If Apple never did the Mac, would the Apple IIGS have thrived?

[liam_on_linux]

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.

Comments

[tpear]

I’ve never tried OS/2 — one of the few not in my collection. A joint effort of MS and IBM; no idea who had most input to it.

I think Apple had to make a choice between the 8-bit ][ stream — even after upgrading to 16-bit in the GS — and a more future-proof 16/32-bit stream of the Mac. So hobbling and then killing the GS was really the only commercially viable route. I’m not aware of questions over yield.

Have only rarely come into contact with Apple ][ helping a friend with his 2c. If I were to get one now as a retro thing, I think it’d be the GS as I just like the look lol

I agree that the WinNT architecture -is- good. Guess that’s what you get by employing VMS's creator.

The whole Amiga/ST thing was a crazy time. Atari initially helping fund the Lorraine, Tramiel being ousted from Commodore & buying Atari, Commodore snatching Lorraine from Atari and the ex CBM people Tramiel took to Atari creating the much simpler ST design. You couldn’t make it up 😊

I have a feeling I once saw Commodore's own 16-bit machine at a show — the Z8000 based unix box. Don’t really remember much apart from seeing it.

More interesting (to me, I mean) than if GNU had adopted BSD is if they’d actually made headway with Hurd… in the end, Linus's clone of Unix won that battle instead so we’re stuck with 1960s design with masses of boot-ons and bodges to try to hide how badly it creeks at the edges from old age.

[liam_on_linux]

I’ve never tried OS/2 — one of the few not in my collection.

It's worth a look. Warp is an interesting OS, and the fact that a current version still survives says a lot, IMHO.

Warp Server 4.52 is out there for nothing, supports SMP and USB, and runs in a VM fine. VirtualBox was built for OS/2 Warp.

A joint effort of MS and IBM; no idea who had most input to it.

OS/2 1.x is kinda sorta 50:50.

OS/2 2.x (and Warp) are 100% IBM.

I think Apple had to make a choice between the 8-bit ][ stream — even after upgrading to 16-bit in the GS — and a more future-proof 16/32-bit stream of the Mac. So hobbling and then killing the GS was really the only commercially viable route. I’m not aware of questions over yield.

Agreed.

Have only rarely come into contact with Apple ][ helping a friend with his 2c. If I were to get one now as a retro thing, I think it’d be the GS as I just like the look lol

Pretty much me too! :-)

I agree that the WinNT architecture -is- good. Guess that’s what you get by employing VMS's creator.

Indeed.

NT was based on OS/2 3, the CPU-independent version, of course.

Classic MacOS is not a miracle of OS design. (UI design, yes.)

But compared to GS/OS, yeah it was streets ahead.

There's an essay in exploring the problems and issues of OS development in the 1990s and in the 21st century.

'90s: aargh, we have to boot native, we have to support 4GB of RAM and 4 different APIs and 2 different buses and it's a nightmare! We've been trying for 2 years but if we move to API 2, it breaks everything that uses API 1, and that includes our whole UI! But now we have API 3 and we haven't even thought about API 4 yet!

'00s: OK, we'll run this on the host and spawn a VM for the old stuff. Give it 64 meg, that'll do. Tweak it so it knows it's in a VM and plays nice.

The whole Amiga/ST thing was a crazy time. Atari initially helping fund the Lorraine, Tramiel being ousted from Commodore & buying Atari, Commodore snatching Lorraine from Atari and the ex CBM people Tramiel took to Atari creating the much simpler ST design. You couldn’t make it up 😊

Quite so!

I have a feeling I once saw Commodore's own 16-bit machine at a show — the Z8000 based unix box. Don’t really remember much apart from seeing it.

Ever read The Secret Weapons of Commodore? So many great ideas. So many terrible ones. And somehow often the terrible ones made it to market and the great ones didn't.

More interesting (to me, I mean) than if GNU had adopted BSD is if they’d actually made headway with Hurd…

That's a fair point. If they'd gone with the BSD kernel, that would almost certainly never have happened. OTOH I think they over-reached themselves dramatically there. Cf. my '90s-vs-'00s paras above.

in the end, Linus's clone of Unix won that battle instead so we’re stuck with 1960s design with masses of boot-ons and bodges to try to hide how badly it creeks at the edges from old age.

Yup. And now Plan 9 is GPL but it's too late and nobody knows or cares. If I had Shuttleworth's money, I'd probably start there...