Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ulowell!m2c!wpi!dseah
From: dseah@wpi.wpi.edu (David I Seah)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: RE: Fool in the Rain
Summary: I feel dumb too
Message-ID: <1073@wpi.wpi.edu>
Date: 27 Feb 89 18:25:02 GMT
Reply-To: dseah@wpi.wpi.edu (David I Seah)
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA. USA
Lines: 96

>>Date:         Wed, 22 Feb 89 16:22:00 EST
>>From:         CHEESEBALL%ALBION.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
>>Subject:      Fool In the Rain

>Do you subscribe to GEnie or AppleLink--Personal Edition?  If not,
>consider giving them a try.  You may be missing out on a lot of
>public domain or Shareware stuff.  People complain about a lot of
>things on the commercial services, but one thing I've never seen
>anybody say there is that they haven't gotten much out of their GS.

I'm on AppleLink PE, and there are generally a lot of pissed off GS owners on
the service.  They aren't quiet either.  In the A2 Development forum, there is
a large folder devoted to "Death of the Apple II".  In Across the Boards,
there is a "Let's Get John Sculley" folder.  In the Grafitti board, there were
some unhappy postings as well.  Perhaps I'm finding them because I am pretty
pissed off too.  These folders tend to be among the largest in terms of
the number of messages AND posters.  

I have been looking through the "death" folders on AppleLink, and there were
several posts about people dumping their GSs.  In the classifieds of
newspapers, people are selling their GSs.  In phone calls to my friends, they
confirm that they know people (or are themselves) selling their GSs.  It seems
to be a nationwide trend (but don't quote me on that).

>>As a business machine, basically the best you can do is AppleWorks
>>2.0 (unless you have the patience of 10 dead men)
>
>I use AppleWorks quite a bit.  Is that bad?  It goes 2.5 times
>faster than on a IIe, and all the GS memory is available for big
>files.  Plus I have desk accessories always available, and a
>detached keyboard & mouse control.

I think Dave Srinivasan was referring to AppleWorks GS.  I have played with it
but briefly, and was impressed with (1) its load time (2) its sluggishness. 
If programs such as MultiScribe GS are called "unfit for documents longer than
a couple of pages" by Apple magazines (that usually gush all over the place),
then AWGS might share the same characteristics.  

>>and as a game machine, the thing is a poor man's Amiga.
>
>I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to the Amiga.  Are you
>calling it a game machine?  I'm not noted for spending extreme
>amounts of time playing games, but I've bought Zany Golf, Shanghai,
>and Tetris, and I'm reasonably happy with them.  Have you tried
>those?  I don't know what kind of games you want.  There's a slick
>public domain Yahtzee and a Shareware Solitaire that I use, too.

Poor man's Amiga?  The Amiga is the poor man's Apple IIGS Plus!
Pay attention to the Amiga!  It's catching up!  They may not have the support,
but they have the hardware!  I got burned by them in a local computer show!  I
had Zany Golf.  Shanghai is availiable for the Amiga (and it looks better,
too).

(take a deep, relaxing breath)

From the programmer's viewpoint, the GS may be a great machine.  But from
those of us who are into animation, presentation, and Total Experience kind of
applications (ie: games and graphics), the GS is really third rate.  "Graphics
that are Static" fits the ticket.  Even in great Apple IIGS games like Zany
Golf, you can SEE the screen update!  Big deal, some may say, but I notice it.
Things like this mar the effectiveness of the presentation.  If you do any
art on the GS, you know that things like ONE pixel out of place can screw up a
drawing.  Attention to detail is very important.  The graphics on Zany Golf
are superb (unmatched, methinks), but a hardware  "detail" that makes screen
writes slow to 1MHz and provides for screen flapping is really too much to put
up with now. 

>>performing the things IT IS DESIGNED TO DO!
>
>Not all the software is slow, but too much of it is.  One thing you
>can do is order a TransWarp GS (see below).  Another is to wait for
>more improvements in software speed (both system software and
>application software), which I'm confident will be forthcoming.

One shouldn't have to buy an accelerator board to crutch up the performance of
the _basic_ machine.  I sooth my nerves by thinking of the GS as a 128K Mac in
capability.  If you want to keep the Apple II as a computationally oriented
machine, then accelerators are OK by me.  But the GS stands for Graphics that
are St...Graphics and Sound! An accelerator doesn't fix the crummy video
updating or the noise/low sample rate of the sound glu. If we want number
crunching, let us designate the Apple IIGS as the Apple IIC Plus, C for
Crunching and Computation!  And it looks like it happened, too!
 
[Stuff Deleted]

>--David A. Lyons              bitnet: awcttypa@uiamvs
>  DAL Systems                 CompuServe:  72177,3233
>  P.O. Box 287                GEnie mail:    D.LYONS2
>  North Liberty, IA 52317     AppleLinkPE: Dave Lyons

Call me a nit-picker.  I am still waiting for that GS Plus.  Commodore (the
company) sucks.  Apple Rocks!  Rah rah rah.

| <<<<<(((((( DAVE SEAH ))))))>>>>> |	Internet:  dseah@wpi.wpi.edu
| Worcester  Polytechnic  Institute |	Bitnet:	   dseah@wpi.bitnet
| Computer Engineering Class of '90 |	ALink PE:  Omnitreant