> I think the other reason the III failed is that Apple deliberately crippled it in one
> or 2 places (exactly why I dont know) which meant there was a whole bunch of Apple II
> software that wouldn't run at all in the Apple II mode on the III.
Making a computer backward compatible is quite hard, especially from that era.
When commodore marketing announced that the c128 would be backward compatible with the c64, nobody knew what that would actually mean. They made at least one mistake which meant that a small percentage of c64 software doesn't work on the c128.
The commodore 65 also had backward compatibility with the c64, but it hardly runs anything properly (it's unlikely that it would have improved even if it had made it to production).
The Apple iii failed because even after solving all of the hardware problems, the Apple ii was good enough. Which is the same reason the commodore 64 outlasted the commodore 128.
It seems that Apple didn't learn from the Apple iii though and the Lisa was an even bigger disaster. The industry works differently now, but back then trying to design by committee never worked out too well.
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