We had a few IIgses at my school when I was a kid and they were used exclusively to run 8-bit edutainment software. Idly, one thing I see a lot, and, actually experienced myself in school is that Apple IIgses were, in practice, used as faster/batteries-included IIes. (Similar to, say, how the Mac LC IIe LCPDS card worked.)Īn Apple-built 16-bit multimedia platform re-architected so it was actually faster would have been real neat.
It's my understanding that an accelerated IIgs is still meaningfully slower than a Mac for a handful of architectural reasons that you really can't get around unless you drop the 8-bit compatibility or re-architect the entire system so that 8-bit functionality is subservient to the 16-bit platform.
