Re: Wozniak vs Jobs

[Jeff Lemke <lemke@terra.cira.colostate.edu>]

Regnirps wrote:
> 
> Jeff Lemke <lemke@terra.cira.colostate.edu> wrote:
> 
> >Sorry if I stepped on any toes about the Lisa.  I was repeating
> >something I had either read in BYTE Magazine in the 1995 issue of the
> >20th anniversary of personal computing, or something I had heard in the
> >PBS miniseries "Revenge of the Nerds".  I have no personal experience
> >with using Lisas.  Perhaps I shouldn't reference a non-Apple source of
> >information in an Apple newsgroup.
> 
> Of course you are right that the Mac/LaserWriter/PostScript super combination
> was a Jobs brainchild and nobody has ever really caught up.


PC desktop publishing has caught completely up, and has been caught up
for at least 6 years now.  I think this is one of the reasons Apple's
market share began slipping in the '90's, to the point where it's less
than a third of where it was in 1990.  I do DTP as part of my job as a
graphics artist for the National Park Service and Colorado State
University.

 
> I would argue that Macs are still preemminent in DTP despite attempts by PC
> software vendors. The Wintell systems are just too undetemninistic. You can pop
> a floppy when it is trying to use it and I notice that PC users on Win95 still
> double check to make sure things really happen like file copying or moving
> around in directories.


Correct, Macs still outnumber the PC's in DTP, but that may be largely
because of the early momentum gained by Macs when DTP was still a new
thing.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Wintell" systems being undeterministic,
and what you mean by popping a floppy.  I'm just trying to understand. 
I also haven't seen any Windows users here at CSU checking to make sure
things are really happening.  I'm perfectly confident they are happening
like I think they are, and they do happen.

 
> One of the things that kept Apple so low to respond was the longevity of the
> Apple II. When we reverse engineered the first IBM PCs they were so ridiculous,
> psuedo 16 bit processor on 8 bit buss (actuallt 9 bit with parity!), very slow,
> idiotic memory architechture, video that flashed and stressed the monitor
> circuitry, limited interrrupts for I/O and none of the automatic features of
> Apple II and Mac like plug & play or networking.


Yes, I suppose the first 8088 IBM PC's were primitive.  But that was
about 14 to 17 years ago (before the Macs), and before people had so
many intensive graphic demands on their computers, and didn't need so
many peripheral boards for all manner of audio/video I/O and half a
dozen types of magnetic and optical media.  They weren't even running
Windows then.

 
> The rate of improvement was greater than expected though still very very
> cheezy. But those who had bought the first ones (like Jerry Pournell) thought
> each new change was a miracle of modern technology. Mac owners could never
> convince these guys that they already had all this and more. I used to hear
> things like "I'm a computer expert and if anything were that much better, I
> would know about it."


People do get defensive about their beliefs and their likes and
dislikes, even when facts to the contrary are staring them in the face. 
They try to reshape the facts or bend them in such a way that they still
fit their current world view.  Sometimes they just ignore contrary facts
altogether.  Such is human nature.  Who hasn't been guilty of that at
some point?  

I always thought and still think that the Macs were and are fine
computers.  But expensive. (Until the relatively recent price slashing
of the Power Macs to make them more competitive price-wise with the
Pentium machines).  I think the expense factor was another reason Apple
began sinking.  There were a lot of people who began to realize that
they could get more computing power to the dollar (for their needs) with
PC's or PC clones than with Macs.  Macs were slick, but you paid extra
for that slickness, and not everybody needed that, especially for
business applications and word processing and the like.

 
> Apple went way too long wihtout significant change to the Apple II family and
> the IIgs was a big dissapointment when it finally happened. The potential for
> the Mac was squandered with business and underpowered design blunders
> (Performa, LCII, LCIII etc).
> 
> Charlie Springer


Boy, that's the truth.  They were still producing platinum IIe's with an
almost unchanged 1-MHz processor in them in the late '80's as the
original Apple II's had a whole decade earlier.  And the IIgs should
have been a bigger splash considering it wasn't released until 1986 - a
full 9 years after the first II, and three years after the last 1-MHz
IIe.  I read in a magazine article somewhere that Apple not only rested
on its laurels, it camped on them.

Tandy was guilty of that to some extent also.  The Model I came out in
1977, and in 1980 (after the business Model II in '79), they came out
with the next version of the home computer, the Model III.  It was in an
all-in-one chassis, but it was almost an identical machine to the Model
I.  The only reason they created a Model III at all was because the RF
interference on the first Model I exceeded FCC standards.  You'd think
after three years the graphics would have been at least a little better,
with an 80 column, 24-line screen, and a faster processor, but no.  And
then the Model 4 came out three years later still, in 1983.  The Model 4
should have been released in 1980 and been called the Model III.  Tandy
could have done that.  All the critical technology was available in 1980
for a Model 3 with the Model 4's capabilities.  I think what happened is
that Tandy's R&D was totally preoccupied in '78 and '79 with the
development and deployment of the Model II, aimed at the lucrative
business marketplace, and meanwhile the FCC rules changed, and they had
to figure out a way to add shielding somehow to their Model I
keyboard/cpu which was connected by a ribbon cable to the expansion
interface, and there was just no way to do it easily short of creating
an all-in-one chassis.  They did a few other minor things to tweak the
inner workings to create the Model III, but not much.

Commodore's upgrades to their Amiga computers in the late '80's and
early '90's were sometimes incremental, tiny little upgrades also, I've
heard.

Jeff Lemke