at least the aesthetics of the relatively narrow IIgs case got carried over into the Mac line

Absolutely.

Also Apple didn't do much to help sell it. Apple Works (that made the IIe and IIc attractive to home/small office users in the later half of the 80s) for the GS was late and development of later versions fizzled out with the expectations being GS users just use the IIe version and Apple had influence over Claris.

This was the evolution of the Apple II but Apple Computers killed them to favor the Macintosh (which Steve Jobs promised and envisioned for the future of Apple) so ultimately killing the Apple II line all together and leading to the demise of Apple Computers as a company since the Macintosh was ultimately a mass market failure and Apple did not have any other mass products available. But also the IIGS as you said was aspirational (kind of the beta version of what the Apple II future would have become) and when it came to benchmark reality the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST blew it away as they were more gaming efficient and more graphics hw oriented, plus they were also cheaper.

The Apple IIGS actually outsold all other Apple products during its introduction and right through to 1988. Even so, Apple neglected it, gave it little to no promotion, discouraged third developers from supporting it, and refused to advance its design. They also left users unsupported for the most part. It's really incredible that a company with such a successful and profitable device on their hands, would go out of their way to try and kill it. They certainly didn't help it in that it was priced so high, and they keep that price high right to the end.

Other factors - in the mid to late 80s one could get C compilers that generated decent code for the MC68000 and the Intel 80286 and 80386. But the 6502 family of chips don't have reasonable support for high level languages. Attempted high level language compilers that produced native code did awful hacky tricks to work around the deficiencies of the CPU architecture. In the late 70s and early 80s successful commercial software was written in assembly language but in the mid 80s onward, companies were shifting to writing in C. The Mac had good compilers but this IIgs, well, it's 16-bit CPU addressed greater memory access but didn't do anything to better support high level languages. Writing in assembly language had by then become frowned on due to poorer economics equation. Companies wanted to more readily port titles to multiple platforms. etc. And writing large, complex programs was easier to do in C vs assembly language. Owning a IIgs was pretty much a ghetto in respect to software being written specifically to that computer. If wanted to play games, then game consoles were more logical alternative.

Thank you for explaining this

Thank you for the comment. I'll have to keep an eye out for the matching keyboard. Yeah, that's the exclusive I couldn't remember. despite not really being an "Apple guy" I really like the IIGS, I just wish I had more reason to use it. I've been comparing Bards Tale with the Amiga version and I was almost sold on just playing through on the IIGS but I was bummed when I found out BT III didn't get a GS release. I just wish there were more exclusives or definitive versions on the system. I may have to try out Rastan.

@@AncientElectronicsFact: Super Famicom/Super Nintendo is actually literally IIGS System on a Chip hardware!!!! The same with SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis being Stronger Amiga 500 OTS components.

It tends to get a little sharper as it warms up. Its also a tad on the dim side overall. Probably going to try a recap eventually and see if that helps. I don't recall saying or implying the AppleColor RGB was compatible with the Apple II in any form, if I did I certainly misspoke

Find it, and pull the battery out of it. Those things can leak and cause problems.

@@cathrynm Probably too late now, been there for years...

@@8BitNaptime You never know. I pulled out my father's old eMac and the battery was fine. Though that's maybe 10 years newer than the 2GS.

@JonRowlison - Not quite the same layout, the Apple Keyboard II has the Control and Caps-lock keys positions swapped, and very bizarrely, the 'Esc' key placed out of the way to the right of the spacebar (rather than at the top-left corner). That made doing the 3-finger salute for accessing the Control Panel very trickery. It's also a cheap membrane keyboard, it doesn't use mechanical ALP switches like the original IIGS keyboard. There's also a border around the keys, it's not nearly as sleek as the official IIGS keyboard. Oh, and did I mention typing on that Mac keyboard feels like crap? I've always preferred mechanical switches, but the Keyboard II was exceptionally bad. I don't regret giving mine away.

Many of my actual Apple floppies do not work either but the floppy Emu is invaluable. I don't really like floppy emulators when they are internal like the GOTEK, It looks horrible and breaks the aesthetics IMO but as an external device, I have no issues with them. I probably won't do too much more to mine, get a battery holder and maybe a 4MB RAM card from Reactivemicro and I should be set.

@@AncientElectronics I've been needing a floppy emu. Got a few apples it would work with. Mainly since with the transwarp and the full original ram upgrade it be a powerful ( in regards to the era) apple to try some games and software with. Unfortunately adtpro has been refusing to load up correctly, so I can't make os floppies.

