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

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <3952FC0A.751C23DF@wanadoo.nl>,
ruud.dingemans <ruud.dingemans@wanadoo.nl> wrote:
 
> Paul Schlyter wrote:
> 
>>>> FYI: the majority of today's modern computers did NOT evolve from the
>>>> Lisa.  Many people frown on this, but "the grandmother of most modern
>>>> computers" happens to be the IBM PC.
>>>
>>> Pffft. Come on, you don't think a 4.77 Mhz command-line driven 8088 is
>>> more like a modern personal than a mouse/GUI-driven Lisa, don't you?
>> 
>> They both have an x86 CPU, an ISA bus, etc etc ......
> 
> So? Does that make any fundamental difference? Is having an x86
> processor or an ISA bus (which no same computer manufacturer uses
> anymore, btw) more important in computer design than having a GUI?
 
Yes -- it's a much more fundamental property of a computer: it
determines what software you can run and what hardware add-on stuff
you can attach.  As you perhaps are aware of, there was a vast number
of ISA cards to choose among.  There were very few for the Lisa, and
none for the original Macintoy, since it lacked expansion slots.
 
> I think not. If my Mac had a x86-type (perish the thought) Repentium
> instead of a powerpc it would still work in basically the same way;
> if it had no mouse or gui, it wouldn't.
 
You fail to realize one thing: a WIMP (Window, Icon, Mouse, Pointer)
interface is a software construct which can be added to virtually any
computer: if you lack a WIMP interface and you want one, just go out
and get it!
 
>> And, yes, they both have a commandline.  Even GUI users on modern
>> PC's are using commandlines although most of them are happily unaware
> 
> Rather silly argument, that. Well, the Mac has a commandline too if you
> want it: just use the interrupt button. It's pretty basic, and pretty
> much nobody uses it (like in your example on PC's) but it's there anyway.
 
The reason nobody uses it is because it's quite powerless, right?
Yes, there are differences in what you can do with a commandline on
different computers.  Compare the capabilities of the Macintoy
commandline with the corresponding capabilities of any UNIX system,
for instance.....
 
>> BTW the original Lisa and Mac weren't running at clock speeds much
>> faster than 4.77 MHz either, so that argument of yours wasn't
>> particularly clever...
> 
> What has clock speed to do with anything?
 
I fully agree with you here -- so why did you bring it up?
 
> Besides, the Mac ran at nearly 8 MHz, which is a LOT more than
> 4.8 in relative terms.
 
It's not "a lot" more -- 8 MHz isn't even twice as much as 4.77 MHz.
Even the IBM AT already ran at 8 MHz, so that's no big deal.
 
50, 100 or 400 MHz, THAT's a lot more than 4.77 MHz.  But 8 MHz
is the same order of magnitude as 4.77 MHz.
 
>>> The Lisa is the grandmother of all modern personal computers, if only in
>>> spirit; for grandfather, it's the Alto.
>> 
>> ..."if only in spirit" is an interesting phrase.  You can probably
>> motivate anything you want with that.  But OK, the ubiqutous GUI can
>> be said to "originate in spirit" from the Lisa, and from Xerox.
>> However a modern computer is so much more than just a GUI....
> 
> True. But it has been a much more important factor for computer users
> than whether it has an 8088-descendant in the box, or not.
 
Wrong -- the most important factor has been affordability.
 
Suppose the market had two kinds of computers: CLI computers and WIMP
computers.  Also suppose the WIMP computers were 3-4 times more
expensive than the CLI computers (because the WIMP computers were
claimed to be "superior" due to the presence of that WIMP interface),
but apart from that the computers had comparable performance (disk
space, RAM size, CPU speed, etc).  Which computer do you think would
sell best?  I'm quite convinced the CLI computers would sell best,
because of their lower price.  And that's why the pee-see clones
outsold the Macintoy in the 1980'ies.
 
> Besides, all of the pc's basic design had already been done in
> the Apple II. The pc was just a bit different, but not much better.
 
Too bad Apple abandoned that design -- if they hadn't, they could still
have been the manufacturer of the #1 personal computer.....
 
>> Could you please refrain from personal attacks?
> 
> Ok, if you refrain from slightly pee'ing me off by giving the impression
> that you're of the many many pc-heads who don't read up
> on some basic historical information before making their argument.
 
