 

I have been reading that even with the Classic, LC and IIsi there was a lot of push back from the executive level about the notion of a low-cost Mac -- especially a low-cost consumer oriented model. Frankly Apple struggled with that all throughout the 90s with only the introduction of the iMac in 1998 being the final success. So perhaps in the mid to late 80s a low-cost, 16bit machine would have only been possible (in Apple's corporate culture) under the II line. But I do really wonder if it was possible to built a 68k based machine, running whatever version of the MacOS was current at the time, with color support, for a price that a consumer of higher end home consumers could have swallowed in the late 80s. All without making the $2500+ Mac Plus/SE look bad. Especially with how cheap an A500 or an ST was.

Lets face it, execs wanted a $10,000 machine and that's why they produced the Lisa.

When that flopped they thought maybe they should price it just above what people had been willing to pay for an Apple II and the Mac was born.

 

For whatever reason, Apple didn't think color was required for business apps.

That seems so bizarre, especially when you consider the Apple II was a hit largely because it had color at a time when other machines were B&W.

[Hatta]

Is there software that supports stereo out on the IIgs?

[Tempest]

Is there software that supports stereo out on the IIgs?

Lots. It was a pretty common upgrade to have.

[akator]

The Mac was originally supposed to be a very affordable computer. When the Lisa failed, Jobs took over the Mac project from Jeff Raskin and upped the requirements to make it a "premium" machine. He envisioned an "appliance computer" with no expandability, expandability he always hated with the Apple II line.

 

The reason the Mac was B&W was because there was no decent consumer color output at the time. He insisted that the Mac be B&W even though most others wanted color.

 

Jobs didn't like the Apple II line and pitted the Mac division vs. the II division. He went through great lengths to kill off the II line, but it was what made the company all of its profits. His shenanigans eventually lead to him being ousted as CEO, then he threw a tantrum and quit.

 

When Jobs left in 1985, Apple was free to make color Macs. The first was released a few years later.

 

Further evidence of Jobs' attitude about color displays was that early Next computers were all limited to B&W. He thought everything had to be WYSIWYG, thinking a B&W screen worked better with a laser printer. To some extent he was right, since it was years before high resolution color monitors could match the resolution of B&W displays and even longer for affordable quality desktop color printing.

 

The IIgs was conceived to be as powerful as the Mac, but the seeds of Apple II hatred within the company were well established and continued after Jobs' departure. The IIgs was intentionally hobbled to prevent it from competing with the "more prestigious" and finally profitable Mac line. When desktop publishing took hold, that made the Mac even more profitable and the II even more distasteful to execs.

 

By the early 90s Macs were doing well. Market share continued to grow throughout the early 90s, allowing Apple to happily abandon the II series. It was only around late 94 and into 95 that Apple began to self destruct with too many models, cheaper Mac clones that were better quality, lackluster Newton sales, development delays with their next great OS, and management craziness. It was in this climate during 1996 when Jobs was brought back into the company as a consultant.

 

Interestingly, while Jobs gets credit for the iMac it was in development before he came back to the company.

 

So... to recap: Jobs made the Mac B&W with no expandability. Jobs hated the Apple II series. Only when Jobs left did the Mac get expansion and color to become profitable. Jobs' antagonism of the Apple II continued at Apple even after he left and lead to a loss of II development and the series demise. Without Jobs, Apple was very successful for over a decade, then imploded in the mid-90s. Jobs came back after learning many things with Next and Pixar to be a much better CEO and fixed Apple.

[+wood_jl]

I think because printers (practical ones, not Okimates) were pretty much black and white - and Desktop Publishing was big - that color wasn't considered a big deal back then, for those machines.

[desiv]

That and, B/W was much sharper than color back then...

B/W displays could be really sharp and not too expensive.

 

And other than games/animation, B/W was fine. There wasn't a lot of serious color competition at the time.

 

Yes, the Apple II had color, but it also had a monochrome mode for "serious" business apps...

The PC had hercules mono. (B/W, green or my personal favorite, Amber...)

People were used to mono for business apps..

 

Now, I'm not sure about the 9" monitor thing...

I think Jobs just really liked the Vectrex or something...

 

desiv

[Tanrunomad]

When Apple abandoned the II line, I abandoned Apple. Haven't bought a product from them since.

[Osgeld]

from what I understand the GS was designed years before it came out, as someone else pointed out Jobs had a hate on for the apple II, and the GS would have just blown away a 128k mac, not in term of power, but in terms of most of your II stuff worked with it, it was mac like, and it had color so why buy a mac?

 

once Jobs is gone, Sculley was just keeping the ship on a mac course, then people started wondering about the future of the II line. Keep in mind that back then a computer would cost thousands of 1980's dollars, but you also had thousands more tied up in extra hardware and software (where a grade A word processor might run you 300+), so Sculley said "never fear", here is a new C (the IIC+) then dusted off the GS and said "you know you want that!" Though it was a bit too late, the second gen mac's were appearing, Atari's and Amiga's were much more powerful and the PC was starting to not suck.

 

I dont know how seriously they took it other than to appease the apple II people, which they ended up cutting off cold turkey in 92

[atarian1]

That and, B/W was much sharper than color back then...

B/W displays could be really sharp and not too expensive.

 

And other than games/animation, B/W was fine. There wasn't a lot of serious color competition at the time.

 

Yes, the Apple II had color, but it also had a monochrome mode for "serious" business apps...

The PC had hercules mono. (B/W, green or my personal favorite, Amber...)

People were used to mono for business apps..

 

I bet Apple did not want to be stuck with the "game machine" image too that stuck with Atari and Commodore. Anything with nice color graphics was not a "serious" machine back then. It's incredible how times have changed since then. Everyone wants color now until the Kindle came along. I still remember people looking at me weirdly when I thought the B&W screen in the Kindle is better than a color screen in the 21st century. Well, it's because it is much easier to read. The market now seems to agree with me. But I digress...

 

Yeah, It was easier to read a B&W screen too. The only problem was the screen was only 9", so it was a bit hard to read compared to the PC, Apple II and Atari ST mono 12" screens.

[BillyHW]

Wild and crazy idea, but couldn't they have just offered both colour and B/W monitors for the Mac and NextCube for those that wanted them?

[BillyHW]

I bet Apple did not want to be stuck with the "game machine" image too that stuck with Atari and Commodore. Anything with nice color graphics was not a "serious" machine back then. It's incredible how times have changed since then. Everyone wants color now until the Kindle came along. I still remember people looking at me weirdly when I thought the B&W screen in the Kindle is better than a color screen in the 21st century. Well, it's because it is much easier to read. The market now seems to agree with me. But I digress...

 

Yeah, It was easier to read a B&W screen too. The only problem was the screen was only 9", so it was a bit hard to read compared to the PC, Apple II and Atari ST mono 12" screens.

 

That's so bizarre, since in the 90s, one of the biggest reasons for the success of the WinTel platform over the Mac was games.

[Osgeld]

the hardware of the first gen mac's dont support color and it takes up 3x as much ram, the screens are fairly high res compared to other systems of 1984, and if you dont go monkeying with them translate perfectly to a half of a sheet of paper making it a true WYSIWYG

Edited December 27, 2013 by Osgeld

[Duder]

I want to know why Apple decided to discontinue use the II(gs) line and pushed forward with Mac’s.  Where would Apple be today if they abandon Mac’s after the original?

[The Usotsuki]

Honestly if the GS were continued it would have gradually evolved, I feel, into something like the Mac LC, and then continued just like the Mac line had.