From: hal@budapest.math.macalstr.edu (Harold Byron Bouma)
Subject: Re: The Apple II Now and Forever (Ok, the _Last_ Post folks!)
Keywords: Really! The last post!
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 17:34:37 GMT

Matt Deatherage writes
> In article <1g9sb2INNlsd@gap.caltech.edu>, toddpw@cco.caltech.edu (Todd P.
> Whitesel) wrote some stuff.
> 
> OK, let's look at these things.  There's a few misunderstandings here.
> 
> 1)  Remember how this started?  Hal implied "The original IIgs team wanted
> to do X, but Apple wouldn't let them."  I said "I don't see how you can
> know that, because you weren't there."  (Neither was I, for those who
> don't know, but I know a lot of people who were and I have no evidence
> that it was true.)  You said "Ah, the old discredit defense.  When will
> you admit that people didn't have to be there to understood what
> happened?"  I followed with "You don't have to read Moby Dick to write
> a book report on it, and it's just as likely to be accurate."

	What I said is (and reitereated in another post) is that some of the  
coding in the toolbox has made it difficult for stuff like a Multifinder GS to  
be done now. I never said thats what they _had_ wanted to do, or even intended  
to do, but given the time/budget constraints at the time, the result came out  
as which.

> (The above paraphrase is, of course, as I see things.)
> 
> In the nearly five years I've been doing whatever-it-is-that-I-do, I've
> seen an incredible amount of speculation about what goes on behind
> the scenes at Apple.  The vast majority of that speculation is, to the
> best of my knowledge, flat-out wrong.  For example, in the MacWEEK forum
> on CompuServe last night I saw someone speculating "The reason Apple
> hasn't put [Macintosh] Network Software Installer 1.3 on ftp.apple.com
> yet is because they want us all to use AppleLink and pay those outrageous
> fees."

	Heh. or like the 12 dozen or so reports of the Apple IIGS being  
discontunued in MacWeekly?? :) I never really try to post stuff unless it fits  
into the big picutre. Maybe sometimes I over step my knowledge, but I don't try  
to talk about stuff unless I feel I have a good grasp on it. And if I'm wrong,  
hey, people will tell me and I'll learn more about it then.

> The truth, as most readers here can probably guess, is that Mark Johnson
> runs the ftp site in his spare time and he hasn't had time to HQX and
> upload the new disk, which is only a few weeks old.

	Yea, and big cheers to him!

> Most of the speculation I see is like that.  The big one of years gone
> by, which is slightly re-emergent today, is "The Apple IIgs team wanted
> to make the machine much more powerful but Apple wouldn't let them
> because it would endanger the Macintosh."  Now, while the employment
> agreement doesn't let me talk about anything that might or might not
> have been a product, I am as sure as I'm ever going to get that no
> features were removed from the original IIgs to protect the Macintosh.

	I never said that features were addeded or removed because of the  
Macintosh. I in fact later said that a lot of good came about from having the  
Mac teams come in to help on the development on the GS

> > I do however take issue with your tendency to simply ridicule people 
> > because you cannot disclose the actual facts that prove them wrong. Perhaps 
> > you have never considered this, but the person being ridiculed usually is 
> > not the source of the information, and probably heard it from somebody they 
> > thought they could trust. No matter what the circumstances, the last thing 
> > they need to hear is an authority like yourself essentially smugging them 
> > off the net!

> 
> I suppose I could replace "That's silly" with "Whoever told you that is
> being silly," but if someone posts something as if they are the author,
> I have no way to know they're not, and I don't want to imply people
> on here aren't capable of original thought (or even highly demented
> thought, which is much more desirable).
> 
> Hal's original post said something like "Apple wanted to ...."  Not
> "According to reports" or "I heard" or "It's been said", but stated
> as fact he had personal knowledge of.

	Ok, I'll spend a greater time itterating what I do know as fact and  
where I'm drawing my conclusions from. A lot of learning comes from talking  
about what you do know and listening to what people say in response to that.
I learned a lot a while ago about using slower than accepted RAM speeds in the  
system. I thought it would slow down system speed, but I later found out that  
it would cause system crashes. I just wish those who had "corrected" me were a  
little more polite. 

