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From: thetroll@rata.vuw.ac.nz (The Troll)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: The New Macs: Greedy Compromises?
Message-ID: <1990Nov30.012311.22400@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
Date: 30 Nov 90 01:23:11 GMT
References: <1990Nov29.005944.17800@scrumpy@.bnr.ca> <1990Nov29.083433.4781@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
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Organization: Computing Serv. Ctr, Victoria Uni., Wellington, New Zealand
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eric@bnrmtl.bnr.ca (Eric Brunelle) writes:
>Take the Classic.  Why does it still have the old 8MHz 68000?  Wasn't it
>possible to give it the same CMOS 16MHz 68000 as the Portable?  Is it that mor>expensive?  If so, was it absolutely impossible to speed up that old timer?

When I asked this question of the team that put together the new macs, the
reply was that they didn't want to reduce software support for MacPlus and
SE owners. 

The rational was that software developers try and write their programs to
perform "well" on the bottom end machines (the Plus and SE). If Apple
increased the speed of the base machine then software developers would
create software that ran "well" on the new baseline. If that happened then
all the SE and Plus owners out there would enjoy perfomance hits when they
went out brought the next upgrade of their software packages. 

For example Pagemaker 4.0 performs ok on a MacPlus but it's not swift. If
Aldus assumed that the new baseline was a 16MHz 68000 then Pagemaker 5.0
probably wouldn't be usable on a MacPlus, because they wouldn't put any
effort into tuning performance for a 8MHz 68000 instead tuning Pagemaker
to work "well" (but not swiftly) on a 16MHz 68000. 

Was it a good decision? I don't know, but I do know that this group sees a
lot of complaints about how Apple keeps orphaning its low end machines.
About how it doesn't give automatic upgrades. 

With a commitment to the 8MHz 68000 in a new machine Apple is commited to
making system 7.0 work "well" on not only the Classic but also the Mac
Plus and SE, and seems to be making an effort to preserve a usable
software base for the Plus and SE. 

The other question is: Do most users really need a faster chip than the
8Mhz 68000? In the MS-DOS world, the most popular model that this
University sells is the original 8088 version, our users seem happy with
not being able to run speed hungry programs, all they want is a
word-processing platform. 

--
Alex Heatley                                Computing Services Centre
Domain: alex@rata.vuw.ac.nz                 Victoria University of Wellington
Path: I don't support bang paths            P.O Box 600, New Zealand.
"My guru card was eaten by my homework, but I think I can help."
                                                    - J Greely