Forced to kill the IIGS??

[Quadraman]

So I was thinking, the IIGS was a really great machine, so why did Apple kill it? Why did they even invent it in the first place? It always seemed to me that the IIGS was a little too close in spec to the Mac. They both used a 16 bit CPU, both used a GUI and mouse but the IIGS had a couple of advantages that I thought made it a better machine than the early Mac. It had a larger screen and was in color and it also had backwards compatibility to the older Apple II models and was cheaper than the Mac. I think Apple had no choice but to kill off the IIGS as it was becoming too powerful and intruding on Mac territory. What does everyone else think?

 

[TylerEss]

That was the theory that I had heard, but I dunno how true it is.

 

[II2II]

The IIgs was released a year or two after the Mac. It was at a time when the Apple II was still a hot seller, and Apple had to take advantage of that. It is also worth considering that the early Apple IIgs OS was nothing like the final product in the late 1990s. From the little that I've seen, you had ProDOS 16 and a little B&W program launcher that was very crude compared to even the Finder on early versions of Mac OS. The TOolbox had not bloomed into it's full glory either (in essence, you were stuck with the ROM Toolbox).

 

[QuadSix50]

I thought the reason that Apple decided to kill the IIgs was because it basically offered something similar to the Mac and the Finder while being affordable and allowing users of older Apple II computers to reuse their older software, something that the Mac could not do. Thus, the Apple IIgs would have seriously hindered Mac sales which were starting to flounder already, and so Apple decided to move everyone over (a la Steve Jobs' tactics today ) to the Macintosh and killed the Apple II line.

Of course, I could be wrong....

EDIT:

Duh...Had I read the entire original post I would have noticed that I was only a resounding echo. LOL :

 

[Bunsen]

And it had card slots, which didn't come back until the Mac IIs.

 

[II2II]

I think that you almost have to leave the Macintosh out of the picture when you consider the demise of the Apple IIgs. It is all too easy for us to look back and say the Macintosh was the future, because the Macintosh won out. The situation is worse when you consider that most of us are Mac enthusiasts, so we will be even more biased.

Take a look at the following graph (near the bottom of the page):

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars/5

You should notice that the Unit sales for the Mac vs. the Apple II line. Even in 1990, the Apple II had a noticeable slice of the pie (though clearly much less than the Macintosh). The Apple IIgs was on Apple's price list until the end of 1992, while the Apple IIe was there a year longer (Wikipedia). This was into the Quadra era. Not bad considering that the updates to these models were very minor.

I think the better question is why did Apple keep the IIgs around for so long. After all, it is pretty clear that they considered the Macintosh to be the future. There are two reasons: the Apple II was a substantial revenue stream and likely had better margins; Apple was also likely concerned about losing the education market (which has a considerable investment in Apple II software and peripherals, without the money to replace it).

Contrary to what was said earlier, the Macintosh was never compatible with Apple II software. The architecture is just too different. The only way to run Apple II software on a Macintosh is to use an emulator or hardware add-on (like the LC IIe card). To my knowledge, there never was a IIgs emulator for 68k Macs. Even if there was, it would never be able to handle copy protected software (which the schools used plenty of). The LC IIe card did allow you to run copy protected software, but it did not run Apple IIgs software.

 

[Quadraman]

I think that you almost have to leave the Macintosh out of the picture when you consider the demise of the Apple IIgs. It is all too easy for us to look back and say the Macintosh was the future, because the Macintosh won out. The situation is worse when you consider that most of us are Mac enthusiasts, so we will be even more biased.
Take a look at the following graph (near the bottom of the page):

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars/5

You should notice that the Unit sales for the Mac vs. the Apple II line. Even in 1990, the Apple II had a noticeable slice of the pie (though clearly much less than the Macintosh). The Apple IIgs was on Apple's price list until the end of 1992, while the Apple IIe was there a year longer (Wikipedia). This was into the Quadra era. Not bad considering that the updates to these models were very minor.

I think the better question is why did Apple keep the IIgs around for so long. After all, it is pretty clear that they considered the Macintosh to be the future. There are two reasons: the Apple II was a substantial revenue stream and likely had better margins; Apple was also likely concerned about losing the education market (which has a considerable investment in Apple II software and peripherals, without the money to replace it).

Contrary to what was said earlier, the Macintosh was never compatible with Apple II software. The architecture is just too different. The only way to run Apple II software on a Macintosh is to use an emulator or hardware add-on (like the LC IIe card). To my knowledge, there never was a IIgs emulator for 68k Macs. Even if there was, it would never be able to handle copy protected software (which the schools used plenty of). The LC IIe card did allow you to run copy protected software, but it did not run Apple IIgs software.

I just read through the thread again to be sure, but nobody said the Mac was Apple II compatible. I said the IIGS was backward compatible, not the Mac, although there were compatibility boards released for some later Mac models.

 

[II2II]

Sorry, I misread a statement by QuadSix50.

 

[Charlieman]

The only way to run Apple II software on a Macintosh is to use an emulator or hardware add-on (like the LC IIe card). To my knowledge, there never was a IIgs emulator for 68k Macs. Even if there was, it would never be able to handle copy protected software (which the schools used plenty of). The LC IIe card did allow you to run copy protected software, but it did not run Apple IIgs software.

