Re: Amelio's ouster

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

In article nobody@REPLAY.COM (Scott Gammon) writes...

>The PC has the more modern OS (pre-emtive MT, etc.)

    Quite true.

>but the Mac has the better interface

    That was true during the Windows 3.1 era, hands-down, but with
Win 95/NT I find the interference even easier to use than the Mac
(plus there are dozens of short-cuts which make you more productive).
Even something as basic as a two-button mouse makes cut and paste
simple and quick, without having to use menus or hitting keys.

>and more powerful CPU (top end PPC are faster than MMX Intels).

    The 68k emulation makes that irrelevent, I've worked with mid
and high-end PPC's and they feel sluggish compared with PC's and
even my accelerated Apple IIgs. Games are always a benchmark of
what the machine is capable of in raw-speed, and PC games are not
only faster, but are more complex (Mac games are generally more
simple and basic because they don't have the same kind of speed).

>_Both_ have advantages.

    The only advantage I would give the Mac is "plug 'n play",
though not because the system is better designed, but due to the
fact there is relatively nothing to add, they're closed systems.
What does a Mac owner usually add? An external SCSI device, one
or more new ADB devices, a modem? Most everything is built-in
(which sounds good, but what if you don't like what is built-in?).

>Well, I like and use a '486, but I prefer the user interface of the GS.
>This Apple interface is basically the same as the Mac's.

    Your "486", to be fair, is a 486sx-25 laptop with monochrome display,
not quite the model for comparison of all PC's out there.

>Or the Atari ST.
>
>Those early experiments in multimedia really do seem more refreshing than
>the boring Mac and PC convergence (now not much different than each other!).

    I never really like the Atari ST, it only had a palette of 512
colors, it's highest resolution (640x400) was in 1-bit monochrome,
it had very low-quality sound (3 channel squarewave with 1 whitenoise
generator), leaving it not only far behind the Amiga, but the IIgs as
well.

>To be fair to the Mac, they do have sound addons.  A couple of years back,
>I saw an advertisement for a Yamaha box, sort of like a wavetable card on
>a cable that plugs into a Mac.  It is driven by software and generates
>32 oscillator sound. The main problem with Mac sound cards or peripherals
>such as this is that they are not very supported.

    There is also the Roland SC-55 and SC-88 external box-synthesizers that
will work on a Macintosh. However, besides being _very_ costly, there is
little to no native support for these devices (or in many cases any support
at all). If you have software that supports GM/GS MIDI, you could use it
to play MIDI files as they were meant to be heard, but beyond that...?

    Are there any wavetable music synthesizer cards you can purchase for
the Macintosh? (PDS, NuBus or PCI? I've not been able to find any, so
I'm asking a serious question). And if there are any, do any software
titles have support for them?

>Because the GS had a state of the art chip for its time, much software
>took advantage of great sound.  Because the PC has no built in sound,

    Actually, while the majority of Apple IIgs software did support the
Ensoniq chip, relatively few titles truely took advantage of it and used
it to it's full potential. In fact there were only ever small pockets of
programmers who ever took full potential of the machine overall, sadly.
This is another story though, one that ironically gets back on topic for
this newsgroup. ;)

>SoftWindows for the PPC is not like GuS or UAE (Amiga emulator).  It is
>much more optimized.  This emulation is more like the emulation the PPC
>uses to run 68K Mac software, and it is good.  So good, in fact, that
>for day to day tasks, you can use a fast PowerMac to do PC tasks.
>Faster than even a fast '486 and maybe even matching Pentium speeds
>in some tasks.

    Yes, but can you delete every trace of Mac System 7.5.6 and work
totally with SoftWindows as your operating system? On the PC, I can
completely rid myself of MS-DOS and Windows if I so desired, and some
people do in fact.

    Sorry to have added to this off-topic thread again, but there were
some last points I wanted to get in. As closing comments though, I
think people should use whatever is more comfortable and have a
preference for. Just be sure and try both (getting a good taste and
feel of each system) so you don't judge a system without even 
knowning what it's about. You may end up short changing yourself. 

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca