Re: Apple and the Holy War

[wbdesnoy@acs2.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron Desnoyers Winmill)]

Paul Schlyter (pausch@saafNOSPAM.se) wrote:
: Yes, you could log into your shell account on your IIc or IIe too,
: however you wouldn't have 50+ lines on the screen available, or
: a 1000 line scrollback buffer, would you?  Also, the II sucked
: regarding type-ahead abilities -- not too surprising on a system
: which hardly uses any interrupts at all.

The given examples are overkill since 25-35 lines is a sufficent quantity of
information to read at any given time, and a 100 line scrollback buffer is
sufficent to review your work (aside from which, buffers usually to fail to
record the results of screen based programs).

The real difficulty with the II is in representing bold and underlined (and
colour, for ANSI) text.  Some programs provide valuable cues (ie. lynx) which
are difficult to distinguish when you are limited to normal and inverse.

: Next: try to log on with your 1 GHz peesee using a TCP/IP connection
: instead.  Surf the net with a graphical browser, run some nice Java
: applets, etc (yep, people often do that with their peesee's
: nowadays).  Now try to redo this with your IIe or IIc.... <evil grin>

I don't mean any disrespect to your browsing preferences, but who really
cares?  Java and JavaScript are turned off on my (albeit sluggish) Mac's
because (IMHO) they present privacy and security risks.  Java *applications*
can still operate in a command line environment (to what degree, I have
long forgotten -- and they do have to be developed as such), so that option
is not completely absent.  Graphical browsers are also sufficently slow at
formatting complex pages that I have long since learned to ignore them
(because that formatting usually conveys no information, and I have long
since stopped enjoying viewing the internet as a glossy brochure.  :-)
:  
: Granted, 1 GHz is definitely "overkill" for these ordinary uses,
: most people would do fine with around 30-50 MHz if they weren't
: more or less forced to use the current bloatware.

Here, I agree fully.  Our Apple II's are certainly a matter of tasted, but
the 30-50MHz class machines provided a good balance of features and a
friendly user interface.  Some people do have the need for faster computers,
but most of those people handle more data than the common home user would.
The back rooms of business and the scientific establishment are the main
examples which I can think of.  People who play around with graphics may 
want something better too, but 300-400MHz is probably pushing the limits
of realistic speed there (ie. handling 5MB+ images on my 33MHz box is a test
of patience).

But people are blindly chasing after "power".  Shouldn't really complain,
because it makes faster machines cheaper for those of us willing to buy
second-hand.  :-)

--
Stopped (SIGTTOU)         byron.
$

(c) copyright 1999 by Byron Desnoyers Winmill.
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