Re: PLEASE STOP THE MAC AND MICROSOFT MESSAGES

[shack@onyx.southwind.net (Randy Shackelford)]

Mitchell Spector (spec@vax2.concordia.ca) wrote:

:     Apple did not supply APDA documentation or support for writing 
: third party printer drivers at that time, which is why programs like 
: Independence (heh, a fitting name considering the nature of Apple's 
: OS) or Harmonie didn't appear until around System 5.0.4. You were 
: stuck with whatever Apple felt like supporting at that time, and that 
: only included the Apple ImageWriter and LaserWriter line of printers.

I have the system 4.0 release notes in my attic somewhere. I'll have a look
once I locate 'em and see what's in that release at least.

:     Apple always strongly discouraged breaking away from the standard
: interface (I was very surprised synthLAB made it out the way it did)
: but nothing stopped you from going against that; but what does this
: have to do with the OS and what hardware components can or can't be
: used though?

The guideline that was mentioned was Apple's wanting printer support to 
exclude everything but IWs.

:     I should dig up the articles that talked about it, many people
: were annoyed at Apple for forcing IIgs owners to buy ImageWriters
: (and yes, they did encourage companies to make sure their programs
: only supported the Laser/ImageWriter to push printer sales). I'd
: call that arm twisting customers and companies.

I'd need to see book, chapter, and verse.

:     Gee, I recall parallel dotmatrix printers to not only be quite
: cheap and plentiful in that time era, but extremely popular within
: the 8-bit Apple II community. Why couldn't Apple have written a
: driver that communicated with existing parallel cards? I had to
: spend an extra $800-$900 Cdn to get an ImageWriter II, knowing very
: well that my existing parallel printer would have worked equally as
: well (minus color support).

It's not Apple's job to support hardware they don't make.

: >This is just not so. Apple's Drive Setup can format hard disks from anywhere.
: >It didn't like a Fujitsu I tried with it, but then I didn't expect it to 
: >since I read that is doesn't support that brand. Every other disk on hand works
: >pretty as you please. That's everything from a 30 mb Seagate to a 1 gig DEC
: >to a 2 gig 5.25" full height Seagate and a slew of Quantums, none of which
: >came from Apple. And it of course does IDE drives too since most new boxes
: >have them internally unfortunately.

:     Here's a MacOS 8 article from the Washington Apple Pi Journal
: Magazine (V19.N5) which states:

: "Then it proceeds to update the hard disk drivers for Apple drives as
:  shown finishing in Figure 13. Apple drives have a ROM on them that
:  identifies them as Apple drives. They may be either IDE or SCSI
:  drives. If you have drives that are not Apple drives (such as
:  my Zip drive and my Quantum drive, you will receive an alert shown
:  in Figure 14 telling you that the drivers for these drives couldn't
:  be updated and why."

:     I would have thought Apple would have stopped doing monopolistic
: stuff like that by now, it only hurts the company in the end. And of
: course, MacOS isn't the only example of that, the formatter program
: that comes with GS/OS looks for the Apple ROM on hardrives as well.
: You can get around that with other software and patches, sure, but
: to the average user they're scared into buying only Apple stuff.

Well you can believe my firsthand account or you can discount it in favor
of some techno-nitwit columnist.

Apple's OSes will work on any hard disk, regardless of the formatter used.
Do you think any companies such as LaCie, APS, FWB, and the like would ever
have existed otherwise? In the old days, you did need an Apple supplied
drive to use Apple's formatter and to use Apple's own device driver. But
using Apple's driver was never a necessity and it remains that way. Ever since
Drive Setup replaced HD SC Setup, you can format any drive with it and get
Apple's driver installed.

The column appears to be talking about the automatic driver update feature
in OS 8's installer. If there is an Apple driver present, it updates the 
driver to the current version. If it's a third party, it leaves it be.
Logical, no? It only takes a reformat with Drive Setup (which supports non
Apple supplied drives) to get the Apple driver on any disk without it.

: >As for CDs, non support of non Apple CDs is a non issue since no Apple boxes
: >ship without one any more. But there is third party software out there for
: >them just the same.

:     What of Apple IIGS boxes. If I recall correctly, System 6 looks
: for an Apple CDSC, CDSC Plus or CD150 if you want to use the Compact
: Disc NDA player. It may be nice when you plug in Apple hardware and
: get full support, but it'd be a lot nicer if you could plug in things
: from third parties and not have the OS reject them (or at the very
: least, reduce its functionality and features available to the user.
: Your basically penalized for not buying official Apple hardware).

You can follow one of two paradigms: either the Wile E. Coyote method of
building a system and crossing your fingers and hoping it'll work, or buy
stuff that's made to work together and having true plug 'n play. I know
which I prefer.
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