Prosystemsearch Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 I know already that the first model of the Apple III was poorly soldedered together, and that the chips were prone to coming out of place. What are some other reasons why it was a failure and never took off? Are there any games for the Apple III?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Hamstrung compatibility mode, and Apple wanted to keep the developer docs close to the chest. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Yes. Documentation, reliability, all that. And then market timing along with the slow-ass CPU. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 price and lack of compatibility and it wasnt solder issues it was the sockets and the heat generated by the machines that caused seating problems, Jobs didnt want fans so it got a huge mostly ineffective heatsink as a case 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 People were happy with the Apple 2 and its huge software range. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Loguidice Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 The Apple III, being targeted to business, really didn't offer any benefits for the average consumer. It was meant to be primarily a monochrome device given the target business audience, and really didn't support color the same way the Apple II did (i.e., easily). In retrospect, perhaps if the Apple III was fully Apple II compatible by default (rather than through optional add-on cards) and had a special high speed Apple III mode that not only ran its native software, but also accelerated Apple II business software (and those games that benefited from ZIP accelerators), then they might have had something. It would have sort of been like an Apple IIgs, just 7 years earlier and without any of the AV improvements. This way it could have been a natural successor to the II line (like a III would imply), rather than transitioning to the more incremental IIe and IIc. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 There's always Satan Mode While somewhat incompatible with the ][ it did allow some stuff to work. My own implementation of Satan Mode can actually run a bunch of ][ games albeit in monochrome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanrunomad Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 The Apple III had very few games made for it and could only run 48K or less Apple II games in emulation mode (so basically only very early stuff). Like Bill mentioned, it was color-capable, but not easily done and to be honest I only recently discovered it was even possible at all. It would be great to have a new homebrew Apple III game that truly took advantage of its capabilities though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted June 3, 2014 Share Posted June 3, 2014 Price, lack of software, unreliable... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkO Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 (edited) Apple Broke the Cardinal Rule of Computing... Making a NEW Computer with limited, Backward Compatibility to the ones you made previously.. Your Customers have no easy way to get from Where They Are, to Where you Want Them to Be.. First Off, It was developed by Committee, a Marketing Committee!! ( See the Apple /// Project at the Apple 2 History web site ) Apple Computer was not the Only Ones to make this mistake.. Just how many Intel IA-64 Servers are out there, verses AMD's x86-64?? According to Wikipedia, the IA-64, is in Fourth Place, because "In 2003, AMD released the Opteron, which implemented its own 64-bit architecture (x86-64). Opteron gained rapid acceptance in the enterprise server space because it provided an easy upgrade from x86. Intel responded by implementing x86-64 in its Xeon microprocessors in 2004." ( Direct Quote from Wikipedia ) There are other examples, none come to my mind, at the moment... Bottom Line, "No-brainer Upgrades", are just about guaranteed to win... Edited June 4, 2014 by MarkO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SSG Posted June 11, 2014 Share Posted June 11, 2014 Was there an actual Apple III made commercially? Outside of the prototype stage? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Loguidice Posted June 11, 2014 Share Posted June 11, 2014 Was there an actual Apple III made commercially? Outside of the prototype stage? ? It was commercially released and available for a number of years. They're readily available on eBay, albeit prices have gone up dramatically over the past several years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SSG Posted June 11, 2014 Share Posted June 11, 2014 (edited) ? It was commercially released and available for a number of years. They're readily available on eBay, albeit prices have gone up dramatically over the past several years. I am sorry I wasn't born around this time so I have no clue. I want to learn though. So did it do Bad, Terrible, or Worst? Edited June 11, 2014 by SonicSageGamer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Loguidice Posted June 11, 2014 Share Posted June 11, 2014 I am sorry I wasn't born around this time so I have no clue. I want to learn though. So did it do Bad, Terrible, or Worst? It's good you have that attitude, but this thread should have given you some of that info, hence the ?. Also, though never good as a primary source, Wikipedia is a great place to get a nice overview/grounding. In any case, the Apple III and the Lisa were two major failures for Apple that never caught on, each for their own reasons. Really it