Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!sugar!karl From: karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Apple //GS, words from their world Message-ID: <3584@sugar.hackercorp.com> Date: 5 Mar 89 23:12:14 GMT Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston Lines: 209 Remember the Apple //GS? The "Amiga killer?" Well, those who take a guilty pleasure in hearing the complaints of the users of competing machines may enjoy some of the following remarks, excerpted from comp.sys.apple: From: joseph@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Seymour Joseph) I get the same moire effect on my Monitor and I checked both my friends machine and the one at my dealer, they all do it. Grin and bear it I guess. From: David I Seah I'm on AppleLink PE, and there are generally a lot of pissed off GS owners on the service. They aren't quiet either. ...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. Origin unknown: Incindentally, the companies killing the machine from the software support standpoint are as follows (These are the ones I have verified, there were more at the meeting): Electronic Arts (5 more games and then their though), Epyx (12 games layed out, all killed) and Cinemaware (2 more to come then it dies). From: SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) The Atari-ST and Amiga may hang in for awhile, but I suspect the reported phenomenon is more a case of the days of a general purpose computer being the game machine of choice have simply passed. [Ha!] From: krazy@claris.com (Jeff Erickson) The problem with David's statement is that GS/OS occasionally does some of the stupid things he describes, or at least seems to. During development of the most recent project I worked on, GS/OS caused the death of my hard drive on about seven different occasions, over the space of three months. I have the drivers/FSTs installed correctly. Other people working on the same project who stuck with P16 did not have the problems I did. ... The Mac OS ejects disks; there isn't any reason Apple couldn't do the same thing with GS/OS. And as far as I know, there is no GS/OS call to eject the disk. I know the Finder does it; that was a hack that Dan Oliver (the original author) put in. ... Apple pushed GS/OS out before it was ready; likewise with the set of tools (System 4.0) that go with it. The support from within Apple for the development (if not the survival) of the IIgs has been, in my personal opinion, abysmal (sp?). The system is buggy. VERY buggy. After having worked on the machine for two and a half years (I started with an Apple II Gumby at StyleWare), I honestly can't say that I expect things to get better. My personal advice regarding the Apple IIgs is this: if you NEED an Apple II, by a IIc+. Otherwise, BUY A MAC!! From: CHEESEBALL%ALBION.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Lord knows that fools come in many shapes and forms, and that there are many around this land of ours, but I never thought I'd see the day where I WOULD SAY THIS: Apple made a sucker out of me! I've had my GS for 2 years and 2 months and I've yet to get much out of it! ...and as a game machine, the thing is a poor man's Amiga. ...GOD IS THIS THING SLOW! From: AWCTTYPA@UIAMVS.BITNET ("David A. Lyons") PaintWorks Gold requires nearly all of the memory available under GS/OS on a 1.25 meg system. It _does_ run for me under System Disk 4.0, but only with the RAMdisk set to 0 and with very few desk accessories or other utilities installed. If PWG can't allocate the memory it needs, it just crashes with the title screen showing, which is stupid. From: "Jeremy G. Mereness" [...] I still don't consider GS/OS a "real" operating system for the GS because of many of these issues: it is too volatile, standards are too new and are all too often ignored, and for some reason (and I can only assume that this is because the OS doesn't cover its tracks) a great deal of software crashes under it. From: joseph@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Seymour Joseph) I coordinate an apple II users group in NJ and have owned a series of Apple II computers since 1978. I purchased my IIGS in October 1988 right after the announcement of GS/OS and the darn price increase :-(. My current system has 1.25 meg of ram, a Sider 10 MB hard disk (ported over from my old //e) and some other random boards (supersonic...). I have been hearing lately that Apple //GS software is not selling as well as it should. I have been buying (and lately returning) a great deal of it and I think I know some of the reasons. I waited until after the announcement of GS/OS to by my machine because I felt the earlier proDOS 16 versions were simply too crude. Below is a list of some of the products I have purchased since I bought my GS. NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM works properly when launched from GS/OS. In addition, the publishers have been unwilling to comment on proposed dates for updates that fix their compatability problems. From Activision: Draw Plus (has printing problems) Paintworks Plus (freaks out) Paintworks Gold (won't launch) Writer's Choice Elite (unstable) Music Studio 2.0 (unstable) From Claris: Multiscribe GS (Dictionary and Thesaurus