I'm trying to be balanced.  I'm certainly no Macintoy-head, but I'm
no pee-see-head either.  So you need not rant about the PC being inelegant,
non-remarkable, etc, because there we are in agreement.
 
>> Anwyay, the conclusion is that Apple didn't create the GUI, as some
>> people seem to want to claim.
> 
> No they didn't. But they did create the basic gui *as we now know and
> use it*. Engelbart's and Xerox's concepts were very different from what
> we use today. It's not a coincidence that Bill Gates around 1985 was
> so fanatical in making Windows "like the Mac" that its design got
> delayed time and again.
 
Well, Micro$loth's strategy for the last 20 years seems to have been
to mimic the market leaders, then try to grab the market.  In 1980
they bought a CP/M clone OS and renamed it MS-DOS.  In 1985 they
mimiced the Macintoy WIMP interface in their Mirco$loth Windoze.  And
in 1995 they first try to ignore the Internet, promoting their own
"Microsoft Network" instead, and then they turned around a full 180
degrees, and aggressively got involved in the Internet.  And their
"Internet Explorer" (which btw runs on both Micro$loth Windoze and
the Macintoy WIMP interface) now appears to be the #1 WWW browser
in terms of the number of users.
 
>>> The Mac was an extension of Lisa tech that made it affordable.
>> 
>> An interesting view.
> 
> It's true. The Mac's GUI is *so* similar to Lisa's that that part's
> obvious; also, its designers used Lisa's Quickdraw graphics routines
> and the same processor to drive the higher level software.
 
OF COURSE they did -- they would have been fools if they didn't !!!
You must reuse as much software as you can if you want to remain in
this business.
 
Software reuse is not unique to Apple.
 
>> The RAM was cut back from 1 Meg to 128 K -- is that an "extension"?
> 
> Now you're nitpicking. They had to cut SOMETHING down to avoid a
> Lisa-type price tag.
 
Sure -- but please don't call that an "extension".
 
They also removed those 3 expansion slots of the Lisa.  Another
"extension" ?
 
> The Mac was like a mini-Lisa, just more affordable and faster - hence,
> an 'extension'.
 
In my book, a stripped-down "mini" version is *not* an extension....
 
>> Was Lisa really a personal computer?  It did cost about as much as
>> the IBM 5100, but at http://www.blinkenlights.com they dismiss the
>> 5100 because it was too expensive for most people.  That argument
>> ought to be valid for the Lisa too.
> 
> It's valid for the Alto too, but that doesn't mean that these weren't
> the machines that basically changed the world.
 
Sorry, but the world won't be "basically changed" just because someone
introduces a WIMP interface.  The world as a whole is pretty much
driven by the same forces today (power, money, sex) as it was before
the WIMP interface appeared.
 
So please stop being pompous and talk about "changing the world" just
because a WIMP interface appeared.  The truth is that the majority of
the world's population haven't seen either a CLI ir a WIMP interface
yet ....or even used a telephone.....
 
One thing which has "changed the world" much more is the appearance
of television: now, the whole world knows much more about the western
lifestyle than they did before TV appeared.
 
>> Therefore I still claim that the Mac introduced the GUI to a
>> mass market personal computer, despite the fact that it arrived
>> one year later than the Lisa.
> 
> That's a matter of defining "mass market". Personally, I have little
> doubt that mine is better, since the Lisa was a personal computer aimed
> not only at businesses or millionaires but consumers too,
 
If they seriously had aimed at the consumer market, they were foolish
in setting such a high price tag.  Consumer products cannot be that
expensive if they are going to succeed as comsumer products.
 
> albeit a)computer-fanatic or b)cash-heavy ones.
 
That excludes a consumer mass market.  Such a market includes those
who are neither fanatics nor cash-heavy.  Also, cash-heavy people who
aren't computer-fanatics have plenty of other stuff to spend their
money on to give them status/etc -- so the Lisa can only have
attracted a minotiry of the cash-heavy people.
 
> The Lisa may have not reached its goals,
 
It certainly didn't -- it was soon discontinued, remember?
 
> but it was there, it got sold in the thousands (oh yes - check it on the
> Lisa sites) and it was there first.
 
A few thousand isn't much in a consumer mass market.
 
