Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jarthur!spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu!tybalt.caltech.edu!toddpw From: toddpw@tybalt.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Reality vs. Apple Computer Message-ID: <1990Mar1.104440.13191@spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu> Date: 1 Mar 90 10:44:40 GMT References: <1990Mar1.104241.13134@spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu> Sender: news@spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu Distribution: comp.sys.apple Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena Lines: 186 Reality vs. Apple Computer by Todd Whitesel 28-Feb-90 This paper was originally to be the preface to the third writing of "The Apple //f: A Possible Future for the Apple //" but as it addresses Apple's confusing signals to the world in general I felt it should be a separate paper. With any luck Apple will realize that this is how they actually look to the world outside and will do something about it. * * * After the thrill of a new computer fades and people actually use the thing enough to run into problems, Apple is nowhere to be found. Authorized Dealers are widely known to be the worst place to go for help, and some of them are even misinformed about their own products. User groups and friends at work or school end up being the best people to ask for help; this is actually as it should be. Apple needs to recognize the widespread user support that has from the beginning sold more of their computers than any "computing experience." Unfortunately, this user support is deteriorating and for the Apple // it has long since reached critical, while Apple has effectively done nothing to stop it. Apple // users are sick of seeing new programs come out for the PC, Mac, and Amiga, with Apple versions late in coming, if ever. The software industry is long since fed up with lack of real support from Apple, and has largely abandoned the Apple //. Apple needs to start genuinely supporting the Apple // before it endures the most painful death a product can experience, with its industry bankrupt and its users betrayed and soured to the company that led them on for years and then finally discontinued their machine. To make matters worse, the PC and Amiga are looking more attractive all the time. Windows on the PC is developing to the point where business users will see few reasons to buy a relatively overpriced Macintosh. The Amiga has been a slap in the face of the Apple IIGS hardware ever since both were introduced. Apple needs to start providing genuine value at competitive prices, with all of its products, and quit riding on the success of a wonderful interface that is programming hell. And while the more impatient // users are giving up and going Amiga, Apple's Education Reps have been telling schools what they should buy. The vast majority of grade school education is a finite problem which has for years been solved by //e's and //c's running a vast library of excellent education software. Educators have labs full of cheap Apple //'s running the 128K programs they are already familiar with, and if they need something more powerful they end up buying PCs or Amigas for it. Many cannot afford the Macs they would need and the programs they want to run (such as AutoCAD) have not yet been ported to the IIGS, because of Apple's ineffectual support. Apple needs to quit sending the signal to educators that they should pay more money to do the same things and to respect customers' decisions about what they want to buy. Everyone wants Apple to bounce back from the shakeup. There are rumors of great things in the labs at Cupertino. But while Apple sits back pondering the most dramatic moment to announce a DMA SCSI card or Hypercard GS, the market for these products shrinks daily as Apple's tight-lipped silence in the face of MacWeek's doomsaying cause more and more people to abandon the Apple // and to disown Apple Computer as well. Apple needs to tell the outside world what is going on before it loses too many customers to misinformation and the competition. I say with conviction that non-disclosure is killing the Apple //. It is a petty and paranoid policy that has prevented an industry from having confidence in its own future. When John Sculley says "we have no intention of abandoning the Apple II" it carries some but not much more weight than John-Louis Gassee's "we will continue to sell the Apple II as long as our customers wish to buy it," which didn't fool anyone; especially not those who see Amigas and PCs getting better and cheaper every year while the IIGS architecture remains that of a //e on steroids and the Apple //c+ gets no marketing thrust when it is one of the best home computers ever produced. Apple needs to take on the responsibility of making its own products worth buying, and to do so in the eyes of a public that cares more about "what will it do for me?" than "How many mega {hertz, bytes, pixels} ?" Most low end customers want a computer they can use before they want one they can brag to their friends about. Satisfying them doesn't take much, as the PC and Amiga are showing, but it does require low cost and flexible expansion options. If Apple wants to sell to the low end in all its diversity, that task will require both the Apple // and the Macintosh. Apple needs to officially abolish the misconception that its product lines cannot