Re: Apple and the Holy War

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <20000430145613.13654.00000680@ng-bk1.aol.com>,
Supertimer <supertimer@aol.com> wrote:
 
> Apple Computers and especially Steve Jobs is funny.  The
> intial success of the Apple II was based on a practical
> machine that Wozniak designed and the early Apple
> manufactured to exacting standards.  So good was the
> Apple II and so expandable that original units are still
> running.  It was a good computer, period.
> 
> But when the IBM PC came out, it was also a practical
> computer although, in my opinion, not nearly as well
> designed as the Apple II.  Jobs, in a fit of delusional rage,
> started to label IBM as an evil entity.  He and the Apple
> he remade in his image lost sight of everything and went
> on a holy war to destroy "Big Brother."  I think that is the
> main reason why he hated the Apple II so much because
> in his eyes, the Apple II was the same type of machine
> as the PC.
 
It was.  That's why I went from the Apple II to the PC: I perceived
the Lisa and the Mac as a quite different machine: a closed machine
where most of the CPU was used to handle the GUI stuff.  I was
particularly disappointed at Lisa: at 10 times the cost of an Apple
II it performed *slower* than an Applesoft program (a simple loop
computing a few thousand sines: this ran some 20-30% faster in
interpreted Applesoft than in compiled Lisa Pascal, and the Applesoft
version produced 9-10 digits of precision, compared to 6-7 digits on
Lisa Pascal.  And the Lisa was some 10 times more expensive, and
everyone was so excited about the Lisa -- I couldn't understand the
excitement over such an impotent computer).
 
Like the Apple II, the IBM PC was also an open machine: you had
circuit diagrams and ROM listings in the manual on early IBM PC's
just as on the Apple II.
 
Of course clones appeared both of the Apple II and the IBM PC.
Apple legally fought the close makes and was successful.  IBM
was less successful in legally fighting the clone makers.  Both
Apple and IBM responded in anohter, similar, way too though:
by replacing their open computers with new, closed ones: the
Apple introduced the Lisa and later the Macintosh; both were
much more closed systems than the Apple II.  And IBM introduced
the PS/2 series of computers, which too were more closed than
the IBM PC and AT.  And both the Lisa/Mac and the PS/2 became
less successful, because they weren't open archtectures.
 
> What he did not realize was that a practical machine better
> designed can triumpth against another practical machine less
> well designed.
 
Whether a computer is "better designed" doesn't really matter much.
There have been many computers which were "better designed", but
which failed because the manufacturer tried to make them closed
systems, forcing the customers to buy everything from one supplier
only.  People want open systems, with lots of options to choose
among.  That's why I preferred the PC over the Mac: the PC was an
open system (another reason for my preference of the PC was that the
PC had a numerical coprocessor option, the 8087, right from the
start; the Apple II's never had this, and the Mac only added it
several years later).
 
> Instead, Jobs forced the design of several impractical
> machines (Lisa, Apple III, and the original Macintosh)
> and tried to bend the public to his vision.
 
Yep -- back then I used to say "The Macintosh isn't a
computer really, it's a religion"....
 
> The Macintosh itself only became successful AFTER
> Jobs was kicked out AND the Mac itself was partially
> TRANSFORMED in the Apple II/PC image (slots and
> distinct peripherals rather than black and white, non-
> expandable, all-in-one) into a practically computer.
 
Meanwhile the PC got a GUI.  So the Mac and the PC line of
computers have been converging more and more.  Perhaps they'll
once become compatible to one another?
 
> However, some of the holy war following still belive that
> computers are about a struggle against one or two
> evil entities.  Hence the labelling of "Wintel" (Windows
> and Intel).  BUT, like IBM before it, the evil monolithic
> Wintel does not exist.  Outside of Apple and the Mac
> world, computer users know that the landscape is
> dynamic, not monolithic.  That's why Jobs didn't see
> Microsoft coming when he thought IBM was the Big
> Brother and now Apple has been caught off guard
> again.
> 
> I have to laugh when some Mac users have never
> heard of AMD but continue to think that Intel is the
> Big Brother out there because interestingly, when
> Mac users were mumbling to each other that the
> Intel chips will never reach 500Mhz, AMD was
> already designing a next generation processor
> capable of going twice that clock speed.
> 
> That's why AMD has beat not only Motorolla/Apple
> but also Intel to the holy grail of 1Ghz.  That's right,
> Mac folks, the 1Ghz AMD K7 Athlon processor is
> now being massed produced and shipped in PCs to
> consumers right now.  These are not refrigerated/
> overclocked units but production units.
> 
> So when Mac users were jumping around about how
> the G4 500Mhz could beat the 750Mhz Pentium II,
> AMD comes out with the 1Ghz Athlon that could beat
> them all and cost less that both.  ;-)
> 
> When will Jobs and his following ever learn.
 
When it's too late?
 
-- 
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Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40,  S-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
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