Very true. The 68k MLA forums are far from the hotspot of Apple II activity. To my knowledge, you would find that on usenet (though things may have changed over the past few years). And something like that may be a relatively hot seller since the remaining Apple II users are rather devoted. And you can see that in a variety of ways.
They seem to be more interested in running real hardware than many other vintage computing enthusiasts. Yes, they have their emulators and yes a few people only use emulators. But when I contrast Apple II users to (say) Amiga users, the former seems to like the hardware and the latter usually wants to get their old software running under WinUAE. (Which is ironic, because the Apple II is easy to emulate while the Amiga is supposed to be hard to emulate.)
I always hear Apple II users talking about "real" projects. There are tonnes of people writing programs either on or for the Apple II. You see a bit of that in the Macintosh world, like the game (Wings of Fury?) that was discussed a couple of weeks back, but not too much. In Apple II land, I see everything from fantastic games to utilities to link the Apple II to other machines to emulators in progress. Then there is hardware. There are several notable hardware projects on the Apple II, but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone building a card for the Macintosh as a hobby.
And there are buyers too. There are at least two online stores that are dedicated to selling Apple II merchandise. These aren't people that sell old Apple II gear along with other stuff. These aren't people who sell stuff off of swap-lists, or forums, or eBay. These are dedicated hobbyists serving other dedicated hobbyists. (Actually, I see this in the Amiga world too. Why don't 68k Mac enthusiasts have the same.)
I've heard complaints that the Apple II community isn't as active as some. I think that can't be further from the truth. I think that they are simply showing their dedication by sticking to the original stuff and building upon the original stuff, rather than making it the sort of place that retro-gamers goto to pirate disk images for their emulator.
So can the engineer of this project sell some cards. You bet.
I just think that is is a bit dodgy, but that may be because he described the design process while most companies keep that sort of thing under wraps. After all, if the iMac design process looked like upchucked oatmeal it would kinda ruin Apple's reputation.
