I mentioned the Apple IIGS in my last post.

I came across an interesting video on YouTube entitled “Apple and Steve Jobs’ Biggest Mistakes Ep 1 – The Macintosh”.

This interesting video claims that the original Mac was a mistake. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. The YouTuber (“The 8-Bit Guy“) goes on to make a compelling argument that Apple should have promoted the Apple IIGS and dropped the Mac.

Here’s the argument:

  1. The IIGS was superior to the Mac in a number of areas (e.g. better sound and graphics)
  2. It was more extendable (slots for cards)
  3. It was a lot cheaper

And the amazing (and cool) thing about the IIGS was that it was able to run most of the Apple II software. So there were hundreds upon hundreds of software products available for it! (Compare this with the Mac which suffered from a horrible lack of software).

He argues (and I agree) that Apple should have been pushing the IIGS rather than the Mac (he blames Steve Jobs for this decision which, based on everything we know about how Jobs was behaving at that time, seems reasonable). But instead they reduced the CPU speed of the IIGS on purpose to make sure that GUI (which was very similar to the Mac’s but in colour!) was sluggish and unable to match the Mac!

Wikipedia tells us that ” The machine outsold all other Apple products, including the Macintosh, during its first year in production”.

We are left to wonder how things would have turned out if Apple had not crippled the machine and has pushed it instead of the Mac. They might have been able to avoid all of those years in the wilderness. Maybe it could even have given the IBM PC a run for its money! Imagine if we were all running machines now which were descended from the Apple II rather than from the IBM PC!

The video includes “Ep 1” in the title and “The 8-Bit Guy” says that he plans to talk about other mistakes which Jobs made but I can’t see any sign of such videos.

You can see the video here: