Newsgroup: it.comp.retrocomputing
Titolo: [Apple] [Long Stroke] Once we were kings. :°

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http://www.aci.com.pl/mwichary/computerhistory/articles/macintoshbytere
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[Reprinted from Byte, issue 8/1984, pp. 238-251.]
Cito, affinche' Google preservi il tutto: 
"Few computers – indeed, few consumer items of any kind – have generated
such a wide range of opinions as the Macintosh. Criticized as an
expensive gimmick and hailed as the liberator of the masses, the Mac is
a potentially great system. Whether it lives up to that potential
remains to be seen.
Personally, I think the Macintosh is a wonderful machine. I use one
daily at work, and then at night I play with the one I have at home. Or,
at least, I try to play with it. You see, my wife – who for years
resisted all my attempts to introduce her to computers – has fallen in
love with the Mac (her words, not mine). She uses it to type up medical
reports, notes on her clients, and personal letters. In fact, she's
suggested that we get a second Macintosh so that we won't have to fight
over the one we have.
The Macintosh is not without its problems. Resources are tight – it
needs more memory and disk space – and software has been slow in coming
to market. Many have criticized its price ($2495). In fact, there are
indications that Apple considered a lower price ($1995) and then
rejected it. It doesn't seem to have hurt the Mac's market – people are
still buying them faster than Apple can make them – but there's the
potential for backlash if the machine doesn't deliver on all its
promises.
Whatever its problems and limitations, the Mac represents a breakthrough
in adapting computers to work with people instead of vice versa. Time
and again, I've seen individuals with little or no computer experience
sit down in front of a Mac and accomplish useful tasks with it in a
matter of minutes. Invariably, they use the same words to describe it:
"amazing" and "fun." The question is whether "powerful" can be added to
that list.
Photo 2: The Macintosh dot-matrix printer
In an industry rapidly filling up with IBM PC clones, the Macintosh
represents a radical departure from the norm. It is a small, lightweight
computer with a high-resolution screen, a detached keyboard, and a mouse
(see photo 1). It comes with 128K bytes of RAM (random-access read/write
memory), 64K bytes of ROM (read-only memory), and a 400K-byte 3?-inch
disk drive. If you throw in an Imagewriter printer (see photo 2 and
figure 1) the system costs $2990. The processor is a Motorola 68000,
running a name-less operating system (see the text box, "A Second
Opinion" on page 248 for a fit description). It has absolutely no IBM
PC/MS-DOS compatibility, and it would appear Apple plans none.
The Display
The display is small (9-inch diagonal), but it has very high resolution
(512 by 342 pixels). Every pixel is crisp. Several things make the
display unusual. First, the Macintosh has no "text mode." Instead, the
display is always bit-mapped graphics. Second, the display is
black-on-white rather than amber-, green- or color-on-black, giving it
an ink-on-paper effect. Third, the pixels are equally dense both
horizontally and vertically, eliminating the "aspect ratio" problem that
plagues other graphic systems. (In other words, a box 20 pixels wide and
20 pixels high will be a square.)
Figure 1: A sample printout from the Macintosh using its printer and the
MacWrite word-processing program. The printout was obtained using
MacWrite's high-quality output mode, as opposed to the draft and
ordinary quality modes. The output here is shown at 100 percent of
actual size
The effect is excellent. The display is clear, crisp, easy to read, and
easy on the eyes. Because all text is graphically generated, the "what
you see is what you get" word processing is available (with multiple
fonts, sizes, and styles). Embedded drawings and proportional spacing
are also possible. Some criticism has been made about the lack of a
color-graphics capability. Frankly, I am unconvinced of its necessity.
Most applications I have seen use color graphics as a substitute for
detail, and the Mac can give you lots of detail. (An interesting
footnote: the QuickDraw graphics routines in the Mac's ROM do provide
for color, although Apple has not announced any intentions for
supporting such.)
The Mac's display does create a problem. Computer graphics are
memory-intensive, once you start drawing pictures, you start using up
lots of memory. The video display itself consumes about 22K bytes (or
about one-sixth) of the total RAM. Any off-screen manipulation (windows)
or information (fonts) chews up additional memory quickly.
The Keyboard
Photo 3: The Macintosh keyboard. Note the absence of a control key, but
the presence insteaf of a "cloverleaf" key just to the left of the space
bar. This key performs several of the functions usually performed by a
control key
Like the rest of the machine, the keyboard is significantly different
from those found on other systems (see photo 3). It's smaller than most
and has only 58 keys. It is detached but the 3-foot coiled cord has lots
of give to it so you don't have to wrestle the computer for the
keyboard. The full printable ASCII American National Standard Code for
Information Interchange) set is available, and the layout of
alphanumeric and punctuation keys is pretty standard. There are no
function keys, no cursor keys, and no control key. Instead, you will
find two Option keys and a Command key. The Option keys, located
directly under either Shift key, are used to generate special text
characters (Greek letters, math symbols, and the like). The Command key,
whose symbol looks like a freeway cloverleaf, is an alternative to the
mouse. For example, if I'm typing along and wish to underline some text,
I can type Command-U instead of stopping and using the mouse to select
Underline in the Style pull-down menu.
All in all, I like the keyboard. I'm a fast touch-typist and
occasionally I overrun the two-key "rollover" (the number of keys you
can press down simultaneously), but I never lose characters because of
buffer overflow. The keyboard's layout is compact, so I can easily reach
any key – well, almost any key. The Command key, located between the
left Option key and the space bar, is in an awkward position. often hit
the Shift key or Option key instead. I don't like function or cursor
keys and the mouse renders them fairly useless, so their absence doesn't
bother me at all. A separate numeric keypad is available for $99 (it
plugs in between the keyboard and the Mac). This keypad has cursor keys
on it, but I wonder how many applications will recognize them.
The Mouse
The rear of the Mac. Note the icon labels. The bottom row of connectors
is for (from left) the mouse, second floppy disk, printer, modem and
speaker
The Macintosh has a standard, one-button, mechanical-tracking,
optical-shaft-encoding mouse (again a departure from industry norms).
The mouse has a 3?-foot cord, its own port in the back, and full support
from the ROM routines and the operating system. In other words, almost
every application on the Macintosh will use the mouse. (I say "almost"
because someone is bound to come out with a program that ignores it
altogether.) Before buying my Macintosh, I used a mouse on an IBM PC and
was not impressed. The Macintosh mouse impresses me. In some
applications, such as MacPaint, I seldom touch the keyboard, except to
hold the Shift, Option, or Command key down with my left hand while
moving the mouse with my right. I find using the mouse faster, easier,
and less disruptive than using function and cursor keys. Function and
cursor keys do not fall within the standard touch-typing layout because
they vary in size, number, position, and function. To use them, I have
to stop and think about what key I need, look down at the keyboard, find
it, hit it, and look up again. Often this process has to be repeated
several times. With the mouse, I never take my eyes off the screen. I
just reach to my right, grab the mouse, and do what I need to do.
Of course, the mouse isn't always a perfect solution. Some commands can
be tedious to perform via the mouse and pull-down menu. For example,
deleting text to the right of the cursor in MacWrite can only be done
with the mouse. This is a nuisance if you have only one or two
characters to delete. I'd also like the mouse's cord to be a little
longer and sometimes I have trouble finding enough surface area to work
the mouse, but these are minor complaints. The mouse is an excellent
feature of the Macintosh.
User Interface
Macintosh's user interface is far different from those of other personal
computers. Strictly speaking, it is not all that new. The original
concepts were pioneered at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
several years ago. Apple used them heavily in the original Lisa machine,
released a year before the Mac. However, that Lisa sold for $10,000, and
the Xerox machines for much more. The people who most needed the
interface were those who could least afford it: small business people,
students, etc. The Macintosh is still a bit expensive, but it's within
the reach of far more people than any of its predecessors.
