Re: Apple II-Or Come on people, It's a 20 year old computer

["ruud.dingemans" <ruud.dingemans@wanadoo.nl>]

Paul Schlyter wrote:

> > - and the user, that's us, the people the computer is ultimately
> > meant for. In personal computer design, the definite determining factor.
> 
> So you're telling me that when I want a computer, I should choose one
> that you want and not one that I want?

No.
 
> If WIMP interfaces are so important to you, then by all means choose
> one and use it!  It's there on many computers -- so what are you
> complaining about?

That wasn't my point. My point was that nowadays, a lot more computers
are GUI computers than
IBM PC-style DOS machines. So in general, I'd say the Alto and the Lisa
have had a lot more
influence on general computer design (not specific types as such, like
AMD-machines or PowerPC-machines etc.)

> > it anymore these days. Everybody mouses. So, that kinda shows which machine
> > was more influential to the users in the end: the Lisa, or the commandline
> > ibm pc.
> 
> Very few people uses a Lisa though....  <evil grin>.  But if you want to talk
> about the original inspiration: the GUI originated at Xerox, which you've
> already admitted.  Thus the starting point was not the Lisa computer.

I've never said it was the starting point outright. The GUI didn't
'originate' at Xerox either (see Engelbart), although
it implemented the first 'real', integrated one. But the Lisa *was* the
machine which introduced the GUI to a mass
audience and influenced just about all personal computers afterwards. It
wasn't until the Lisa that GUI machines were
taking off in personal computers.

> >> It's not "a lot" more -- 8 MHz isn't even twice as much as 4.77 MHz.
> >
> > So, a 40 per cent speed increase
> 
> LEARN TO CALCULATE, will you?   4.77 plus 40% = 6.68 MHz, not 8 MHz...

Ok, so that was a rough estimate - I didn't calculate anything. Anyway,
3.3 Mhz on top of 4.7 is
quite a lot in relative terms and certainly if you have to work with it.

> would conclude that the Z-80 would run its programs about twice as
> fast, when in fact the 2 MHz Z-80 actually often ran things a little
> slower than the 1 MHz 6502.

You don't need to lecture me that mhz does not equate to computer speed
outright. I used
an Amiga for years.
 
> > Wrong again. The original IBM AT ran at 6 Mhz (look it up).
> 
> The speed was switchable though -- "hi speed" was 8 MHz.

It was not. Not on the original IBM AT. Look it up. Intel couldn't make
286's faster than 6 Mhz at first, that's why it came out this way.

> > MHz 68k's and not 8 Mhz) and now you're telling that the speedup
> > to 8 Mhz didn't make any difference in driving the GUI
> 
> It wouldn't have made a big difference.

Still, it definitely made a difference or the Mac wouldn't have succeeded.

> You don't think that may be because the GUI then had been moved into
> ROM's, instead of being read off disk?

The Lisa GUI was not read from disk entirely.

> > Anyhow, from 5 to 8 MHz does matter.
> 
> If you seriously think so, then throwing out the GUI will matter even
> more...

Irrelevant. The Lisa was a GUI machine, the IBM was not, and that's that.

> > I don't care who outsold who.
> 
> But the manufacturers do -- and Apple Computer Inc did.....

Yeah, but we were talking about (the most) historical influence on
computer design here, not old sales
figures.

> > I care about which design had the most influence on the personal computer
> > of today. And today, personal computers look a lot more like the
> > mouse/gui-driven Lisa than the commandline ibm pc, and that's that.
> 
> That's your religious belief, and since you appear unable to have a
> rational discussion about this

Well, just prove me wrong - show me the majority of thousands of
commandline personal computers in use today that I must've missed.
Even Windows 3.x isn't sold anymore, let alone DOS. Unix is cli-based,
but hardly the majority of
personal computers out there run on it, and most tend to get KDE or
Gnome on top of it, too.

> So far you've only been able to point to two improvements: its
> significantly lower price, and its marginally higher CPU clock speed.
> In all other respect it was a cut-down Lisa - right?

No. There's more, but I won't go into *every* detail of early Mac
design. Look it up.

> Could you please attach some figures to "a lot faster"?  How much
> faster?  2x?  5x?  10x?  100x?  1000x?

Who cares. It was noticeably faster (or people would have complained
again - instead, they
complained about the lack of RAM and a second disk drive), so that's that.
 
> > The Wimp interface did change the world, in a way. No but's or if's.
> 
> It did, in a way, change a small subset of the human world, yes.  That's
> quite different from "changing the world".

Well, if it changed the world in a small way, it changed the world,
anyhow. This
is just nitpicking. You and I know that the arrival of the GUI meant a
radical change
in computer design - if only for going from dos to windows.

