Re: A Tale of Two Apples

[bjblackbear@ibm.net (B.J. Major)]

Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:

>     I don't like the way Apple is pushing for a proprietary market once
> again, squeezing the life out of all the clone companies and any form of
> competition. I do not like how Apple forces you to purchase THEIR own
> products by having the operating system actually _check_ firmware ID
> in CD-ROMs, hardrives and printers, or only writing drivers to support
> their hardware. 

Oh, really?  Then just HOW do you explain that a software program like
PowerPrint for Macintosh works?  This is *not* an Apple product, yet it
lets you print to every parallel PC printer on the planet.  The drives
on the disks are not made by Apple, and obviously the printers aren't
made by Apple either.  Yet somehow the product works--and works very
well.

> This is a practice they did 10 years ago, and apparently
> they are still doing it today. Just their business practices and support
> attitudes alone are enough to turn me off from Apple Computer. I don't
> even want to get into the Macintosh itself, which is so far behind the
> PC in software and hardware it is laughable at this point (something as
> basic as preemptive multitasking is not even available on the Mac, or
> two button mice). I already made my points a few months back, so I'll
> not go any further on that.

Personally, I'd never want a two-button mouse.  But, those with two and
four buttons *already exist* in the marketplace.  There are even
programmable multi-button mice for the Mac that you can assign different
functions to.  I think your knowledge on this is a bit behind the times.

And if it's the non-multitasking feature of the Mac OS you don't like
(which *will* be corrected in the near future), there is always the BeOS
that runs on the PowerMac that does true multitasking, among other
things.

No matter what you don't like about the Mac, software is NOT behind the
PC's.  Program after program (the big ones like Pagemaker, Photoshop,
FileMakerPro, whatever) is feature for feature the same as for the Mac.
Some programs have built-in features for the Mac that are lacking on the
PC side, as well.

-- 
--bj   Auto reply will not work; remove "black" to reply
Proud owner/user of Apple Computers since 1984  
"None of my computer systems do Windows."