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From: knauer@sunc5 (Rob Knauerhase)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Woz giveth, Scully taketh away
Message-ID: <1990Oct2.042335.7929@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 2 Oct 90 04:23:35 GMT
References: <5658@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <6397@hub.ucsb.edu> <5666@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <7379@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <5673@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Reply-To: knauer@cs.uiuc.edu (Rob Knauerhase)
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Science, Urbana
Lines: 54


In article <5673@mace.cc.purdue.edu> asd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth) writes:
>In <7379@darkstar.ucsc.edu> unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User) writes:
>>	As other people have said, I just want the Apple II(GS) to remain
>>competitive... Have all it's always got (hackability), and remain 
>>competitive. That's ALL. More would be nice, but not necessary. Speed
>>to be roughly equal to other comparatively priced machines, and graphics
>>and other characteristics that are similar too. (640 * 400 would be a minimum

This is all any of us are asking.  (We used to ask for more, but have trimmed
down our expectations. :)

>Absolutely!  Unfortunately, I don't believe in Apple coming thru.
>I would love to see Apple come out with a machine that addressed all
>these problems.  Heck, I'll printout my posts and eat my words,
>literally, if they do!  Anybody want to make bets on wether they will
>come thru?

Well, although I'm not enough of a gambling man to take this offer, do let
me remind you (and all the others who are whining prematurely about the
death of the II) about the rumored things that may (or may not) be coming
Real Soon Now:

- System Software 6.0 [DTS, back me up on this, like with a product?!?]
- HyperCard GS (w/HFS FST?) [Ditto for Claris/Apple people]
- Duet Mac-emulation board  [Cirtech, are you out there?]
- SynthLab
- (I forget the name) the Animation package that was seen at KansasFest
- Fast 65816's from whomever
- BlackBox-thingy to allow use of 1.44MB or higher 3.5" drives

I'm the first to admit that this is a lot of promise and no delivery.  Some
of these things may very well exist at least in beta, but are held up somehow.
BUT we shouldn't give up the ship yet!  [Mainly, I can't afford a IIfx or NeXT
and I'm not completely sold on the Amiga. :)]  It's OK to be a bit jaded and
suspicious, but the last people we need as doomsayers are II-people!  (Besides,
you guys are getting so good at II-bashing you could work for MacWeek!)

However, we can all be sure of one thing.  If Apple does phase out the II
and bets its future on a way-too-expensive Mac IIfx and a "Mac Classic" (yeah,
which I wouldn't trade an HP28S calculator for), it'll give Commodore and IBM
a lift like they've never seen before.

More later.
Rob
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Robert C. Knauerhase                                                      |
|   knauer@cs.uiuc.edu                   | U of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign|
|   rck@ces.cwru.edu,knauer@cwru.bitnet  | Case Western Reserve University |
|   knauer@scivax.lerc.nasa.gov          | NASA Lewis Research Center      |
+----------------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|   "Computers are different from telephones.  Computers do not ring."     |
|                    -- A. Tanenbaum, "Computer Networks", p. 32           |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+