In creating the Macintosh's unique user interface, Apple has attempted
to make the abstract seem concrete. Few things are as abstract as the
data and programs stored and used on a computer. The Mac takes that
abstraction and presents it as something familiar a desktop cluttered
with pencils, papers manila folders, and even a wastebasket. Do you want
to put a document in a folder? Pick it up with the mouse and put it in
the folder. Do you want to throw something away? Pick it up and put it
in the wastebasket. Abstractions take on real forms that we can
understand and use without obscure commands or bizarre syntax.
Another important aspect of this user interface is the way in which the
Macintosh makes commands available to the user. As I write this review
with MacWrite, the top of my screen has an Apple symbol and six words
(File, Edit Search, Format, Font, and Style) written across the top. If
I point at any of the items with the mouse and press the button, a menu
of options appears on the screen. When I release the button, the menu
disappears. All available commands appear in the menus. I haven't had to
memorize or learn much; in fact, I opened my MacWrite manual only once
or twice, briefly. The same is true at the "desktop" level. Any actions
can be performed via the pull-down menus or by direct "physical"
manipulation of the objects shown. The best feature of the Mac
documentation is that I almost never have to refer to it.
My one complaint about the user interface is that it's slow. Sometimes
running a program or opening a file seems to take longer than it should.
File copying on a one-drive system is also tedious.
A special disk-copy utility is now available that lets you copy an
entire disk in just four swaps – not too shabby when you realize that
this utility uses nearly 80 percent of the total RAM just to hold the
data. Unfortunately, this utility won't solve the problem of copying
several files onto a disk that's already formatted and in use. There is
a simple solution: more RAM.
Memory Limitations
The top of the Mac with the cover removed. The disk drive and digital
circuitry are below the cathode-ray tube; the analog circuitry is to its
left
The 68000 is a powerful microprocessor but it has a limited environment
in the Macintosh. The Mac comes with 128K bytes of RAM: less than
1/100th of the 16-megabyte RAM the 68000 could use, and there's no way
to expand it. True, Apple is planning to upgrade the Mac to 512K bytes
sometime in the future, but that still leaves 97 percent of the
potential memory space unused and unusable. The Mac has no provisions
for expanding memory beyond replacing the 64K-bit chips it currently
uses with 256K-bit chips as they become available. It has no expansion
slots and no external bus. And remember, this is a graphics-intensive
environment where memory often gets eaten up rather quickly.
So the question arises: why did the Macintosh design team so limit their
machine? The most common reason I've come across is that the Macintosh
team wanted to provide a standard environment for software developers
and users (although the latter is less often cited). In other words,
software developers know that a Mac will always have 128K bytes of RAM
and users will never have to worry about software requiring more RAM
than they have. The idea is sound, but it causes two problems. First,
128K bytes is not enough RAM for a standard, especially in the Macintosh
environment, where graphics chew away at your free space. Second, there
will be no standard for software developers when the 512K-byte upgrade
becomes available. Many software developers are ignoring (or unable to
use) the 128K-byte machine and will release the packages for 512K-byte
machines only. Unless Apple plans a free update to all Mac owners, the
standard environment will no longer be standard.
Another argument I've heard to support the concept of such limited
memory is that the expansion slots were dropped to avoid power and
cooling problems and to keep the user out of the machine. Again, this is
a good idea if you provide sufficient resources in the unexpandable
model. I have no complaints with Apple's choice of two RS-422A ports, an
external disk port, the mouse port, and audio output. External video
would be nice, but it isn't critical. But there's just not enough
memory.
