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The 65C816 was a dead end, I'm afraid. It was a fairly poor 16-bit chip, and the notional successor, the 65C832, was never made. It only existed as a datasheet:
https://downloads.reactivemicro.com/Electronics/CPU/WDC%2065C832%20Datasheet.pdf
Backwards compatibility is really limiting. Look how long it took the PC to catch up with mid-1980s graphical computers, such as the Mac, Amiga or ST. Any of them was frankly far ahead of Windows 3.x, and it wasn't 'til Windows 95 that it could compare.
Innovation is hard. Everyone tends to overlook the Lisa, which is the machine that pioneered most of the significant concepts of the Mac: not just the GUI, but a rigorously and completely specified set of UI guidelines, plus a polished, 2nd-generation GUI.
(Xerox's original was very Spartan. No menu bars, no standardised window controls, no standardised dialog boxes, etc. It was a toolkit for writing GUI apps, and a fancy language to implement them in.
Apple added a _lot_. But the first version was, just like the Xerox Star, way too complicated (hard disk! Multitasking!) and *way* too expensive.
It took a second system to get it right, and it took cutting it back *HARD* to make it affordable enough so people would notice. Yes, sure, 128 kB wasn't really enough. One single-sided floppy wasn't enough. But even so it was $2500. It had to be pared to the *bone* to get it down to a quarter of the price of the Lisa.
It was a trailblazer. It showed that a single-user standalone GUI machine was doable, and worth having, and could be just about affordable.
Just 9 months later, a 512 kB model was doable for only $200 more. Tech advanced fast back then.
They simply could not have done a IIGS at that kind of price point in 1984. It wasn't possible. The Mac was only barely possible. The other new 680x0 personal computer of 1984, the Sinclair QL, had 128 kB too.
If there'd been no Mac, the GS wouldn't have had its GUI. The GUI was a re-implementation of the Mac one. Without that, it would have just been a slow kinda-sorta 16-bit machine, released a year and 2 months after the Amiga 1000 – which was $1300 but which had much better graphics, comparable sound, a full multitasking GUI, and a 7.1 MHz 68000 – a much more capable chip.
Or the Atari ST, which was another full 68000 machine, with half a meg of RAM, and a GUI, and was (unlike the Amiga) usable with a single floppy because the OS was in ROM... and which was $800 in June 1985.
There is more to the universe than just Apple.
In the gap between the Lisa and the Apple IIGS, IBM released the PC-AT, which my friend Guy Kewney, perhaps the most famous IT journalist in the UK then, called "his first experience of Raw Computer Power". His caps.
The year after that, Intel released the 80386, a true 32-bit chip. The same month as the IIGS, Compaq released the Deskpro 386, the first true 32-bit PC. Sure, $6,500 -- but vastly more powerful and capable than a 65C816.
The IIGS was a gorgeous machine. I was at the UK launch. I wanted one very badly. But bear in mind that the Apple II was _not_ a successful machine in Europe -- it was was too expensive. A $1000 computer in 1977 was no use to us: that was more than the price of a car. We got Sinclair ZX80s and ZX81s, the first £100 computers. :-)
So outside a few countries, the IIGS had no existing catalogue of software and so on. Neither did the Amiga or ST at launch, but they'd been around for over a year by the time the IIGS appeared, and they had amazing best-of-breed apps and games by then.
https://downloads.reactivemicro.com/Electronics/CPU/WDC%2065C832%20Datasheet.pdf
Backwards compatibility is really limiting. Look how long it took the PC to catch up with mid-1980s graphical computers, such as the Mac, Amiga or ST. Any of them was frankly far ahead of Windows 3.x, and it wasn't 'til Windows 95 that it could compare.
Innovation is hard. Everyone tends to overlook the Lisa, which is the machine that pioneered most of the significant concepts of the Mac: not just the GUI, but a rigorously and completely specified set of UI guidelines, plus a polished, 2nd-generation GUI.
(Xerox's original was very Spartan. No menu bars, no standardised window controls, no standardised dialog boxes, etc. It was a toolkit for writing GUI apps, and a fancy language to implement them in.
Apple added a _lot_. But the first version was, just like the Xerox Star, way too complicated (hard disk! Multitasking!) and *way* too expensive.
It took a second system to get it right, and it took cutting it back *HARD* to make it affordable enough so people would notice. Yes, sure, 128 kB wasn't really enough. One single-sided floppy wasn't enough. But even so it was $2500. It had to be pared to the *bone* to get it down to a quarter of the price of the Lisa.
It was a trailblazer. It showed that a single-user standalone GUI machine was doable, and worth having, and could be just about affordable.
Just 9 months later, a 512 kB model was doable for only $200 more. Tech advanced fast back then.
They simply could not have done a IIGS at that kind of price point in 1984. It wasn't possible. The Mac was only barely possible. The other new 680x0 personal computer of 1984, the Sinclair QL, had 128 kB too.
If there'd been no Mac, the GS wouldn't have had its GUI. The GUI was a re-implementation of the Mac one. Without that, it would have just been a slow kinda-sorta 16-bit machine, released a year and 2 months after the Amiga 1000 – which was $1300 but which had much better graphics, comparable sound, a full multitasking GUI, and a 7.1 MHz 68000 – a much more capable chip.
Or the Atari ST, which was another full 68000 machine, with half a meg of RAM, and a GUI, and was (unlike the Amiga) usable with a single floppy because the OS was in ROM... and which was $800 in June 1985.
There is more to the universe than just Apple.
In the gap between the Lisa and the Apple IIGS, IBM released the PC-AT, which my friend Guy Kewney, perhaps the most famous IT journalist in the UK then, called "his first experience of Raw Computer Power". His caps.
The year after that, Intel released the 80386, a true 32-bit chip. The same month as the IIGS, Compaq released the Deskpro 386, the first true 32-bit PC. Sure, $6,500 -- but vastly more powerful and capable than a 65C816.
The IIGS was a gorgeous machine. I was at the UK launch. I wanted one very badly. But bear in mind that the Apple II was _not_ a successful machine in Europe -- it was was too expensive. A $1000 computer in 1977 was no use to us: that was more than the price of a car. We got Sinclair ZX80s and ZX81s, the first £100 computers. :-)
So outside a few countries, the IIGS had no existing catalogue of software and so on. Neither did the Amiga or ST at launch, but they'd been around for over a year by the time the IIGS appeared, and they had amazing best-of-breed apps and games by then.