> > Irrelevant again. There only were about six Apollo's that actually
> > reached the moon, but that doesn't mean the Apollo team didn't get
> > there first, or didn't have any historical impact.
> 
> But it DOES mean that moon trips never reached the consumer market,
> don't you agree about that?

Sigh... Too silly to argue.

> Btw, i numbers are that irrelevant: the Lisa didn't create the first
> GUI - Xerox did.  It was only implemented on a few computers, and it
> never got out of their labs, but you think such things are
> irrelevant.  Xerox was first, period.

No it wasn't. Xerox did neither invent the mouse nor the GUI outright
(go read up
on Engelbart, SRI, and other pre-Xerox/Alto developments.) Xerox did
make the first
real, integrated gui/mouse machine by taking existing elements and
putting these together.
The Lisa brought this idea to market.

> ...and doing what we wanted to do on the computer that way.  A marginal
> difference: life is so much more than just GUI vs CLI...

I never said it wasn't. But in personal computing terms it was important
- a far more
radical change than going from 8088 to 80186, which took place in the
same period.

> Paul Guertin did that (see his post) --- and he found no big
> difference.  It's mostly a cultural thing.

Sure. That's why everybody is now using a dos/cli interface. It makes no
difference at all.

> >> You mean the Lisa run barely faster than that deradful IBM pee-see?
> >
> > Irrelevant.
> 
> Then why did you make so much fuzz about it's CPU clock rate?

Because the Mac, which was faster, made a difference later on, and
because the lack of
fast enough Motorola cpu samples crippled the Lisa unneccessarily.

> > It introduced the gui to the world,
> 
> NO!!!!   Xerox did -- they were FIRST!

Again - read up on Engelbart and SRI. You clearly don't know what you're
talking about here. Xerox had a gui
before the Lisa did (obviously), but it was not 'first'.

> If so, why is the Lisa not sitll on the market?

It's not the Lisa, but the Engelbart/Lisa-type concept that's important.
Let me turn the question around:
why is the original ibm pc not still on the (mass) market, let alone dos
machines. I'm talking general
design here, while you're mostly nitpicking.

> > Sigh... Read up. I have a real Lisa here, and if I say there's a socket
> > for a copro, better believe it. I never said its type was a 881.
> 
> Perhaps you could elaborate on WHAT kind of copro it was, then?  There
> are so many coprocessors out there....

AMD 9520 math copro.

> > Because your argument was that the *IBM PC* was the design modern
> > computing works like today.
> 
> It was -- the clones copied the IBM PC design, and most of today's
> computers are a legacy of that design.  That's a *fact*, which isn't
> changed by adding on WIMP interface software later.

It's also a *fact* that more computers use a GUI nowadays than they use
8088-type cpu's,
ISA slots, 5.25 inch floppies and a DOS interface.

> choice when they really bought their computers.  Why didn't most
> computer owners buy the Macintoy, if it was such a superior computer
> as you claim?

Obviously, because it was more expensive. But that didn't change the
fact that
nowadays, just about the whole pc industry has copied the Lisa/Mac way
of using a computer.
 
> > Yeah, well, I have one. And I know how this thing is/was built. And what
> > role it really played in computing history - a minor one. The *clones*
> > made the ibm noteworthy; the copies, not the design or the computer itself.
> 
> The PC clones also forced Apple to lower their price on the Macintoy,

Like I said, it was the clones that made the difference, not the IBM PC
itself. If it hadn't
been cloned (and therefore it's price would've stayed high) it wouldn't
have had much impact
at all. Ergo, the computer itself wasn't that influential, the fact that
it got cloned was.

> > Yes you were. You brought the *IBM PC* up as the originator of modern
> > computing.
> 
> No I didn't!  I brought it up as the mother of most modern personal
> computERS !

You mean most pc's. That's just one type of computer, there are more,
you know.

Apart from that, since the PC clones later copied the way the Lisa
basically worked (and not the other way
around), I think we all know which design was more influential.

> Well, the clone makers certainly didn't clone the price of the
> original IBM PC --- thus your earlier remark about the IBM PC
> being expensive is irrelevant: most PC buyers didn't buy the IBM
> PC, but some clone instead.

Indeed, and that's why the IBM PC *itself* wasn't all that important.
But you brought
it up as being the most important. It wasn't, it's cloning was - so
maybe the first
Compaq clone would have been more appropriate.

> Please keep the hardware design separate from the applications.  You
> do know the difference, don't you?

I do, I just choose to make my own distinctions and not someone else's. Besides,
it's obvious my examples applied to most computers in general and not
just to
hard- or software.

> It also spawned a standard floppy disk format, which helped to enable
> easy data exchange a lot!  Even the Machintoy later changed to a floppy
> format which, on the lowest level, was compatible to the PC disk format.