Others argue that 128K bytes of RAM is enough because so much of the
work is done for you in the 64K-byte ROM. The ROM toolbox (the optimized
68000 machine-language routines that handles all aspects of the user
interface) is truly a marvelous thing, but it doesn't change the fact
that large, complex programs need lots of memory, especially if the
displays are all graphical. A supporting argument points to MacPaint and
MacWrite, saying, "See, these work fine!" Yes, they do, but both have
easily reached limits. Furthermore, these programs were developed over a
long period of time, concurrently with the Macintosh. The authors of
these programs knew a lot about optimizing code for the Mac. Software
developers with less time and more ambitious designs will find the lack
of RAM a serious roadblock.
I also have heard that the upgrade to 512K bytes will eliminate all such
problems because there will be more than enough RAM for any application.
Again, I disagree. You can never have enough RAM. I think it's no
accident that the Commodore 64, with 64K bytes, has dominated the
low-end market over machines that have (or had) 8K, 16K, or 24K bytes.
Apple gave the IIc, which uses an 8-bit 6502 chip, 128K bytes of RAM.
Why the company limited the 68000, a 32-bit chip, to the same initial
amount of memory is beyond me. Even the fourfold upgrade is too
limiting. Apple delights in stating how much better the 68000 is than
the 8086/8088 chips used in the IBM PC and compatibles, yet most of
those systems can use more RAM than the Mac. Where's the advantage?
Obviously, I think that 128K bytes is not enough RAM to make the
Macintosh a truly powerful machine. My attempt to run the Sieve of
Eratosthenes benchmark on the Mac provides one indication of its RAM
limitations. Once BASIC was loaded into the Mac, there was too little
space left in memory for the Sieve program. To fit the program into
memory, I had to declare all variables integer. This will, of course,
speed the execution time considerably. Thus, the speed of the Mac Sieve
is not commensurable to the other two systems. (If you are curious, the
modified benchmark took 96.4 seconds on the Mac.) The upgrade to 512K
bytes will help considerably, but it's still an inexcusable limit. I am
convinced that this limited RAM has held up the release of Mac software.
As I write this, it has been three months since the Macintosh was
released, and all the Apple dealers in town have only three software
packages for the Mac besides MacPaint and MacWrite, which are still
bundled. Mac should have had at least double the initial and upgrade
RAM, i.e., 256K bytes and 1 megabyte, respectively. It may be that Apple
will release yet another upgrade when 1-megabit chips become available
in mass quantities, or they may just release a new machine.
Although the RAM is a limitation of the Macintosh, the ROM is a
tremendous strength. In what is undoubtedly one of the marvels of modern
programming, the Macintosh design team crammed an unbelievable amount of
power into the 64K bytes of ROM in the form of tightly written, highly
optimized machine code. In doing so, the team provided standard user
interfaces, so that most application programs on the Mac will be used in
similar forms. I tried some prerelease programs with no documentation
and I was able to use them almost immediately. Try that under CP/M or
MS-DOS. The ROM toolbox is a vital facet of the overall amazing nature
of the Macintosh.
The Macintosh also lacks adequate mass storage. At first, it doesn't
look bad: it consists of one single-sided 3?-inch built-in disk drive
(made by Sony) holding 400K bytes. Having only one disk drive can be a
nuisance, but it's acceptable if the drive holds enough data and if you
can copy it easily. However, the system files on a Macintosh disk take
up over 200K bytes, or half the disk. Even with trimming, you only have
about 220K bytes of usable space on a bootable disk. If any other
company marketed a CP/M or MS-DOS system with a single disk drive with
only 220K bytes of free space, no one would buy it. It takes a lot of
time and disk swapping to copy files or to back up a disk. The Mac's
only saving grace on this point is that it automatically ejects the disk
and prompts you for a new one.
