From: bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Macintosh bigots
Date: 23 Nov 92 17:33:59 EDT
Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA

In article <1992Nov15.081518.11743@sequent.com>, furballs@sequent.com (Paul Penrod) writes:
> 
> I agree with you. The one thing Mr. Cohen does not take into
> account is the fact that the Macintosh was designed to be used for
> solving simpler problems using a closed architecture that made it
> torture to program for. 

Three points.

* You are correct that the Macintosh was designed. The design process for
the Mac was lengthy and extensive. By comparison the PC is just a pile of
parts ignorantly slapped together. The PC ROM BIOS was a joke. The Mac
ROM was overflowing with useful system software. (As proof note that
several companies have legally cloned the former. No one the latter)

* The Macintosh is not a closed architecture. It may have STARTED as a closed
system, but that strategy was abandoned long ago. The system has been quite
open since 1987, if not earlier. 

* The Macintosh is difficult to program because the Macintosh phylosophy 
directs the programmers to really THINK about what their users need,
and DESIGN their applications accordingly. Macintosh users also expect more
from their software. By comparison, most DOS software is slapped together
with little thought about user needs or design. Note that programming for
Windows is equally, if not more difficult than programming for the Mac.

> The IBM, by being so generalistic, suffers
> from non-conformity in some corners, but solves myriads of diverse
> problems because it can be built to do so. That is the key. 

Wrong. IBM had no vision. The division that created the PC did it as a
renegade project. The original PC was strapped with multiple limitations
so as not to compete with another IBM division's product (the DisplayWriter).
This gave it foolish things like 180K 5 1/2" disks. (The original design
called for 8" disks with larger capacity) IBM came out with the product
and they didn't even have a plan for it. There was no OS for it. (You
had your choice of three different OSes, available from different
vendors (can anyone name all three?))

They didn't build it to solve specific problems because they didn't even
try. They just put the pieces together. 

By comparison, the Apple IIe (of the same era) was a much nicer piece of
hardware in terms of chip count, cost and system software. Unfortunately it
was saddled with a less-powerful 8-bit architecture and lacked IBMs brand
name recognition amoung businesses.

> Apple determined long ago the class of problems the Mac would solve and
> figured the rest of the world was unimportant to them. 

If you implied that Apple has ignored all other computing venues, you are
wrong. Apple is keenly focused on expanding their business outside the
desktop computing market. Witness the powerful acceptance of the PowerBook
line, which went from 0 to 25% of the portable computing market in just
1 year. Witness the development of Newton technology.

> IBM, to their credit, realized that the world is a big place with an
> infinite amount of problems to solve, and solved problems very
> quickly turns into cash, because time is money.

Ironic becasue the PC they delivered wasn't geared to solve problems.
It was just a jumble of hardware. Ironic still because the DisplayWriter
was more focused on solving problems, yet it flopped.

Even more Ironic because Apple sells more computers than IBM. I guess
Apple must have had a lucky guess at what computing problems there were
to solve....

> If all a person wants to do is write a report, then choice your
> poison. 

Macintosh. It is significantly less complicated to learn a Macintosh word
processing package for this application than to deal with a PC. (And I'm
not talking MS Word here -- try MacWrite II or WriteNow)

> If you want to solve a problem, such as 3D rendering of
> seismic data, while handling on the fly analysis of incoming data
> via a satellite link, and shuffle all this around several differnt
> kinds of networks, while still being able to run about 99% of all
> DOS and windows software out there, then the IBM is the most cost
> effective choice. 

I'm sure there are millions of users who do this kind of stuff all the
time. <big grin>

> Granted you could shred a Mac and stuff all the hardware in it to do 
> these kinds of things, but it would no longer be a Mac according to 
> Apple's definition.

You seem to have a very outdated idea of what a Macintosh is. Indeed, I
can do much of what you say without any hardware at all. And adding 
hardware doesn't require me to shred my Mac. I merely have to lift the
lid and stuff in a card. You'd have to do the same with an IBM, for sure.

Also note that the first electronic mail login from the Space Shuttle
was performed using a Mac (actually several). 

> It's all perspective and the class of problems that need to get
> solved.

Agreed. I've seen very few problems that the Mac doesn't solve better
than an equivalent PC.

-- 
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."
Quote: "The same light shines on vineyards that makes deserts." -Steve Hackett.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy