Apple ][ Forever (in 1988)

[BydoEmpire]

http://www.archive.org/details/CC605_apple_ii_forever

 

Also cool, right at the start the host shows an Apple 1, which was mounted in a briefcase. Neat!

[Streck]

Videos like this always make me wonder what would have become of the Apple II series if Apple had actually paid attention to it, and let it bloom to its full potential. As it was, they let it stagnate while focusing on the Mac, and the IIGS (while an awesome machine) was just too little, too late.

 

Heck, just look at MousePaint - a Mac-style GUI for the Apple II was certainly possible, but innovation and advancement were stifled for the sake of Mac marketing imperatives.

 

Here's a brief history of Apple's neglect of the Apple II - it's ugly and sad.

 

Jobs's fanatical devotion to the Macintosh division almost resulted in a mass walk-out of Apple II employees. Wozniak relates the story: "....when I came to work the next morning, there were a bunch of people ready to resign. They had already typed out their resignation letters. I managed to talk them out of it." [Accidental Millionaire 143-4]

 

Woz had gone to work at the Triangle Building that morning and found the engineers in a bad state because they'd been left out of the stockholders' meeting the day before. They'd wanted to show that an Apple II could run a LaserWriter as well as Macintosh, but the demonstration had been yanked at the last moment. Instead, the II had barely been mentioned all morning. Woz himself was used to this kind of treatment -- the II had been shoved aside for years, first in favor of the III, then for Lisa, now for Macintosh. But the others weren't, and it made him angry to see them so demoralized. Some of them were saying they were going to write a protest letter to Sculley. When he heard that, he went straight for the phone because he knew his voice would be heard. [West of Eden 239]

 

"As the third-largest shareholder, I want you to know I'm upset and so are a lot of people in the Apple II group," he told me. "These people work on Apple IIs and all they hear is Mac, Mac, Mac. It hurts me to see people so demoralized. When I came to work this morning, the engineers, managers, and secretaries were just ready to send in their resignations, they were so angry about it. The shareholders were given the impression that the company's total revenues were coming from Macintosh."

 

"Steve," I said, "we really did mention the Apple II and the education markets."

 

"Yeah," he countered, "I heard the word two times in the entire thing, once in a question from the audience and once in a film clip at the start. It was the wrong impression to give." [Odyssey 334]

 

He knew that would get the guy's attention. And he knew that the thing the board of directors -- any board of directors -- feared the most was a lawsuit alleging deceptive actions. So he told Sculley that the stockholders' meeting had presented a deceptive and fraudulent portrayal of the company's earnings. He told him that the people who own the company ought to be given an accurate picture of where their earnings were coming from. John tried to tell him it was just event marketing -- that the Apple II had gotten its day in April at Moscone Center [when the Apple IIc had been introduced] and this new product announcement just happened to coincide with the annual meeting. Woz pointed out that Jobs had plenty of time to talk about Macintosh at the Moscone event, and besides, the II wasn't even mentioned during the formal business session, when the officers got up to report on the state of the company. John tried to argue; Woz wouldn't have it. John tried to tell him they were providing the analysts with the numbers: there, at least, the II was getting fair credit. But he found himself talking to a dial tone.

 

Woz had hung up on him. [West of Eden]

 

Unfortunately, it's impossible for me to look at the latter half of the Apple II's lifespan with anything but bitterness.

[Blackbag]

I watched this video, and I was intrigued at something--

 

At 3:04 into the video, there is an interview with John Sculley. Just over his left shoulder is an Apple IIc+ (how convenient that it was so prominently displayed, as he sucked up to the Apple II userbase).

Anyway, there appears to be some sort of Apple IIc+ demo playing in the background. At one point, it even says "Apple IIc plus" and has some unreadable text under it.

 

What is this program??!? I'd like to run it to check out some of the graphics (which looked pretty cool).

 

I've gone to asimov and downloaded the Apple IIc+ demo disk that shipped with the unit, and that isn't it. Can anyone else identify what software that is?

 

I hope it isn't something internal to Apple.

Edited February 4, 2011 by Blackbag

[jamesk]

In an alternate universe Doom came out on a 32bit Apple II instead of the PC? Considering a lot of those guys came from Apple II backgrounds. Wraith: The Devil's Demise was one of the first RPGs I ever played. I didn't know until much later that John Carmack wrote that and my favorite PC game Doom.

[The Usotsuki]

I wonder if it's possible to design a 32-bit 65816, a 32-bit enhanced IIgs, and a 32-bit GS/OS... *runs*