Re: PC or Mac?

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <xgr58.15317$Zc.5645343@news2.rdc1.mi.home.com>,
Will Strutts <wrstrutts1@home.com> wrote:
 
> "Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote in message
> 20020128173529.24765.00001206@mb-cu.aol.com">news:20020128173529.24765.00001206@mb-cu.aol.com...
> <snip>
>> British computer scientist Byian Randell once said (and perhaps
>> he was paraphrasing someone else) that "a philosophy of evolution
>> not revolution is, in fact, a philosophy of fewer but bloodier
>> revolutions."
>> And so it is.  As evolutionary development, constrained by backward
>> compatibility, falls further and further short of the full capability that
>> technology can deliver, eventually a major revolution--a paradigm
>> shift, if you will--ensues, which pays little or no homage to the past,
>> but rushes beyond it into the future.
>
> Isn't that what Apple did first with the Mac and then later with the iMac?
> The first was switch to a new paradigm of GUI based computing and the
> next was obsoleting a lot of old technology such as a floppy drive.
 
Yes, Apple did this with the Mac (or, more properly, with the Lisa
which predated the Mac; I think early Mac's could run some Lisa
software).  But not so with the iMac - removing some peripheral as
standard equipment and instead offering it as add-on equipment is
hardly a revolution -- and neither is painting the covers in a
different color.  After all the iMac was a Mac, able to run Mac
software.  Steve Job's NeXT computer was probably more of a
revolution: it couldn't run any Mac software.  However some
revolutions fail.
 
In a way the IBM PC could be considered a revolution too for its
time: it ran a new CPU, and it was unable to run CP/M-80 software
(CP/M-80 machines were perhaps the most common personal computers
when the IBM PC was launched).
 
Computer revolutions have a price: if you want to follow them, you
must invest in a completely new set of software for your computer,
and perhaps also discard your old data files and create new ones.
 
-- 
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