was the Apple II that helped the company financially survive missteps like those even through the first several years of the Macintosh, which itself didn't really set the world on fire at first despite extremely positive press coverage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SSG Posted June 11, 2014 Share Posted June 11, 2014 It's good you have that attitude, but this thread should have given you some of that info, hence the ?. Also, though never good as a primary source, Wikipedia is a great place to get a nice overview/grounding. In any case, the Apple III and the Lisa were two major failures for Apple that never caught on, each for their own reasons. Really it was the Apple II that helped the company financially survive missteps like those even through the first several years of the Macintosh, which itself didn't really set the world on fire at first despite extremely positive press coverage. I know about the Lisa. and heard of the Apple 3 but i didnt know it existed in the market Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted June 11, 2014 Share Posted June 11, 2014 You could make a bit of history yourself if you become the one and only active homebrew game developer for the Lisa http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/post/87007024545/lisa-pascal-development-in-lisa-workshop Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streck Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 The Apple III had very few games made for it Honestly, I'd be very surprised if there were even a single game made for it, something that didn't run in Apple II emulation mode. So narrowly focused was Apple's marketing about this system - narrower than IBM's for the PC - that I can't imagine any developers at all would have bothered to step outside that. I'm willing to be shocked, though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david__schmidt Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 Honestly, I'd be very surprised if there were even a single game made for it, something that didn't run in Apple II emulation mode. [...] I'm willing to be shocked, though! http://apple3.org/iiisoftware.html#games http://apple3.org/Software/wap/html/a3games.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Loguidice Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 I can't think of one computer that didn't have at least a handful of games made for it, but the Apple III is certainly on the anemic side in that regard. I would think more games would have been made if most users didn't have the Apple II mode to fall back on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 I can remember when my parents were buying a house back in 89 the site office used an Apple III. I was an avid Apple II user at the time and I had never heard of or seen an Apple III before. That was the one and only time I ever saw one in the wild. I've looked into getting one now and then for fun (back when they were cheap), but for someone who's mostly a gamer, they're pretty useless. There are compatibility cards that can bring it up to the level of a 64K II+ or even a 128K IIe, but those cards are super rare and pricey. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streck Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 http://apple3.org/iiisoftware.html#games http://apple3.org/Software/wap/html/a3games.html Well, how about that! Now I wish I hadn't sold my /// years ago so that I could try those out authentically. Ah well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david__schmidt Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 Well, how about that! Now I wish I hadn't sold my /// years ago so that I could try those out authentically. Ah well. The MESS /// emulation is almost like the real thing - it has really come a long way. We were in the wilderness with /// emulators for a long time, but that changed very recently. The coolest thing about the real hardware is the dual-speed repeat on the arrow keys based on how hard you push it. Very handy for games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david__schmidt Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 Almost forgot... my 2048 port from the 2600 runs natively on the /// as well. Not much of a UI on it, but it plays... https://github.com/david-schmidt/AII2048 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arbee Posted September 1, 2014 Share Posted September 1, 2014 I don't think it's entirely right to say the /// wasn't easily color capable; it required an RGB monitor for it, which was also true of PCs and several other machines from that time period, and if you had the monitor it had much better color than pre-GS Apple IIs, with 16 no-bleed colors. Porting some relatively simple Apple II games to the III's native mode and taking advantage of the better color would be an interesting project given there's a ///-native port of DOS 3.3 (the confidence and dealer diagnostic disks) and SOS is nearly binary compatible with ProDOS, except you BRK to make calls instead of JSR $BF00. (No, I'm not volunteering, but MESS has a pretty nice debugger built-in that's handy for that kind of thing). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted September 2, 2014 Share Posted September 2, 2014 http://1.buric.co/satander.dsk.gz Here's a blank DOS 3.3 disk for the ///, boots into Integer Basic. (Note it takes 7 tracks, rather than the 3 of normal DOS 3.3 or the 2 of the DOS I use on my usual disks.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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