From: bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: How many "Macs" do you see doing important work?
Date: 29 Sep 92 10:32:25 EDT
Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA

In article <ft_pf=b.nagle@netcom.com>, nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) writes:
> 
>         You don't see that much engineering work done on the Mac, either.
> The PC board design programs for the Mac are inferior to the ones for
> Intel-based machines.  CAD on the Mac has never really taken off, although
> CAD ought to be a great Mac application.  Vendors who have products on both 
> platforms report that the Mac versions just don't sell.

There are a few CAD products on the Mac that do quite well. Mechanical and
architectural CAD programs seem to hold their own on this platform.

Electronic CAD software can't hold a candle to the PC. This has nothing to
do with the features of the software. There are two or three Mac electronic
CAD vendors whose products have the same features as the PC competition. The
problem isn't software or hardware inferiority. I'm afraid it is culture.

Electronic CAD (or any type of CAD) is a graphically intense application.
And the Macintosh is a graphics machine. So, you'd think that it would be
a natural. But there are very few electronic CAD products for the Mac, and
what exists is very expensive.

I submit the reason is simple. Who uses this CAD software? Electronic 
Engineers, of course. And Electronic Engineers, from their profession are
interested / obsessed with hardware, not software. 

Hence, we move back to my theory concerning the fundamental difference
between Macintosh and PC users. PC users are enamoured with hardware. How
many MIPS, MB and pixels per dollar seem to be the most important issues.
Not a word is said about software. Macintosh users are less concerned with
hardware, and more interested in software -- actually using the machine,
rather than admiring its potential.

The conclusion I'm forced to come to is that the overwhelming majority of
Electronic Engineers fall into the PC camp. Very few of them consider the
Mac a 'serious' machine. They don't feel the hardware is impressive enough.
Never mind the fact that the Mac performs quite well with the hardware it
has, since the software and architecture are excellent. It is virtually
impossible to get past that initial bias.

>         Part of the problem is that, in CAD and engineering work, sheer
> speed, especially floating point speed, matters.  

Mac II class machines have performed particularly well in this category,
especially compared to the PC camp.

> Macs have traditionally
> had less price/performance, and floating point coprocessors are not all
> that common in the Mac world.  

WHAT? The MAJORITY of Mac II-class machines have them. FP coprocessors were
STANDARD EQUIPMENT on Mac II-class machines until the introduction of 
low-cost color Macs.

OTOH, with PCs, FP coprocessors are almost uniformly an OPTION.

> SANE, Apple's numerics library, is
> painfully slow, even with a coprocessor present.  (There's a big
> performance degradation, perhaps 10x, from using SANE vs compiling floating
> point instructions for a coprocessor).

What good is speed if it gives you the wrong answer? SANE is excellent
because it gives very precise answers over a large number of platforms. 
The latest OmegaSANE is very fast.

>         Apple is finally getting enough compute power in its machines for
> serious CAD users, but it's probably too late.

I feel the problem isn't technical, but cultural.

-- 
Bill Coleman, AA4LR                ! CIS: 76067,2327    AppleLink: D1958
Principal Software Engineer        ! Packet Radio: AA4LR @ W4QO
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Disclaimer: "My employer doesn't pay me to have opinions."
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