> 
> > [shortcomings of system software]
> 
> Note:  We weren't originally talking about this; we were talking about
> whether people who weren't "there" can accurately know what went on
> inside Apple.  However, since you bring it up:
 
	Well, one more comment. Those who are quick to blame you Matt for being  
responsible for the death of the II get informed that you do not have much  
decision over Apple II matters, which is true. and its sad that you get a lot  
of complaints such as that. "I just do my job" is the reponse, and since you  
are not involved with the higher level decisions of the Apple II, its even hard  
for you to "accurately" know what goes on inside of Apple. I mean, how often  
did Scully stop by to tell you about his decisions regarding the Apple II? Not  
much I bet. But you didn't have to. You got decisions that came down the chain  
of command and those reasons are left to the guesswork or "heresay" given by  
those other people higher up. 


> I find a lot of criticisms of the system to fall into this latter
> category of "I think Apple should have done different things with the
> IIgs."  You can think that, go ahead -- I think that in some cases.
> I generally find the decisions that engineering made about what to
> do with the resources they have to be quite solid, and those I'm
> perfectly willing to defend.

	Yes, They have done great stuff with the Apple IIGS. I'm not  
complaining about that. Its just that given Apple's sales records with the IIGS  
during the late 80's, its just disappointing that the needed resources to get  
GS/OS going earlier wasn't allocated. 

> No, I didn't say you did, either.  We were originally talking about
> "The Apple II team  wanted to make the first IIgs multitasking but 
> Apple wouldn't let them."  No one who wasn't there can know if that's
> true or not, but from what I know I don't believe it to be true.
> 
> > if you spent more brain power
> > analyzing what you read, you'd waste less of it in replying to things the
> > author quite evidently never intended!!
> 

	Well, just to prove a point about miscommuncations, again, you seem to  
point out that the Apple II team wanted to make the GS multitasking. Which I  
never claimed it to be. In fact, a lot of this could have been avoided as  
"speculation" had my idea stayed in tact and not been read into. Maybe thats  
from reading into a statement too much. And I'll try to make it more clear  
about what I'm trying to say in the future as well.

> > This is the FIRST time I've ever
> > heard you mention that somebody else at Apple disagrees with your version
> > of history.
> 
> If I have personal knowledge of something, I say it as fact.  If I don't,
> I say it as opinion ("I believe," "I have no evidence," etc.)  If this
> is not true, it's a mistake on my part, because I intend to do it this
> way.
> 
	Yes, and its something that I said I'll work on to. Perhaps maybe long,  
tedious, energy-consuming threads like this one can be avoided in the future if  
we work harder on this. :)

> When it comes to "Why did Apple decide to do X instead of Y," most of the
> time I can't tell you, even if I do know (mostly I do, sometimes I
> don't, sometimes I've been told but I find it hard to believe).  I can
> see how trying to answer this without revealing things I can't could be
> seen as providing zero information content -- but in those cases the
> point is usually "It's not that easy a decision."

	No, decisions are not easily made. I'm sure the Apple II team would  
have liked to have done more, but they had to do with what they were given.
And thats not saying it was Apple's fault, nor anybody elses.

> > And if they manage to set off one
> > of your infamous red flags in their initial post, well you might as well 
> > let somebody else answer. This doesn't get THEM much of anywhere, and they 
> > don't even know what they did wrong.
> 
> My #1 red flag is repetition -- I absolutely can't stand having to answer
> the same questions over and over, which is one reason I've written so
> many Technical Notes.  If comp.sys.apple2.programmer passes, I hope there's
> a good FAQ list.

	Yea, I just wish I didn't have to spend lots of time answering  
questions for the 100th time, and it reduces productivity just like threads  
like these that deal with miscommunications, mis-represented ideas and such.
But sometimes they are helpful to get people to be more aware of how their  
writing is precieved and others to realize that maybe they read into statements  
too much.

	And yes, unless someone else tries to carry this deadbeat thread on,  
its my last post! (yay!)

| Hal Bouma                            | Send mail to: HBouma@Macalstr.edu    |
| Macalester College, St. Paul, MN.    | and           HBouma@Macalstr.Bitnet |
 \  Things that make you go Hmmm:  System 6, GNO, DreamGrafix, SoundMeister  /
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