Apple and The Number 3

Is there anyone here old enough to remember the Curse of 3 and Apple?

There was the Apple III (a complete disaster,) Macintosh System 3 (very
quickly replaced by 4.12) and another 3 that eludes me at the moment.

Is Panther the next Curse of 3 for Apple?

In article <101120031912499471%>,
"F. Rabelais" <> wrote:

> Is there anyone here old enough to remember the Curse of 3 and Apple?

Naah, just kids here.

> There was the Apple III (a complete disaster,)

I was there at the time in Apple Engineering...

Actually, it wasn't a total disaster. After fixing the "fine line"
motherboards, replacing them with the "coarse line" motherboard, and
replacing all customer systems at no cost to the customers (the "6
million dollar fix"), they soldiered on quite well for several years.

What it couldn't overcome was the idiotic marketing-specified
emasculation of the machine. They were terrified that allowing the
machine's Apple// emulation mode to use 64K of memory would instantly
kill all Apple// sales. (Riiiiiight. Nobody is going to buy any more
$1500 computers when they could buy the $3000 bigger machine.)

At the end, there were Apple///'s with 512K internal memory, but only
running SOS in Apple/// mode, with mice and Profile hard drives. Too
late; the machine had embarrassed Mr. Jobs and Apple, and you never
again saw a computer with the number 3 (or ///) in the name from Apple.

> Macintosh System 3 (very quickly replaced by 4.12)

Because they didn't want to delay shipping the Mac any longer, and 4
wasn't quite ready for prime time.

> and another 3 that eludes me at the moment.

Can't think of one, offhand.
> Is Panther the next Curse of 3 for Apple?

No.

On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 22:21:58 -0800,
Steve Hix () wrote:
>> Macintosh System 3 (very quickly replaced by 4.12)
>
> Because they didn't want to delay shipping the Mac any longer, and 4
> wasn't quite ready for prime time.

The Mac Plus you mean? Not the original Mac 128k.

Beverly
--
Bev A. Kupf
"The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne" -- Chaucer
Sussex - Division One Champions 2003!

In article <101120031912499471%>, F. Rabelais
<> wrote:

> Is there anyone here old enough to remember the Curse of 3 and Apple?
>
> There was the Apple III (a complete disaster,) Macintosh System 3 (very
> quickly replaced by 4.12) and another 3 that eludes me at the moment.

system 3.0 was rather buggy, however, it was quickly replaced with
system 3.2 which was pretty stable. if i recall, appleshare made its
debut with system 3.3 not too long after that. system 4.0 appeared with
the mac se and 4.1 with the mac ii a few months later. system 5 shipped
that summer and introduced multifinder.

> Is Panther the next Curse of 3 for Apple?

with two serious data loss bugs? it sure has a running start...

In article <101120031912499471%>,
"F. Rabelais" <> wrote:

> Is there anyone here old enough to remember the Curse of 3 and Apple?
>
> There was the Apple III (a complete disaster,) Macintosh System 3 (very
> quickly replaced by 4.12) and another 3 that eludes me at the moment.

MS Word 3.0 for the Macintosh.

--
Never play strip tarot.

In article <101120031912499471%>,
wrote:

> Is there anyone here old enough to remember the Curse of 3 and Apple?
> There was the Apple III (a complete disaster,) Macintosh System 3 (very
> quickly replaced by 4.12) and another 3 that eludes me at the moment.


The Power Macintosh G3 / PowerBook G3 / iMac G3 / iBook G3 series of
computers seems to have done quite well over the years. Obviously being
supplanted by the G4, and then the G5.

I'd say the "curse of 3 and Apple" was wiped away in lieu of the success
of the G3.

"F. Rabelais" wrote:
>
> Is there anyone here old enough to remember the Curse of 3 and Apple?
>
> There was the Apple III (a complete disaster,) Macintosh System 3 (very
> quickly replaced by 4.12) and another 3 that eludes me at the moment.

Another real disaster were the efforts the HyperCard 3.0 team
made to finish the updated HyperCard as quickly as possible. Not
the efforts themselves were disastrous but what happened after that.

The HyperCard 3.0 preview was at the 1997 Apple World-wide
Developers Conference. A built-in technology was called
QuickTime Interactive (QTi), but the final product was
presumably called HyperCard 3.0. For a reason still unknown this
new version, an almost completely finished product with amazing
capabilities, integrating QuickTime, AppleScript, enhanced
plug-in support including the well-known XCMDs and XFCNs, and
all original features of HyperCard, never got off the shelf.

The European HyperCard User Group (http://www.ehug.ingo) and the
International HyperCard User Group (http://www.ihug.info) have
asked Apple several times for an explanation why HyperCard 3.0
has never been released. Apple still officially says that it
hasn't cancelled HyperCard! Officially, they have been working
on it for more than six years now! Isn't that embarrassing?!

Btw, you can hear Steve jobs saying that HyperCard isn't
cancelled if you visit the iHUG site.

Best regards,

Mark

--

eHUG coordinator
http://home.wanadoo.nl/mark.sch
http://www.ehug.info

In article <NoEmail-1111030306510001@24.77.190.53>,
(Perry) wrote:

> In article <101120031912499471%>,
> wrote:
>
> > Is there anyone here old enough to remember the Curse of 3 and Apple?
> > There was the Apple III (a complete disaster,) Macintosh System 3 (very
> > quickly replaced by 4.12) and another 3 that eludes me at the moment.
>
>
> The Power Macintosh G3 / PowerBook G3 / iMac G3 / iBook G3 series of
> computers seems to have done quite well over the years. Obviously being
> supplanted by the G4, and then the G5.
>
> I'd say the "curse of 3 and Apple" was wiped away in lieu of the success
> of the G3.

And, of course, there's the 3rd generation iPod.

--
Tom Stiller

PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3
7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF

In article <sehix->,
Steve Hix <> wrote:

> At the end, there were Apple///'s with 512K internal memory, but only
> running SOS in Apple/// mode, with mice and Profile hard drives. Too
> late; the machine had embarrassed Mr. Jobs and Apple, and you never
> again saw a computer with the number 3 (or ///) in the name from Apple.

Not for several years anyway. I remember being stunned when they
actually delivered something called the "LC III" precisely because I
remembered the curse.

>In article <101120031912499471%>,
> wrote:
>Is there anyone here old enough to remember the Curse of 3 and Apple?
>There was the Apple III (a complete disaster,) Macintosh System 3 (very
>quickly replaced by 4.12) and another 3 that eludes me at the moment.


Oh yeah, in addition to the success of the late '90s PowerPC G3 systems, I
forgot about an equally successful Mac from the early '90s.

The Macintosh LC III. They sold those by the truckload because it was a
low cost color capable Mac, stripped of the expensive NuBus slots.

Might as well add in the popular PowerPC 603 based systems from the
mid'90s, just to put a nail in the coffin to debunk the "Apple and the
curse of 3" myth.