Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!MITRE.MITRE.ORG!mcgurrin From: mcgurrin@MITRE.MITRE.ORG Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: New GS Message-ID: <8908181343.AA21443@mitre.arpa> Date: 18 Aug 89 13:43:23 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The MITRE Corp., Washington, D.C. Lines: 33 To further address the question of why an upgrade path would be nice, back around '80 I bought a plain ][, even though the ][+ had just come out. At the time, it seemed like the absence of Applesoft ROMS wasn't a big deal, nor was autostart. Why? Because to get autostart you gave up the nifty machine language tools in the ROM that the autostart replaced, and I was buying a "language card" that gave me another 16K of RAM to hold Applesoft, and the "language card" memory wasn't used for anything except languages, so I wasn't giving up anything. At the time this seemed like a good decision. Over the years, it became clear that the additional 16K was useful for other things, and that the ROM and RAM versions of Applesoft weren't *EXACTLY* alike. Therefore many programs which ran on a ][+ wouldn't run on a ][, and in many cases you couldn't tell without trying it! I can easilly forsee a similar occurrence with the newer GS "not quite +". Sooner or later, and the problem is it will probably be sooner, the feature not available on the older GS will start to really matter, and the new hardware board will require the new slot handling, or the really nice piece of software will use features that don't exist on the GS. For this reason, I'd like a convenient upgrade path (and no, I don't "deserve" a free upgrade, nor am I entitle to one. Bug fixes should be free. New and improved items can be priced at a reasonable level. It's a matter of debate, but I would claim that the slow speed of the Finder and Appleworks GS were sufficiently crippling before System 5.0 to classify as deficiencies in the original product). Now, given Apple's position of not announcing future products, it may be that a new, true GS+ will come out, with enough changes to make an upgrade worth the expense, and Apple might offer such an upgrade. The problem is, this involves trusting Apple to take care of those of us who purchased the original GS, and I'm afraid that with the on-again off-again contradictory statements about the Apple II line, Apple has about exhausted our trust in them.