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.