5 ms·

I'll never forgive Apple for breaking their promise of "Apple ][ Forever." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHCp0nuA4xA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHCp0nuA

I'll never forgive Apple for breaking their promise of "Apple ][ Forever." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHCp0nuA4xA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHCp0nuA4xA)

taylodl 2y ago
They got a good run out of that platform, longer than most. But the NeXT platform has gotten a longer run...
- rbanffy 2y ago
  It's one of the best cases of "reverse acquisition". It's like NeXT acquired Apple for one Steve Jobs (and an OS) and got $400 million as change.
  - fzzzy 2y ago
    I always say NeXT aquired Apple for -400 million.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    Its kind of crazy, I have no idea why anybody would think NeXT was worth $400 million. Who except Apple was gone buy them? A user focused OS that is mostly costume is more of a liability then anything else. Keeping that maintained and up to date with technological progress is a huge effort. And all the big companies already had their own. The up and coming companies all didn't need user first OSs.
    - WoodenChair 2y ago
      It’s about how much money did it take for them to want to sell instead of continue as an independent business. In 1996 WebObjects was starting to get traction. After a decade it seemed like there was perhaps a viable future for the company.
      - panick21_ 2y ago
        There is a difference between a 'viable future' and 400 million $. The reality is the most proprietary software companies of that area didn't make. Specially companies with their own programming, language, compilers and so on. First a devastating economic crisis and then the rise of open source. So maybe they could have survived, but likely nowhere close to that value.
        rbanffy 2y ago
        It most certainly wouldn’t. Would be a very tight window, and it’d be going against the likes of BEA and soon to be killed by open source solutions. The best bet was to vertically integrate with a large hardware manufacturer that’d bundle their OS. WebObjects was, however, doomed anyway. And this, kids, is why everything now is a subclass of NSObject.
        WoodenChair 2y ago
        > The reality is the most proprietary software companies of that area didn't make. You're using 20/20 hindsight instead of putting yourself in the shoes of someone in 1996. The term "open source" was not even in wide use in 1996. But actually even with hindsight your analysis is flawed. 1996 is right at the start of the .com bubble. A company whose software (WebOjects) was being used to power real world .coms (it was even being used by large companies like UPS and Dell) almost certainly would have risen tremendously in value (even as a private company). Now, if they would have been acquired before the 2000 crash is another discussion.
        KerrAvon 2y ago
        Yeah, but Apple didn’t care about WebObjects; it needed an operating system. And OpenStep on PC hardware was slow, crashy, unpolished, and generally much less pleasant to use than the fastest Macs at the time. Apple bought it because it had a fully working graphics architecture (BeOS couldn’t even print!), and vastly overpaid for it because Gil Amelio was an idiot. Irony: the graphics architecture had to be fully rewritten from scratch for Mac OS X because Adobe didn’t want to support Display PostScript anymore. Have I mentioned that Gil Amelio was an idiot?
rbanffy 2y ago
I still say they should release a beige Apple IV as an apology for the Apple ///.
- jdswain 2y ago
  I think the built-in keyboard idea had run its course, so any possible Apple IV would probably end up looking a lot like an Apple IIgs. The little keyboard extension on the IIgs case is kind of reminiscent of the Apple ///. It would have been good to end the line with what was planned for the Mark Twain, internal floppy and hard disks would have made the whole system a lot better. And of course if we could have got a 14 MHz 65C816 as well then it would have been a really interesting system.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    It can still look like a /// with a detached keyboard that’s a continuation of the main case. Commodore did that with their office machines (the rounded ones). I think the beige is important as part of the apology ;-) Frankly, I’d accept a beige Mac Mini with a rainbow Apple logo on top and call it a day. I’m sure Tim Cool lurks around these pages.
    - hakfoo 2y ago
      Given how there's plenty of market for retro nostalgia kit, I'm surprised nobody is making a modern desktop PC that pushes the same aesthetic buttons. Beige paint is no more expensive than white or black. A desktop form factor would be good for today's super-heavy video cards. Since we no longer design around internal optical drives, etc, you could probably whip up something micro-ATX that looked a lot like an IIgs or the IIsi mockup, maybe with some USB ports in the front "lip" for convenience sake.
    - lproven 2y ago
      > Tim Cool Fun typo for Tim Apple. ;-)
dhosek 2y ago
I remember being surprised to see someone with an Apple IIgs when I was in undergrad (late 80s) and discovering the platform still lived. The fact that they were still selling the Apple II line in 1993 (1995 if you count the Mac add-in card) seems pretty damn miraculous to me.
- zerocrates 2y ago
  K-12 schools are obviously their own whole situation, but in a well-funded, well-regarded public school system we were using Apple IIs in the mid-90s. Of course this was elementary school and not a college. By middle school it was PowerMacs and by high school it was Windows 2000.
- justanother 2y ago
  That rabbit hole goes pretty deep. In the early 1990s, the IIgs community went through this sort of "faux workstation" phase where we had 16MHz hotrodded accelerator cards, high(er) resolution graphics cards like SecondSight, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system (GNO/ME) along with the beginnings of TCP/IP support (gstcp). If you squinted one eye, we could almost hold our own against something like SPARCStation 1 as long as you didn't want to run Mosaic. You could fire up a desktop with a few shell windows and compile C programs and telnet out while playing SoundSmith (not-quite-.MOD) songs. That is to say, we were pushing the whole mess beyond anything a sane person would even fever-dream of attempting. The community today is putting out more releases more steadily than any other era I can recall since then, but we seem to have mostly backed off of the whole "workstation" application that was in a few dorm rooms at the time. Edit: FWIW I just noticed the date today. Happy 8/16!
  - js2 2y ago
    GNO/ME was published on GitHub years ago: https://github.com/GnoConsortium/gno https://github.com/GnoConsortium/gno https://github.com/GnoConsortium/gno-docs https://github.com/GnoConsortium/gno-docs
    - Locutus_ 2y ago