don't work) From Spectrum Holobyte Tetris (won't quit back to GS/OS finder.) What gives? These are major developers, not yahoos. They were seeded with GS/OS way before its release and today, almost six months after the public introduction and shipping of the Apple //GS operating system, I have been unable to find a single personal productivity product that works correctly with it. This week I am returning Multiscribe GS. I like the product design a lot. I used all the earlier versions of Multiscribe on my //e (they worked correctly with the OS for the //e), but I am unwilling to pay Claris for a product that makes me go back to booting from a floppy every time I wish to run it. This is not the kind of performance I bought a GS for. (and this is not the kind of lack of support I expected from Claris either!) I must give them credit for offering to refund my money. These products are still on dealer shelves, being sold today with no notice on the package or documentation to inform the user that they won't run with GS/OS. Why? Apple //GS software isn't selling very well because the software environment is in a state of violent flux and developers are not keeping up. Often the products you buy are incompatible with the operating system, common hardware add-ons or each other. Example: I share an AppleTalk Imagewriter II with my wife's Mac. This is not unusual and it is a supported configuration. Activision's Music Studio 2.0 will simply crash if booted while AppleTalk is enabled from the control panel. No warnings, no mention in the manual, just a 45 second boot that ends with the old familiar and leaves you looking at a blank screen. Therefore, every time I run this program, I have to remember to turn AppleTalk off and of course, I can't print from Music Studio. AppleLink Personal Edition comes with a long list of control panel settings that must be made in order to run it on a GS. These include changing the PRINTER settings (I asked both Apple and Quantum why I have to change the printer settings and neither has been able to supply an adequate answer). Included in the required printer changes is turning all handshaking with the printer OFF. If you leave applelink PE and run an old ProDOS 8 application to print something the printer will screw up because the settings are wrong for anything else BUT AppleLink PE. ... Well written Apple //GS software should never ASSUME that the control panel is set a certain way. It should check the settings and warn a user if they are inappropriate. Well written Apple //GS software should NEVER require the user to make a control panel change to run it. If it needs a change to run properly, it should ask the user permission to make the change, do it and then restore the original settings before quitting. In cases where the machine must be restarted to make the change, the program should store the original settings, make the changes, instruct the user to resetart, run, and upon quitting, restore the original settings, and inform the user that the machine must be restarted again to have them take effect. This is all very grungy. A really well designed program shouldn't have to diddle the control panel at all. From: tsouth@pro-pac.cts.com (System Administrator) No matter what anyone says, the Amiga concept is primarily promoted as a game machine/animation work station, IMHO. While it may have a multi-tasking o/s, the directing commands and interface for the machine are more cumbersome than running Apple ][ DOS 3.2 and Integer BASIC (just to allow you non-amiga fans some reference point). I agree that the Amiga is a better hardware machine than the IIgs, but the implementation of the system, and support for applications that I am interested in are little to none. With the introduction of the Amiga 2500UX, I have had my own interest in the Amiga rekindled. By September Fest 89, I should have $2000 in cash saved up to purchase a new computer (along with credit to cover the extra stuff) and I am seriously looking into purchasing the 2500UX with the Unix operationg system. If Apple does not come out with a new Apple ][ computer by September, that's where I will be placing my money. If Apple comes out with a new IIgs which does not support a decent speed and/or someone doesn't come out with a decent C compiler for the IIgs, I will probably purchase the thing anyway, as I am tired of not being able to write good (read -- compact, fast, non-cumbersome) C code on my machine. ... No, he's talking about the graphics which you can seen being drawn to the screen. One thing that has always amazed me about the Apple ][ family is all of the trouble which the programmers have to go through to make animation work on these machines. I guess I could live with this, but you got to admit that it is rather annoying to watch pull-down menus being drawn. ... David, you can be so innocent sometimes. Of course, he means that we want HIGHER resolution modes! Personally, I'll never understand what the problem was with making a vertical resolution of 400. This 200 stuff is Commodore 64 technology. ... -- -- uunet!sugar!karl | "Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is -- | watching television." -- David Letterman -- Usenet BBS (713) 438-5018