Re: The sad Truth about iMac:

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

"John Paul Murdie" <john_murdie@sunshine.net> wrote:

>This is an article written by Brad Dosland in the March issue of Maximum PC.,
he
>is the editor in Chief.
[article snipped]
>I was going to buy an iMac, but after reading this article I don't know? I
would
>like to see some feedback, hopefully my opinion will be swayed as it is a
>compact little machine that you can easily pack with you anywhere you go with
>little fuss. If I had to pack up my IBM clone it would take me an hour to stow
>it.

Comp.sys.apple2 is an Apple II newsgroup, not Macintosh, so this is better
answered in comp.sys.mac.advocacy, however, Mr. Dosland is so off the
mark, I'll chime in...

Do not listen to what Dosland says.  He's obviously one of those anti-Mac
people who won't like Apple products no matter what package they come
in.  I can say this objectively because I myself have a 32MB RAM, 12GB
hard drive, 200Mhz IBM 6x86 Windows 95 unit, so I'm not anti-PC.

You can pretty much disregard Mr. Dosland's entire article.  The iMac
has its quirks, yes.  They obviously should have included a 3.5" floppy
drive (the motherboard has a FD controller, but Apple didn't add a cable
to the back of the iMac), for example.  However, the iMac is cutting edge
technology.  It has USB ports for peripherals, built in high speed
networking, and in spite of the iMac being advertised by the Jurassic
Park actor, that actor is not lying.  The iMac is easy to set up and easy
to transport, and ready out of the box to get you onto the internet.

You should not be worried about the machine at all, but you might be
about the company.  Apple has a history of abandoning its users.  For
example, Mr. Dosland said that he had a Mac Plus in 1986 and that was
state of the art.  Yeah right!  In 1986, there were much better units.
There was the Amiga from Commodore, the Atari ST from Atari, and
even the Apple IIGS from Apple itself.  I myself got the Apple IIGS
and never looked back.  The IIGS has a 32 channel Ensoniq wavetable
chip, a color GUI, 8MB RAM/8MB ROM memory expansion, and
seven general purpose expansion slots.  It was the first computer with
ADB.  It was the first computer with wavetable audio (and look how
hyped up it is in the PC world these days).

The Apple IIGS was such good technology in 1986 that many people
are still using the IIGS to this day.  My IIGS system has a CD-ROM,
an Iomega Zip Drive, lots of RAM, a 1GB hard drive, a 28.8 modem,
an SVGA display capable of 1024x768 max resolution and 24-bit max
color.  The Apple IIGS was obviously the better unit and it outsold
the Macintosh during its initial year, but Apple has an "if I say so, it
goes" attitude rather than responding to customer demand like a
normal company does.  It tries to CHANGE customer attitudes rather
than respond to them.

So, in response to the IIGS' good performance, Apple stopped
advertising it.  They decided they wanted the Mac to be its future.
Finally, after a massive advertisement campaign and enormous loss,
the Mac line finally began to show profit.

Apple II users never forgave Apple and many defected to the
PC/Windows world, but most continued using the IIGS because
it was such a great machine.

Mr. Dosland says the iMac was nothing like his MacPlus in '86 and
I agree.  He says the MacPlus was state of the art in '86 and that
I disagree.  I would have stopped using the MacPlus, a closed box
with b&w screen and stunted memory capacity (only 4MB RAM/
4MB ROM, another top down decision by Apple) a long time ago.
I mean, it has basically NO expansion potential.  On the IIGS, you
could add an SVGA card and get the same display potential you
could get from modern Win PCs (or at least the display they were
using in 1995 or so, still much better than what the Mac Plus could
do).  Can't do that on a MacPlus.  However, looking at the iMac, I
would say it is more like the IIGS than the MacPlus.  It really is on
the cutting edge.

What does this mean to you?  Since Apple is still the same company
with the same attitudes, you must remember that *APPLE* is not
going to consider your iMac its baby for long.  Pretty soon, it
will be old news to Apple and Steve Jobs will come up with a new
idea and it will have COMPLETELY different ports, slots, etc.,
than anything your iMac has.  Then Apple will try to get you to
give up your iMac and buy a new Apple.  That's what Apple does.

If you are prepared for this, however, and can ignore it, then the
iMac is a great computer.  Buy it, load it up with software, and it
will still be a great performer for years to come.  Heck, my IIGS
is still going strong and the first IIGS was introduced in 1986.
I doubt anyone at Apple in 1986 would have imagined IIGS units
running around with 8MB of RAM, >1GB hard drives, acclerated
7 times over, with SVGA 1024x768 displays and 24-bit color,
using Zip Drives and CD-ROMs and ink-jet or laser printers, using
TrueType fonts, sending faxes, using UNIX-type shells with
pre-emptive multitasking, using TCP/IP, connecting to the internet
with 56k modems, all this stuff.  Apple builds great machines and like
the IIGS of 1986, the iMac of 1997 is one of them.  As long as you
are willing to ignore the ridicule of the Windows world and
(eventually in a few years) of Apple, the iMac will serve you well
for years to come.  Even Microsoft says the iMac is a good
design and THAT is high praise.  ;-)