@@AncientElectronics I run a Booti in my GS. A real game changer

@@captain3186 i was looking into getting one of those but they seem to be sold out and not being made anymore.

In terms of what is accomplished in one clock cycle, the 65xxx series is more efficient than the 68000. Roughly speaking, the 65C816 at 2.8 MHz CPU is comparable to a 8 MHz 68000. A IIGS running at 8 MHz is much more zippy and responsive than a Macintosh Plus or SE running at the same speed, and really flies once you hit 12-15 MHz. There were certainly other bottlenecks in the IIGS besides its CPU speed, such as its 1 MHz I/O bus and video, but it became obvious Apple hobbled the machine by refusing to increase its speed even in the slightest for the 6 years it was on the market. Even its 8-bit younger brother, the 4 MHz Apple IIc Plus, was faster than the Apple IIGS!

well, specific technical abilities aside, on brief first impressions of the small handful of games I tested it at least feels in the same ballpark.

@killr0y - Whoa, let's back up there, you've got it backwards! In terms of the sound, the Apple IIGS is in a whole different ball park and infinitely better than either the Atari ST or Amiga. Its Ensoniq 5503 DOC--the same chip found in the Ensoniq ESQ-1 and Mirage keyboards, is a hybrid digital/analog synthesizer with 32 oscillators/voices and 64K of dedicated sound-RAM. It can support 8 independent speaker channels (yes, 8.1 audio, not just left/right stereo) and offers wavetable synthesis. Although it has an 8-bit resolution, its playback frequency far exceeds the 22 KHz range limit of the Amiga and other DACs found in other sound chips. Its audio was state of the art back in 1986, no computer had anything even remotely like it until the early 90's, not until you had the Gravis UltraSound (which used an Ensoniq itself) or Roland MT-32. Sorry but the Atari ST's audio was inferior to even the Commodore 64, and while the Amiga had the Paula sound co-processor and could produce decent audio, it only had 4-voices and limited capabilities and range. In terms of graphics, the IIGS was superior to the Atari ST. You had a 12-bit color palette with 4,096 colors, whereas the ST had only 512 colors. And while the ST had a limit of 16 colors per screen, the Apple IIGS could produce 16 colors per scanline with up to 256 colors per screen (the ST did however offer a 640x400 mode in 1-bit monochrome, but required a separate monitor that supported that higher frequency). The Amiga had a bit of an edge graphics wise, but I would say they were nearly on par or close to it. Same color palette depth, although the GS could only do 16 colors per scanline, whereas the Amiga could do 32 colors per scanline. Not too mention half-bright and HAM mode, but those were of very limited use in general. Of course the Amiga blew the IIGS away in terms of animation capabilities with its blitter and graphics co-processor, that is where it really shined. The IIGS suffered with its slow CPU that Apple never addressed, and a 1 MHz I/O bus with no graphic co-processors to help. Though the IIGS did manage to produce very impressive games, such as Sword of Sodan (nearly identical to the Amiga), a NARC clone, 1:1 arcade perfect ports of Rastan, Arkanoid I and II. Also Out of This World and Wolfenstein 3-D. It even had a demo scene like the Amiga. The machine is very underrated in terms of what it can do, especially with an accelerator, hardisk and 4-8 MB of memory installed. Its GUI was also much more elegant and capable than Workbench or especially GEM.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about 🤣. I have a IIgs and an Amiga sitting right next to each other. The IIgs can barely move pixels across the screen... And that sound chip has lots of channels of garbage wave table sound. Do yourself a favor and look up Amiga demos on KZfaq and then let me know when you've ever heard a IIgs look or sound that amazing.

When you can show me a IIgs that can do this, let me know: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hqx2ZdaK38qaXXk.htmlsi=f5-7mo_IGjJhRr1a

The sound is another beast though. Neither on par nor sub par the Amiga and/or Atari. Very different with other features. It is actually designed as a successor to the SID chip of the Commodore 64, by the same developer Bob Yannes.

Hmmm, that's not what I read when I was researching the issue but I did just read this "The IIgs can use a Duodisk without problems if the analog card is the correct revision." so maybe I was reading about a machine that had a controller card of the incorrect revision.

@@AncientElectronics odd. Because it literally worked no issue when I plugged mine in lol. It’s the only 5.25” drive I have for the Apples.