The 128K-byte Macintosh with one single-sided drive is not a powerful
machine. You can do useful work with it, and the user interface beats
all other cold. But for the same price or less you could go out and buy,
for example, a Compaq with 256K bytes of RAM and two 360K-byte disk
drives. And I could get lots of software for it – programs that can
handle larger, more difficult tasks than the Mac currently can. The
upshot is this: a $3000 Macintosh with 128K bytes of RAM, a 400K-byte
disk drive, and an Imagewriter printer, is an amazing machine but not
really a powerful one. A 512K-byte Mac with two 400K-byte disk drives is
both amazing and powerful, but it is also expensive ($3500, including
printer and not counting any cost for the RAM upgrade). In the
two-and-a-half months that I've owned my Mac, I've often wondered if I
should have bought one so quickly. However, the arrival of MacFORTH (see
the text box "Software for the Mac" on this page) has done much to quell
my reservations. I can now create my own windows, graphics, and
pull-down menus, and the "fun quotient" of my Mac has made a quantum
leap. Besides, I suspect that by the time this sees print, prices will
have dropped and the software base will have expanded considerably.
Conclusion
You won't find another machine that's as easy to use or as much fun as
the Macintosh. In the right configuration, it can do as much as any
microcomputer on the market. However, you should go for a 512K-byte
system with two disk drives and a printer. Anything less and you'll find
yourself frustrated by the machine's limits.
I have no doubt that I would have bought a Macintosh sooner or later,
and I have no intention of getting rid of the one I own. The Mac's a gem
– rough, slightly flawed, but a gem nonetheless."
Un Maramao che non sto piangendo e che ci ho una bruschetta nell'occhio.
:P
-- 
"Intel Inside", It's     )\._.,--....,'``.
not a marketing ploy,   /,   _.. \   _\  (`._ ,.
is a warning label.    `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

l'altro giorno parlavo con mio fratello dei mac, e mi ha raccontato che 
l'ha usato durante il servizio civile per farci girare un database con 
dei dati anagrafici.
usavano allora un mac liscio e per fare una semplice query del db prima 
di ottenere il risultato dovevi aspettare un bel po' (molto più si 
quanto stiate pensando comunque)....altri tempi.

 quanto stiate pensando comunque)....altri tempi.
Mac liscio? Tipo pietra di fiume? :?
Un Maramao che ora i Mac li fanno Ferrarelle. :P


 :P
La prima volta che ho visto il Mac "compatto" č stata in una trasmissione
televisiva dove De Crescenzo spiegava un pņ di informatica..chi la ricorda?
Il MAC... č sempre stato un miraggio visto il prezzo che veniva a costare. 
ai tempi Abbiamo dovuto ripiegare sull'AppleIIC.
Adesso lo voglio utilizzare per scrivere qualche testo anche se mi
preoccupa la dimensione dello schermo (ci vedo poco)
Mi interesserebbe anche giocare a qualche avventura misto grafica/testo.
Se non ricordo male era uscito qualche titolo.... link/info?
-- 
questo articolo e` stato inviato via web dal servizio gratuito 
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ab...@newsland.it

 Adesso lo voglio utilizzare per scrivere qualche testo
Hai risolto col problema del sistema operativo per il 512k?
Altrimenti, se mi procuri i dischetti da 800k, la mia offerta e' sempre
valida.
ciao
-- 
Lucio
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 ciao
No, non ho risolto nulla.. visto che c'e' inn ballo il CBM 3032 vedrò di
portarti dei dischetti 720K in quell'occasione.


 Mac liscio? Tipo pietra di fiume? :?
mi lascio tagliare... il mac :-) che ci trattava di un LC *liscio* come
quello che io ho usato per un anno alla soprintendenza per registrare
carte catastali. era incredibilmente bello, nel '98 dover ottimizzare
gli input in modo da far lavorare meno possibile la macchina (quindi
scansioni 1bit, dati alfanumerici essenziali e "densi di significato");
molto formativo.
nello stesso periodo io facevo ricostruzioni 3D di monumenti con un iMac
233, a casa mia.
ovviamente sorvolo sullo stato patetico della pubblica amministrazione
in un settore cosi' delicato come i beni culturali.
-- 
"...non potresti desiderare di essere nato in un'epoca migliore 
di questa, in cui si e' perduto tutto..."         S.WEIL