--- On Sat, 12/12/09, Gord Tulloch <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: Gord Tulloch <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: What if Apple hadn't created the Mac?
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Saturday, December 12, 2009, 8:44 PM
> So, you're saying that a computer
> company that had one of the top
> computers on the market would have gone belly up if not for
> the Mac?
> I'm not sure I'm buying that, why? -- gt
The Apple II line was quite old by 1984, basically unchanged in its core
components, including the CPU. Meanwhile the IBM PC was on its third major
revision (PC, PC/XT, PC/AT) and second CPU (8088, 80286, 8086 used in XT
"turbo" clones). There were also higher resolution video cards capable of
displaying more colors at once than there were available for the Apple II.
Apple had sunk a lot of money and effort into the Lisa and the Apple ///,
rather than following a progression of updating and extending the II line while
maintaining almost total backwards software compatibility.
After those two over-expensive and under-powered for their price (and problem
plagued in the case of the ///), Apple chose to make a complete break with
their past hardware and software.
Apple could have survived without the Macintosh IF they'd never wasted
resources on the Lisa AND had done a progression of updating and expanding on
the II system. The Apple II was like the Ford Model T of computers. It had
minor changes through the years while remaining affordable. Unfortunately it
became obsolete and bypassed by the competition.
--
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