So I was thinking, the IIGS was a really great machine, so why did Apple kill it? Why did they even invent it in the first place? It always seemed to me that the IIGS was a little too close in spec to the Mac. They both used a 16 bit CPU, both used a GUI and mouse but the IIGS had a couple of advantages that I thought made it a better machine than the early Mac. It had a larger screen and was in color and it also had backwards compatibility to the older Apple II models and was cheaper than the Mac. I think Apple had no choice but to kill off the IIGS as it was becoming too powerful and intruding on Mac territory. What does everyone else think?

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Just a comment - the IIgs' 65C816 is an 8/16-bit processor while the MC68000 in the original Mac is a 16/32-bit processor. Internal ops on both chips are twice the width of the data bus on which the processor sat.

The Mac became a true 32-bit machine with the introduction of the MC68020-based Macintosh II and the Amiga found this glory with the advent of the Amiga 3000. (Though the Amiga 2500 had a 68020 acclerator card, it still had to interact to a large degree with the 16-bit motherboard...)

Wait...why did I start talking about the Amiga. Weird... Anyway, 32-bit version of the IIgs' processor, the WDC 65C832, was designed but never saw production. Apple didn't want the IIgs to get in the way of the Mac. This is why, even before the IIgs hit market, Apple dialed the clockspeed down to the paltry 2.8MHz in "Fast" mode... Definitely crippled to keep it "down."

blakespot