I hate to even get into this, in part because I can't really even remember why this thread started ... BUT, first let's re-visit what a "Road Apple" is (I'm assuming LEM coined this term and if not, is certainly the defacto guardian of it's use) : http://lowendmac.com/roadapples/index.shtml
If this is to be the universal definition of a "Road Apple" then the Plus is definitely NOT one. Whether Apple continued making it past the innovation threshold of technological implementation is moot. The Plus, like most Macs, exceeded the limitations imposed by theory or design based on the revolutionary features at the time of its introduction. Nothing about it was "crippled" or lacking based on available resources at the time (in the Mac world -- certainly comparing any Mac to available features in the computing world at any given time would put most of them on the "Road Apples" list) and in fact was able to handle advances well beyond it's intended usefulness (much to Apple's chagrin). You wouldn't call a Ziplock bag a "Road Apple" just because they keep selling them well after the superior disposable Tupperware-type container came onto the market. BUT, the 128k should actually go on this list because of the 128k limitation that everyone knew was a mistake from day one. But then it was the first affordable GUI, so what are you gonna do? Which brings us to the Classic. The only Mac ever to be sold for less than $1000 to that time. Was it a "Road Apple" in spite of the fact it had no real improvements over the Plus? You betcha. But NOT because of that. Except for one thing, I would otherwise say it is not a "Road Apple": the Classic was an updated Plus with and internal hard drive, ADB ports and a quicker, modern SCSI bus (nothing revolutionary, but improvements none-the-less). While it lacked the expansion slot of the SE, (only the 68000 SE used that slot and Apple wanted to get rid of it in favor of a standardized expansion slot, so continuing it in the Classic would not have made sense and engineering something else would have raised the cost), you could get direct Ethernet through the SCSI port or bridged via Apple Talk. Whether they should have offered it is a marketing issue and it does not diminish the ability of the hardware or the fact it runs just as proficiently today as it did then. Who cares about proprietary RAM cards, it was 1990 -- a long way from the world of the Mac and PC hardware cross-compatibility of today. The fact is the Classic was not crippled by hardware in any way -- it ran as well as the Plus and in fact better. Did it lack anything over the SE, sure, but it was not intentionally crippled based on what it might otherwise be able to do -- they simply did not expand it. BUT it was crippled, by software. While the Plus with its maximum 4MB RAM could run the earliest 1.0 system software to the most current in 1990 (and indeed all the way up to 7.5.5), allowing you to maximize that tiny amount of RAM based on your application needs, the Classic forced you to run system 6.0.7 or higher. It was designed as a System 7 entree computer and that is a bad thing for an 8MHz 68000 chip and 4MB RAM (The fact they had the nerve to sell it with less than 4MB should have been actionable under law). So there indeed is the single overwhelming criteria for labeling the Classic a "Road Apple". Most of us by today's standards with less than a $1,000 investment can have a new state of the art iBook that will do most anything we can think of on a computer almost as well as the top-of-the-line models. We've forgotten about inflation and that $1,000 was a lot of money in 1990. We've also forgotten that the computer had become a virtually mandatory appliance for doing work. It was a world before the internet and there were people who really NEEDED an easy-to-use computer (pre-windows 3.1) to write letters, papers, reports, spreadsheets, books and to write and sequence/perform music, etc. The Classic could do all of that easily and more -- on a budget -- but only in the narrow boarder-town world between System 6 and 7. No other Mac had ever been so restricted -- and by, of all things, software! Since the hardware of the Classic can be much more productive using earlier systems and application software and the fact that so much more software was available for earlier systems, it is needlessly limited to what it can do and seems to have clearly been crippled by Apple as a a single-use workstation (obvious by the built-in ROM System) and/or a way to expand market share and lure PC users and expecting they would have such a positive experience they would want to upgrade as soon as they could, or worse yet and more conspiratorial, a way to recoup their money through an unsuspecting public after a failed work-station contract bid. Whatever the reason by LEM's definition, the Classic is a "Road Apple", though in my opinion: only in flexibility of available software it can effectively use. > From: Anthony Moss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > You can't really compare the Classic with the original Mac 128K! > The Classic came out four years, ten months after the Plus; and these > two computers are pretty close in specification. If the Classic was > a Road Apple, and obsolete at the time it was first introduced, then > the Plus, with its pre-ADB peripherals, no internal hard disk and no > 1.4M floppy support, was obsolete at some point *before* the Classic > was introduced and the Plus phased out. > -- Compact Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/>. 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