>>>> That won't leave much of a revolution to the Lisa, right?
>>>
>>> Wrong. Dead wrong.
>> 
>> Why?
> 
> Because it was there, and it started the revolution in a way the Alto
> couldn't, because it basically never got beyond the lab (and some
> private buyers).
 
I still claimed it was an evolution.  And it "changed the world" much
less than all those Macintoy-heads believe.
 
>> Note that it's mostly a matter of opinion whether something is a
>> "revolution" or "evolution".  Therefore you cannot say "Dead wrong"
>> here -- but you can say "I'm of a different opinion than you".
> 
> I say "dead wrong". A revolution is a fundamental paradigm/reference
> shift, and the difference between
> commandline and a Gui/mouse computer is so fundamental that it can be
> considered a revolution in that respect.
 
It's not fundamental at all -- it's merely a matter of appearance.
"Under the hood", the computer acts pretty much like before.
 
If electronic computing some day is replaced by biological computing,
i.e. computers based on biological or biochemical entities, THEN we
have a true computer revolution: mass parallell processing, self-repair,
and similar stuff.  But the Macintoy still pretty much follows that
good ol' Von Neumann computer paradign, despite it's WIMP interface.
 
Even the emergence of the Internet was a greater revolution than the
WIMP interface, since it did mean a bacis paradigm shift from
computers as isolated machines to computers networked to one another.
And this paradigm shift works regardless of whether one uses a WIMP
or a CLI interface (I'm writing this on a machine with CLI interface
for instance).
 
It's only in the eyes of the Macintoy religious zealots that this WIMP
interface 
 
>> time to spare, I might do that.  But it's not particularly high on my
>> priority list - after all the Lisa is a dead computer, and since
>> I never had one, or used it much, I have no nostalgic reason to
>> check this up.
> 
> Well, since you don't know it, it's perhaps not such a good idea to
> start an argument around it.
> And yes, there are several Lisa sites to look this up (start at
> lowendmac.com).
 
I'll look it up.
 
>>> This *was* one cool machine
>> 
>> I fully agree with you here -- it wasn't hot at all! 
> 
> It was *red hot* in terms of hardware and software design.
 
...which resulted in ...s...l...o...w... execution speed, even slower
than the good ol' Apple II.  How "hot"....  Perhaps this was intended
to be some kind of "The Zen of Computing"?  I.e. its purpose was to
teach its users patience?  Too bad Bill Gate$ got inspired by that
when he created Micro$loth Windoze....
 
> It was ice cool in price and only barely lukewarm in terms of
> performance. But performance is irrelevant here,
 
<grin> .....perhaps it was to you and all those who only wanted to
do trivial stuff on your computer, which didn't require much CPU
performance.  But I was, at that time, already trying to squeeze
as much as I could out of that poor 6502, and significantly improved
performance was a *fundamental* *requirement* for me if I should
upgrade.  Therefore the Lisa (which was about appearance, not
performance) was definitely not a computer for me.
 
> where we're talking historical milestones - if it worked, it
> worked (albeit slowly).
 
One would expect performance to increase, not degrade, with
time though.  That's the difference between progress and regress...
 
>> And you say the Mac "evolved" this technology?
> 
> It evolved and extended in the sense that the Mac was cheaper
 
The Mac was cheaper because hardware features were removed (RAM,
expansion slots, etc), as you've already explained.
 
> and faster (8 instead of 5 Mhz).
 
You mean the Lisa run barely faster than that deradful IBM pee-see?
 
And Lisa was beaten, performace-wize, by the 1 MHz Apple II....
 
> The basics were there in the Lisa, but the Mac made it more affordable.
 
Less overpriced, yes, but still overpriced.  It took another 5-8 years
or so before the Mac came down to a decent price.
 
> And it lost some features in the process,
 
..and that you call an "enhancement"... <g>
 
> which made the Lisa a cooler machine hardware-wise, apart from the
> clock speed.
>
>> <sarcasm_mode>
>> WOW !!!!!    THREE EXPANSION SLOTS !!!!!    I'M STUNNED !!!!!!
>> </sarcasm_mode>
> 
> No need to - just don't blab about closed systems when they're not.
> 
>> FYI: the Apple II had 8 expansion slots.......
> 
> So what. My Amiga 2000 had nine. The number is rather unimportant.
 
..and the Mac had zero.  Do you still think the number is unimportant?
 
>> ...and a lack of a numerical coprocessor.... which of course made
>> perfect sense on a machine which boasted the GUI over actual performance.
> 
> A socket for such a mpu *was* available. Just like in the IBM PC, btw.
 
It coudldn't be -- the 68K FPU (the 68881) wasn't even available when
Lisa was released.
 
>>> Oh yeah, and then there was a GUI and a mouse, too.
>> 
>> Yep, that's the only thing which was new on that desktop computer.
> 
> Glad you acknowledge my basic point.
> 
>>> Sigh. Lisa had *three slots* and it's based on a modular breadboard
>>> design - you could take out the cpu, i/o and RAM cards separately (try
>>> that on the IBM PC).
>> 
>> I've seen several PC clones where the motherboard just contained the
> 
> But we were talking about the original *IBM* PC here.
 
Perhaps you are, but I'm not.  Why ignore those other PC's?  They were
often better, faster, and cheaper.... the best PC's were NOT made by
IBM.  Why exclude these?  I can only think of one reason: you're a
Machintoy fan, and want to twist the facts to make the Macintoy appear
better in the comparison...
 
> The PC just could not do this - it's cpu was on the motherboard.
 
Not on all PC's.
 
>> Yes, there were other PC's than those manufactured by IBM.  Which I
>> think is the reason that computer line thrived and became the dominant
>> one: you did have a choice!  You weren't forced to buy your computer
>> from one single manufacturer.
> 
> Baloney. IBM didn't want an 'open system' in the sense that it wanted
> everyone to copy its design. It just got copied by Compaq (and other
> sheep) without their consent.
 
And thanks to those "sheep" the mass market of affordable computers
exploded.  Otherwise we would still be stuck with IBM-only PC's
and Macintoys, at perhaps 3-5 times their current costs.
 
>> I/O and RAM cards have existed for the PC all since its infancy.  I have
>> taken out various I/O and RAM cards from PC's many times.
> 
> You are talking about clones. We were talking about the IBM PC.
 
Perhaps you were -- I wasn't.  I've never owned one single "ture-blue"
pee-see.
 
> I know that many clones had (technically irrelevant/insignificant)
> internal design differences.  But we were comparing the *IBM PC*
 
Perhaps you were -- I wasn't.
 
> and the *Lisa* as computers that *started* things, not the
> 1000.0000.000 computers that followed.
 
Why disregard the evolution which was spawned by the clone market?
A lot of today's features in the PC computers were NOT spawned by
IBM.
 
>>> Hey, all of these were better than Windows, certainly in the beginning
>>> and in many ways they still are.
>> 
>> THAT's a matter of opinion.....
> 
> True. However, compare Windows 1.0 with MacOS 1.0 or GEM or Workbench
> and that's pretty obvious. That version of Windows mostly didn't even
> *run* on the hardware it was supposed to be designed for (i have
> magazine test reviews from the pre-Win3.0 era).
 
I've acutally run Windoze 1.0 on an XT clone with no harddisk, only
two floppies.  It was slow, but it *did* run.  So you have an
eyewitness here ..... no I didn't particularly enjoy it.  Windoze
became acceptable only in version 3.11 -- of course in so-called
"enhanced" mode, which made pre-emptive multitasking possible.
 
>> BTW how do you rank these GUI's compared to X-Windows ????
> 
> A lot easier to use since X is partly CLI-based and a bear to set up...
 
Well, I wasn't considering the set-up aspect.  I bet it's non-trivial
to build the Macintoy WIMP interface too....
 
>> I never ever claimed it was, so please don't try to put words in my
>> mouth I've never spoken.  All I said was that most computers today
>> are descendants of the IBM PC.  I did *not* say that the IBM PC
>> was the best, most elegant, or most revolutionary computer -- it
>> certainly wasn't.
> 
> True. But saying most computers today are more like the commandline PC
 
CUT THAT OUT, will you!  I never talked about the "command-line PC",
neither did I talk about the "MS-Word PC" or the "Quake PC" or whatever
piece of software you may choose to run on it!  Whether you use a CLI
or a WIMP interface is a matter of which software you run on it.
 
You can even make your pee-see behave like a Macintoy if you like,
by running the Executor Macintoy emulator on it.
 
> (because they use an x86 derivative) than the mouse/Gui-driven Lisa is
> rather silly. "Descendants" (VERY distant - hardware-wise there's almost
> nothing left but some 8086-compatibility)
 
Yet there's a continuous line of hardware development form the very
first IBM PC to today's fastest P-III machines.  You'll find NO
similar line of development from the Mac to the P-III machines.
 
> they may be, but in practical terms that's not too relevant. Get rid
> of your mouse or GUI on your own pc, and then compare that which
> changing the processor.
 
I can't even change the processor -- a PowerPC processor won't fit in
that P-III socket.  Do you have some wiring diagram which shows how I
could throw out the P-III and replace it with a Power-PC on my latest
Dell computer?  No?  Why not?
 
>> The PC merely became the most dominant computer architecture.  How come?
>> I think it's due to two things:  1) The PC was an open archtecture, just
> 
> Again: baloney. It was open in the sense that third parties could design
> *extra cards* for it, not in the sense that IBM wanted it's *own basic
> computer hardware* copied.
 
Yet, this was possible, and IBM couldn't prevent it.
 
> Microsoft, on the other hand, was basically *hoping* it's business
> partner would get screwed because of copycats.  And screwed they were,
> otherwise we could all be using ibm's right now.
 
Don't you agree it's a Good Thing that one single company don't have
a monopoly on the market?  Btw Apple too must have been quite
satisfied that IBM didn't gain that monopoly -- back in the 1980'ies,
Apple envisioned IBM as "The Great Satan" or something similar.
(later Apple and IBM became partners though, but that's a different
story)
 
>> as open as the Apple II.  This enabled:  2) A lot of clones appeared,
> 
> The Apple II was cloned as well. That didn't make a lot of difference.
 
That's because the Apple II clones also copied the Apple II ROM's.
They had to, since the entry points into these ROM's were fixed
machine addresses.  So Apple sued e.g. Franklin, not for copying
the Apple II hardware but for copying the Apple II ROM's.  And Apple
won that lawsuit.
 
The PC clone makers learnt from this, and avoided copying the PC ROM's.
Instead they re-implemented these ROM's, duplicating the functionality
but not the code.  And thus IBM couldn't sue the clone makers.
 
> The difference was that a lot of non-technical manager sheep got wind
> that the label *IBM* was on it. No matter that technically it was a rather
> shoddy design (because it was rushed), it had the label and that's why
> everybody got on the same boat.
 
That's the way the business world is.
 
>> If Apple had opened up the Mac as much as it did open up the Apple II,
>> then computer history could have been different.
> 
> True. But don't forget Apple did just about the whole design itself, and
> therefore the future of the company depended on it much more than IBM's pc,
> which was a hodgepodge of cheapo third-party parts except the bios. So they
> didn't put nearly as much money or effort into it
 
Relatively or absolutely?
 
> as Apple did into the Lisa and Mac. Opening it up at that time would
> have been incredibly brave, and might have been a great success, but it
> would also have been an incredible risk. Same goes for the innovative
> designs of (for instance) Acorn, or Amiga. If it works you might rule
> the world, if it doesn't you are completely dead - at once. Very very
> risky for any business. IBM didn't have the balls for this, either.
 
It's good for the world though when one single company don't have a
monopoly on the market.  Second sourcing is vital -- for the customers.
 
>>> That honor mostly goes to the Apple II, the Lisa, the Mac and the Alto.
>> 
>> ....plus a dozen or so other computers you "forgot" to include.  A
>> computer isn't merely a GUI, as you seem to believe.
> 
> It's not. But there are computers which were true milestones in computer
> history. The abovementioned computers are among them, the IBM PC is not -
> at least not technically, since it brought nothing new by itself. The
> *cloning process* was the breakthrough where the pc is concerned, not
> the technology of the IBM. And therefore it wasn't a milestone, since
> by itself it was nothing really special. The Lisa and the Alto certainly
> were. Even if most people couldn't afford one.
 
So the Lisa and Alto then become icons, which the masses perhaps can
admire but never afford ????   I do think a computer which people can
afford is more useful, even if it's not a technological milestone.
 
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40,  S-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
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