Bad example - which computer was first to use the 3.5 inch disk, SCSI,
and USB? And yes,
because of the cloning the pc software format became something of a standard.

> So why aren't Amigas outselling PC's today?  You said it was better....

Being better doesn't always mean dominating the market. Microsoft is a
prime example, it seems...

> > Oh yes you did. You said in your original argument that modern computers
> > are descendants of the *commandline* IBM PC,
> 
> No.  I said "IBM PC", not "*commandline* IBM PC" -- the latter is your
> twisted quote of what I wrote.

Since the IBM pc *was* a commandline machine and most of today's
machines are not, it's obvious
which design has had more of an influence in general design terms. And
no, most machines don't
use an 8088 anymore today, either.

> I have some proof for you: pick an old IBM PC application, and an old
> Lisa application, and try to run it on a modern PC.  Which one do you
> think will have the greatest chance to run successfully?   <evil grin>

Irrelevant, since most original ibm pc's software doesn't run on a gui
either, and most
of today's machines are, for all intents and purposes, gui machines. I
doubt DOS 1.0 runs too
well on a modern Win2000 Repentium III, anyway.

> > The IBM PC was a commandline computer. Q.E.D.
> 
> If you ran such software on it, yes.  And so was the Lisa, if you
> e.g. ran CP/M-68K on it....

Never came out for the Lisa, afaik. Xenix did, though.

> You're talking about software here.  ANY computer can be a CLI or a
> GUI computer -- it's merely a matter of which software you choose to
> run.

Yeah, but my point was that most people/computers/organisations run
GUI's on their
personals today, not cli interfaces like on the ibm pc. And there's a
reason for
that - it's called Lisa.

> > Small wonder, since the Mac did not actually evolve into a Pentium III,
> > thank goodness.
> 
> Yet you claim the P-III evolved from the Lisa through the Mac.  Could
> you please stop make such obviously erroneous claims?

That's what *you* claimed, so don't put words into my mouth, if you please.

> >> I can't even change the processor -- a PowerPC processor won't fit in
> >> that P-III socket.
> >
> > I never said it needs to be a PowerPC. Ever heard of Cyrix, or AMD, or
> > Transmeta?
> 
> They're all x86 clones.....

Try telling that to Transmeta.. It CAN be, but needn't be. Anyway, I never
sad it needs to be a powerpc and that's that.

> Fine -- then you must agree that the PC clone market was a Good Thing,
> and that the absence if a similar clone market for the Mac was a Bad Thing.

In general, yes. But it's not like IBM *wanted* to have its computer cloned.

> > The Lisa was.
> 
> No it wasn't.  It was only remarkable, for its time, in the user interface
> terms.  But the actual computing was quite non-remarkable.

This is just plain silly again. In terms of what was available on the
market *at the time*, it
was an enormously remarkable machine. Why do you think Lisa got such
attention back then (look it up in the old
magazines - I have several here), and are now in computing history musea.

> No -- the hardware of the Lisa wasn't that remarkable.  The software
> was built differently, and aimed more at appearance than performance.

The software was inextricably linked to the hardware, and the mouse is a hardware
thingy, anyway. The hardware of the Lisa was *very* remarkable in
personal computing
terms back then, anyway II; I just mention the custom MMU and the 1 Mb
of RAM, which
was quite a lot for a pc back then.

> > influence. Well, the IBM PC and the Lisa and Alto qualify in this respect.
> > But the IBM didn't really change computers in the sense that it changed
> > the way we use computers today (it only got cloned);
> 
> This cloning meant one change: computers got significantly cheaper.
> That alone meant a change in teh way people sued computers: they were
> now using them for more trivial tasks, where the former higher costs
> couldn't be justified, but the current lower cost could.  That matters
> too.

True. I did say, after all, that it was the cloning process that was
important (in hindsight).
But the IBM PC design itself was not that important, since it added
little to what was already there (even
in comparison to the Apple II, which came out 4 years earlier).

> > the other ones did. So it's pretty obvious which computers
> > have had more impact both historically and technically.
> 
> Why do you ignore the economical impact of computers? 

I don't. But you're comparing sales figures and computer design, which
are rather different
beasts. And the Lisa had more influence on the way computers work today,
which was my original
point. After all, having a 10 Mhz 8088 instead of an 4.77 MHz one is
nice, but it doesn't change
the way you work all that much if you're still using DOS. However,
adding a GUI and a mouse to the
same machine does. There's a reason Microsoft made Windows, and they did
that after the Lisa and the
Mac kicked this different way of computer use into the (consumer)
personal computer market.

Anyway, it's been nice ramblin' with ya, but this is taking too much of
my time.

Regards, RD