Re: PLEASE STOP THE MAC AND MICROSOFT MESSAGES

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article shack@onyx.southwind.net (Randy Shackelford) writes...

>Mitchell Spector (spec@vax2.concordia.ca) wrote:
>
>: >This is a crock. Apple's OSes are easily extensible, and they've never
tried
>: >to tell anyone what components they can and can't use with 'em.
>
>:     Are you certain about that? There was in fact a long period of
>: time when the only printer Apple IIgs System Software supported was
>: Apple's own ImageWriter II. Not only was this the only driver that
>: shipped with the OS, Apple also insisted that 3rd parties *only*
>: support the ImageWriter II in their software. When I bought my
>: system, I was forced into buying an ImageWriter II as that is what
>: was required if I wanted to print from the vast majority of IIgs
>: specific applications (letting a perfectly good 9-pin parallel
>: printer from my II Plus go to waste). Sure, there was some support
>: for laser printers, but again, they were Apple printers (this is
>: moot regardless, as back then no one could afford LaserWriters).
>
>I pulled out my system 1.1 and 3.1 disks to take a look. They both have
>drivers folders in their system folders. I see nothing to keep anyone from
>supporting any type of printer they wanted by writing a suitable port driver
>and printer driver.

    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.

>Apple gives guidelines, which people either follow or ignore. One doesn't
>have to follow the human interface guidelines, for example. Look at Bill
>Basham's software such as Diversitune to see a non compliant app. If Apple
>only wanted IWs supported (I don't recall that myself) they still weren't
>twisting arms to ensure it.

    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?

>If Apple only wanted IWs supported (I don't recall that myself) they still
>weren't twisting arms to ensure it.

    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.

>As for alternatives to IWs, they weren't plentiful in the eighties. Inkjets
>weren't there, and as you mentioned, LWs were too expensive. But since they
>are networkable, it made sense to support them. Most other printers from
>that era aren't Apple, hence Apple didn't go overboard supporting them.

    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).

    Using the built-in serial port is a more elegant and easier
solution, but the fact is many people already had parallel cards
and printers ready to plug-in (why else did the GS come with
backwards compatible IIe slots?).

>:     It's also funny you should mention that, since Apple OS's refuse
>: to support SCSI hardrives and CD-ROMs that don't have an Apple ROM
>: installed in them, even today (MacOS 8 for example). Apple in both
>: the past and present has always forced people into buying Apple
>: components whenever possible. Having to depend completely on a
>: single company is not a good thing (that will be especially true
>: when the that single company ceases to exist and your left stuck).
>
>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.

>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).

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca