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

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

Paul Schlyter wrote:

> >>>> Lisa.  Many people frown on this, but "the grandmother of most modern
> >>>> computers" happens to be the IBM PC.

()
> > 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.

So? There also were a lot of Nubus cards, but that's hardly a determining
factor in computer use. Neither is the cpu type. You're looking at it
from an
*engineering* point of view, not from a *user's* point of view - and the
user, that's us,
the people the computer is ultimately meant for. In personal computer
design, the definite
determining factor.

To us, to the user, it's not relevant what cpu is in there as long as
its design is competitive (and if it's not, it will
play no part in the industry). But having a gui or no gui, is definitely
more relevant.

> computer: if you lack a WIMP interface and you want one, just go out
> and get it!

If you want to change your cpu type, just go out and hack one in. This
is really
getting silly. A non-GUI design like the original ibm pc does not a
usable mouse/gui
computer make. Besides, we were talking about *existing* designs and
their impact on
computer history, not about theoretical options that never were.

> different computers.  Compare the capabilities of the Macintoy
> commandline with the corresponding capabilities of any UNIX system,
> for instance..

You brought up the issue that it's possible to use a cli on a Windows
machine. Well, it's possible, but most people sure don't know how to use 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.

> > 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.

So, a 40 per cent speed increase means nothing to you it seems. Let's
see how you'd
react if your own machine suddenly was 40 per cent slower. It *does*
amount to a significant
difference, I'd say.

> Even the IBM AT already ran at 8 MHz, so that's no big deal.

Wrong again. The original IBM AT ran at 6 Mhz (look it up). Besides, it
came out one year
*after* the Mac.

> 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.

This is just silly. First you argue that the Lisa was such a slow
machine (which it purely
was because Motorola could only deliver 5 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 (well let me tell
you, on the Mac it sure did: the
complaints about slowness were generally gone. (I have magazines from
that era to prove that). Anyhow, from 5 to 8 MHz does matter.

> >>> The Lisa is the grandmother of all modern personal computers, if only in
> >>> spirit; for grandfather, it's the Alto.
> 
> Wrong -- the most important factor has been affordability.

In that case, the IBM PC was *NOWHERE NEAR* the godfater of personal
computers, since it
was *DARN* expensive for its time. It was known for it (again, read the
old computer mags).
Clones like the CBM PC-10 were a lot cheaper, and they needed to be
without the ibm label.

> because of their lower price.  And that's why the pee-see clones
> outsold the Macintoy in the 1980'ies.

I don't care who outsold who. 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.

> >> 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".

The Mac *in general*  *was* an extension of Lisa technology. I never
said it was an
improvement in every respect.

> > 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....

This stripped-down mini was a lot faster than the original though, and
more affordable, the
argument you've been waving about a lot.

> 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.

This is too silly to argue. With "the world" I generally mean "the
computer world", of
course. I'm not talking about the basic structure of the universe!

> So please stop being pompous and talk about "changing the world" just
> because a WIMP interface appeared.

The Wimp interface did change the world, in a way. No but's or if's.

> money on to give them status/etc -- so the Lisa can only have
> attracted a minotiry of the cash-heavy people.

Irrelevant. It reached the consumer market, if only in small numbers
(initially; it got better later on).

> A few thousand isn't much in a consumer mass market.

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.

> I still claimed it was an evolution.  And it "changed the world" much
> less than all those Macintoy-heads believe.

It was a revolution because just about everybody copied it's radically
different design and because THEN the gui was shipped on just about
every computer, it did change
the world as we live in now. Otherwise we'd all still be using cli-commands.

> > 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.

Like I said, try putting your granny behind a commandline IBM PC and a
Lisa and try to have her use it
within the hour, and then tell me there's no fundamental difference.

> upgrade.  Therefore the Lisa (which was about appearance, not
> performance) was definitely not a computer for me.

That was your personal priority set. Doesn't have a lot to do with
historical impact.

> > and faster (8 instead of 5 Mhz).
> 
> You mean the Lisa run barely faster than that deradful IBM pee-see?

Irrelevant. It introduced the gui to the world, that's what important -
not that it
was somewhat slow for its day. Nobody remembers the Lisa for its
performance, but people
today want one like crazy. That has a reason, and performance is not it.

> > 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?

Of course. The Mac was a success even without slots, remember?

> >> ...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.

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.

> > But we were talking about the original *IBM* PC here.
> 
> Perhaps you are, but I'm not.  Why ignore those other PC's?

Because your argument was that the *IBM PC* was the design modern
computing works like today.

> 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.

Maybe. But that's just a matter of *volume*. Not of design type.

> > 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.

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.

> > 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.

Yes you were. You brought the *IBM PC* up as the originator of modern
computing. Not the Compaq,
not the other clones, not the Dells or Shitecs, but the IBM.

I quote:

> > >>>> Many people frown on this, but "the grandmother of most modern
> > >>>> computers" happens to be the IBM PC.

Q.e.d.

> > 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.

Indeed. Like the GUI, the mouse, the expansion slots, the microprocessor,
the floppy disk, the Internet, etc.

So what role did the IBM PC *really* play? It was a second-rate rushjob
in a technical sense,
it was expensive, and it got copied because it said IBM on the label.
That's it.

> 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.

Well, that's my point: Amiga's Workbench already reached most of that
level in 1985, and it still
was better in a lot of ways. (And yes, I do have an original Amiga 1000
to compare.)
Besides, the 'pre-emptive multitasking' of Windows 3.1 is nothing short
of ghastly compared
to the original 1985 Amiga! And it needs four times the memory to do
something, too.

> CUT THAT OUT, will you!  I never talked about the "command-line PC",

Oh yes you did. You said in your original argument that modern computers
are descendants of the *commandline* IBM PC,
and resemble it more than the Lisa. Which is wrong. Q.E.D. The IBM PC
was a commandline computer. Q.E.D. II. Most personal computers today are
not, they're Mac or Windows (and if they have the capability, this is
barely used in comparison to mouse use). Q.e.d. III.

> 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.

Small wonder, since the Mac did not actually evolve into a Pentium III,
thank goodness.

> > 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.

I never said it needs to be a PowerPC. Ever heard of Cyrix, or AMD, or Transmeta?

> Yet, this was possible, and IBM couldn't prevent it.

That last part is important, because it means that the IBM PC was not an
"open" design at all.

> Don't you agree it's a Good Thing that one single company don't have
> a monopoly on the market?

Yes, of course I agree.

> That's the way the business world is.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean the IBM PC was anything special in computing
terms. The Lisa was.
In case of the Lisa, its introduction onto the mass market meant a
change in the way computers
were built. In case of the IBM PC, it just meant more of (basically) the
same were built, and the original
design of it didn't bring anything really new in the first place.

> > 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.

We were talking (originally) of which computer has had more historical
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); the
other ones did. So it's pretty obvious which computers
have had more impact both historically and technically.

Regards, RD