I'll never forgive Apple for breaking their promise of "Apple ][ Forever." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHCp0nuA4xA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHCp0nuA4xA)

taylodl 2y ago

They got a good run out of that platform, longer than most. But the NeXT platform has gotten a longer run...

rbanffy 2y ago
It's one of the best cases of "reverse acquisition". It's like NeXT acquired Apple for one Steve Jobs (and an OS) and got $400 million as change.
- fzzzy 2y ago
  I always say NeXT aquired Apple for -400 million.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  Its kind of crazy, I have no idea why anybody would think NeXT was worth $400 million. Who except Apple was gone buy them? A user focused OS that is mostly costume is more of a liability then anything else. Keeping that maintained and up to date with technological progress is a huge effort. And all the big companies already had their own. The up and coming companies all didn't need user first OSs.
  - WoodenChair 2y ago
    It’s about how much money did it take for them to want to sell instead of continue as an independent business. In 1996 WebObjects was starting to get traction. After a decade it seemed like there was perhaps a viable future for the company.
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      There is a difference between a 'viable future' and 400 million $. The reality is the most proprietary software companies of that area didn't make. Specially companies with their own programming, language, compilers and so on. First a devastating economic crisis and then the rise of open source. So maybe they could have survived, but likely nowhere close to that value.
      - rbanffy 2y ago
        It most certainly wouldn’t. Would be a very tight window, and it’d be going against the likes of BEA and soon to be killed by open source solutions. The best bet was to vertically integrate with a large hardware manufacturer that’d bundle their OS. WebObjects was, however, doomed anyway. And this, kids, is why everything now is a subclass of NSObject.
      - WoodenChair 2y ago
        > The reality is the most proprietary software companies of that area didn't make. You're using 20/20 hindsight instead of putting yourself in the shoes of someone in 1996. The term "open source" was not even in wide use in 1996. But actually even with hindsight your analysis is flawed. 1996 is right at the start of the .com bubble. A company whose software (WebOjects) was being used to power real world .coms (it was even being used by large companies like UPS and Dell) almost certainly would have risen tremendously in value (even as a private company). Now, if they would have been acquired before the 2000 crash is another discussion.
        KerrAvon 2y ago
        Yeah, but Apple didn’t care about WebObjects; it needed an operating system. And OpenStep on PC hardware was slow, crashy, unpolished, and generally much less pleasant to use than the fastest Macs at the time. Apple bought it because it had a fully working graphics architecture (BeOS couldn’t even print!), and vastly overpaid for it because Gil Amelio was an idiot. Irony: the graphics architecture had to be fully rewritten from scratch for Mac OS X because Adobe didn’t want to support Display PostScript anymore. Have I mentioned that Gil Amelio was an idiot?