Apple created a PPC IIgs emulator called GUS, but it is unclear whether this was an official project or work done in free time. I doubt whether any 68K Mac has the power to emulate a IIgs in a meaningful way, and the limited sound capability in hardware would have made things even more difficult. However, I can't see why copy protected software would have been a problem. The 1.44MB SuperDrive emulated an 800KB drive very well, and the differences between a IIgs 800KB drive (M0131) and a IIe 800KB Unidisk are much greater than an M0131 and anything in a Mac.

Overall, I agree with II2II. When looking at the cost of computers, many people shortsightedly ignore the cost of updating software and retraining people. These costs are significant in education, so the longevity of the II family is unsurprising.

 

[QuadSix50]

Sorry, I misread a statement by QuadSix50.

Yeah I was going to say, "I never said that!"

 

[Scott Baret]

The fact that the IIe outlived the IIGS by a year makes me believe the major customers of these computers were in the education sector. There was infinitely more education software developed for the IIe/IIc/II+ than for the IIGS.

I liken this to the Oldsmobile lineup of 1999 when they were looking at things. They had the compact Alero and the midsize Intrigue. In the middle of the two was the Cutlass, which technically was competing against both. Oldsmobile axed the Cutlass that year even though sales were decent. The reason? They didn't want it to eat into sales of the Intrigue or the Alero, both of which they were pushing. Likewise, the IIGS was eating into sales of the Macintosh and to a degree the IIe. Apple had something similar to the IIGS in the Mac OS and it was clear that, like Olds was with the Intrigue, they were going in that direction.

When the Cutlass came out in 1997, it was between two cars like it was in 1999, but those cars were the Achieva, an aging compact that had been on the market since 1992, and the Cutlass Supreme, not much bigger than it and introduced in 1988 (the two Cutlasses were not on the same platform). The Cutlass Supreme was quickly canned for the Intrigue, an early 1998 model. Even with the new Intrigue, the Achieva was slow-selling and outdated and disappeared without a replacement in 1998 (the Alero came along for 1999) so the Cutlass had a definite niche in the lineup for some time.

The Cutlass wasn't really given the attention the other two got in terms of marketing, new features, etc. Doesn't this seem an awful lot like the IIGS abandonment?

 

[II2II]

The Apple competes against itself car analogy reminded me of something else: Apple's legal problems with Apple. The synth on the IIgs probably caused problems with Apple Records because Apple was getting precariously close to their turf. It is quite possible that this limited how Apple could update the IIgs in the future. Indeed, all we saw was a minor update to the IIgs (the ROM and a couple of minor mainboard revisions). The only other revisions in the Apple II series were with the 8-bit models -- which already had higher adoption rates anyway, and they wouldn't have to ditech the 'S' in the Apple IIgs.

 

[bluekatt]

according to apple confidential 2.0

the gs 2 was relased in sept 86 six months before the first color mac which cost 6 times as much as the gs2 ( that alone is a reason to kil it off )

part of the problem acording to the book was that developers were unwilling to write gs specific code whiel the normal 8bit apple 2 segment was substantially lrger so basically al these nifty hardware specs would go to waste because the software would just not use them another reason not to buy the machine

the biggest problem and stake through the heart of the apple 2 gs was that appel activley discouraged devolpers to develop for the apple 2 and steered themto the macintosh

apple execs believed that continued succes fo the apple 2 would harm the macintosh

managment finally did get its wish though but only through gross malicious neglect did the apple 2 line died on 15 november 1993

the last apple was not a 2ggs but a 2e

 

[Scott Baret]

II2II: They couldn't have dropped the "s" from the model, they already had a IIg...a LaserWriter!!!

 

[blakespot]

So I was thinking, the IIGS was a really great machine, so why did Apple kill it? Why did they even invent it in the first place? It always seemed to me that the IIGS was a little too close in spec to the Mac. They both used a 16 bit CPU, both used a GUI and mouse but the IIGS had a couple of advantages that I thought made it a better machine than the early Mac. It had a larger screen and was in color and it also had backwards compatibility to the older Apple II models and was cheaper than the Mac. I think Apple had no choice but to kill off the IIGS as it was becoming too powerful and intruding on Mac territory. What does everyone else think?

Just a comment - the IIgs' 65C816 is an 8/16-bit processor while the MC68000 in the original Mac is a 16/32-bit processor. Internal ops on both chips are twice the width of the data bus on which the processor sat.

The Mac became a true 32-bit machine with the introduction of the MC68020-based Macintosh II and the Amiga found this glory with the advent of the Amiga 3000. (Though the Amiga 2500 had a 68020 acclerator card, it still had to interact to a large degree with the 16-bit motherboard...)

Wait...why did I start talking about the Amiga. Weird... Anyway, 32-bit version of the IIgs' processor, the WDC 65C832, was designed but never saw production. Apple didn't want the IIgs to get in the way of the Mac. This is why, even before the IIgs hit market, Apple dialed the clockspeed down to the paltry 2.8MHz in "Fast" mode... Definitely crippled to keep it "down."

blakespot