coexist, and its dealers must be taught to be knowledgeable of and to sell each for what it is best at doing. The most simple example of this, for any fanatics who need convincing, is also the most obvious. NTSC Video versus Square Pixels. The former is widely used for games, animation, and overlay; the latter is unbeatable for high-quality desktop publishing, CAD, and image analysis. It is not very cost effective to design for both without lots of compromises. The real world is never simple enough for any one design to work well for everything, and Apple has the greatest product diversity of any manufacturer. It's time we saw that as an advantage instead of a pointless holy war. * * * Ok, so we take on the world as a unified front behind Apple's Human Interface and its mission to make computers that people can use. What to do first? 0. Announce something before MacWeek does. Announce that the Apple // has a future, and follow it up with some concrete evidence that people will believe and that developers will stake their money on. Apple has the power to excute a major comeback in the low end if somebody upstairs would realize that there are lots of people who want a cheap computer they can use more than they want an expensive one they can play with, and that Apple can and has manufactured both. 1. Advertise the //c+ as the perfect AppleWorks machine that it is, pull the price down so that it blows away the Laser, and then let it sell like wildfire to those who want a computer but already have a desktop. Or give them a choice: resurrect the double-hires "mini finder" and include it free. Refine the //c+ into niche products whose markets are untapped, like a diskless education workstation and a true portable that people can use to take notes on in a quiet room. 2. Develop a REAL IIGS that will nuke the Amiga and get some innovation back into Apple's products. Pre-announcing it wouldn't be such a bad idea, actually; IIGS sales suck anyway and I doubt Apple would notice the loss once the //c+ starts selling. Since the new machine would be IIGS compatible it would rekindle interest from developers, but they will still need better software support and this means fixing APW. Don't force Apple // developers to buy Macintoshes if they can't afford them; they don't appreciate it and neither do we when their programs turn out bad, expensive, or both, because no one has invested the man-hours to produce a decent C compiler for the 65816. 3. Keep the low cost Macintosh development chugging along, and give it a blitter as well. Color Macs for the masses will be a great thing. In the future, make a blitter standard in every desktop based computer; if anyone actually needs to be convinced of how easy and necessary this is, I suggest you inspect an Amiga 500, which was available before the Mac Plus and can still run rings around the graphics of any computer Apple makes that is even close to its price range. 4. Simply accept responsibility for all that has happened and take steps to prevent it from ever getting this bad again. Form a Customer Feedback Division and include stable mail and Email addresses with every Apple product. Then act on the flood of letters that will come in. This alone is probably the single greatest thing that can be done to re-establish Apple's credibility as a company that cares. 5. Burn all the 90 day warranty sheets and make a one year warranty standard for every Apple product. There is no honest reason to delay doing this. 6. Update every Apple product to make each competitive and valuable in and of itself. The IIGS RGB monitor desperately needs this. People buy Commodore 1084S's instead because they also take stereo and composite NTSC. Lots of students use them to watch television from a VCR. They also cost $150 less, but the cheap picture tube is unusable for interlaced graphics. However, monitors can be made to display interlace properly; ask DEC how their VR241 works. 7. Quit playing phone tag with Bill Mensch. Until someone is interested enough to invest some money, Mensch's very promising 65832 and 65032 will remain wisps of vapor, and Apple reportedly hasn't given him one bit of recognition since he licensed two second sources to produce 65816's. Follow up: get WDC and ASIC technologies together (if they'll cooperate) to produce a 65832 that can fit on a gate array. This will solve the floating point, math, and segmented addressing problems that people have with the 65816, and will do it for cheap, especially if Apple's clout is behind the project. 8. Keep A/UX on the right track. A full Unix with true multitasking and a usable GUI that doesn't require the decadence of a NeXT will be a good thing. The technology might then work its way into the Mac and GS operating systems and that multiplies its benefit. 9. Above all, don't forget that Apple started in a garage with a product that was ahead of its time. Innovation is the art of taking a compromise and turning it to advantage, and we all want to see that make a comeback. Loosen up, too; Apple doesn't need to be IBM to beat IBM. * * * Comments, questions, flames, etc. to the addresses below. Todd Whitesel toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu (internet) toddpw (America Online) 1-55 Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91126 (US Snail) This document may be distributed, posted, and made available for downloading so long as it is preserved in its entirety.