rbanffy 2y ago

I still say they should release a beige Apple IV as an apology for the Apple ///.

jdswain 2y ago
I think the built-in keyboard idea had run its course, so any possible Apple IV would probably end up looking a lot like an Apple IIgs. The little keyboard extension on the IIgs case is kind of reminiscent of the Apple ///. It would have been good to end the line with what was planned for the Mark Twain, internal floppy and hard disks would have made the whole system a lot better. And of course if we could have got a 14 MHz 65C816 as well then it would have been a really interesting system.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  It can still look like a /// with a detached keyboard that’s a continuation of the main case. Commodore did that with their office machines (the rounded ones). I think the beige is important as part of the apology ;-) Frankly, I’d accept a beige Mac Mini with a rainbow Apple logo on top and call it a day. I’m sure Tim Cool lurks around these pages.
  - hakfoo 2y ago
    Given how there's plenty of market for retro nostalgia kit, I'm surprised nobody is making a modern desktop PC that pushes the same aesthetic buttons. Beige paint is no more expensive than white or black. A desktop form factor would be good for today's super-heavy video cards. Since we no longer design around internal optical drives, etc, you could probably whip up something micro-ATX that looked a lot like an IIgs or the IIsi mockup, maybe with some USB ports in the front "lip" for convenience sake.
  - lproven 2y ago
    > Tim Cool Fun typo for Tim Apple. ;-)

dhosek 2y ago

I remember being surprised to see someone with an Apple IIgs when I was in undergrad (late 80s) and discovering the platform still lived. The fact that they were still selling the Apple II line in 1993 (1995 if you count the Mac add-in card) seems pretty damn miraculous to me.

zerocrates 2y ago
K-12 schools are obviously their own whole situation, but in a well-funded, well-regarded public school system we were using Apple IIs in the mid-90s. Of course this was elementary school and not a college. By middle school it was PowerMacs and by high school it was Windows 2000.
justanother 2y ago
That rabbit hole goes pretty deep. In the early 1990s, the IIgs community went through this sort of "faux workstation" phase where we had 16MHz hotrodded accelerator cards, high(er) resolution graphics cards like SecondSight, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system (GNO/ME) along with the beginnings of TCP/IP support (gstcp). If you squinted one eye, we could almost hold our own against something like SPARCStation 1 as long as you didn't want to run Mosaic. You could fire up a desktop with a few shell windows and compile C programs and telnet out while playing SoundSmith (not-quite-.MOD) songs. That is to say, we were pushing the whole mess beyond anything a sane person would even fever-dream of attempting. The community today is putting out more releases more steadily than any other era I can recall since then, but we seem to have mostly backed off of the whole "workstation" application that was in a few dorm rooms at the time. Edit: FWIW I just noticed the date today. Happy 8/16!
- js2 2y ago
  GNO/ME was published on GitHub years ago: https://github.com/GnoConsortium/gno https://github.com/GnoConsortium/gno https://github.com/GnoConsortium/gno-docs https://github.com/GnoConsortium/gno-docs
  - Locutus_ 2y ago