[Coco] Another Radio Shack Article

[Richard E Crislip]

At the risk of coming off as a little Charlie Brownish, I get both 
points. The C-128 had a lot of potential that was never realized because 
of that backward compatibility with the C-64 which was still THE 
dominate platform. So if was were writing software, I'd for sure pursue 
the largest market. YET, the C-128 would not have sold as many as it did 
were it not for that very compatibility reason. User at that time were 
clamouring, loudly, for interesystem compatibility.

On 01/05/2014 01:47 PM, Arthur Flexser wrote:
> Bill, I'd strongly differ with your negative assessment of the
> attractiveness of backwards compatibility.  Would a lot of Apple II
> and Commodore 64 users have bothered to upgrade to the IIGS or C-128
> if it meant discarding all their old software?  Would Windows still
> have dominated the marketplace if you had to junk a lot of software
> each time Microsoft brought out a new version?  Sure, preserving
> backwards compatibility can place limits on a new machine, but I think
> there's no question that the benefits typically greatly outweigh the
> disadvantages.
>
> I wonder if the CoCo 3 would have sold nearly as well if those
> involved hadn't done a really excellent job in preserving
> compatibility with software written for the earlier CoCo's?
>
> Art
>
> On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 1:09 PM, Bill Loguidice <bill at armchairarcade.com> wrote:
>> I think historically we can look at backwards compatibility measures as not
>> really being a big help in the vast majority of cases. It's arguable that
>> the Apple IIGS, for instance, was as much hurt by being backwards
>> compatible with the Apple II, as it helped. Same thing for the Commodore
>> 128 being backwards compatible with the Commodore 64. Why support a new
>> platform with few users, when you can just keep creating software for the
>> old platform (that still works on the new platform) with far more users.
>>
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