Re: Amelio's ouster

[GUDATH@EZINFO.VMSMAIL.ETHZ.CH (Henrik 'Ratte' Gudat)]

Let's do some Q&A:

>     How about this instead: Can the Mac do wavetable music synthesis?

Yes, Inside Macintosh: Sound, page 2-8

> Can you do preemptive multitasking? Do you have multiple choices for

No

> OSes? 

Fortunately not, see below

>Can you play complex game software? (remakes of late 70 and early

Yes

> 80's games with just a nicer color palette and digitized sound effects
> do not count). Can you add a 3-D video hardware board? Can you run

Yes

> full-screen video on low-end models? (hint: processing speed). Can you

Well, Mitchell, low-end Macs start where your high-end PCs end..

> exit your windowing/icon environment when it just gets in the way? Can

Well, this is an embarassing feature. I would call it emergency exit. And I
surely wouldn't have mentioned it because you earlier stated that, not quoting,
"the PCs are no longer machines you have to throw obnoxious commands at".

> you pop in new CPU's or motherboards when you want to upgrade?

Yes, sir.

One last note about the variety of OSes. What you buy with a Mac is a complete
solution, it's a hardware/software bundle that you either like as is or watch
elsewhere for alternate offerings. If you are neither satisfied with NT and
W95, then that doesn't mean Mac users are at a disadvantage but PCs have the
choice among various sucking OSes. Well, it seems there's a market for it..
Same with interrupts and what else you have mentioned. It's not fear but the
pure lack of necessity for having to deal with your computer on such a level.
It's great when you can talk with your friends about the latest findings in
IRQ priorities, but I better get my work done. From the users point, it's none
of my business.

And that's the whole point. It doesn't count how much Mhz you have in the box,
how many keys on the keyboard and what bandwidth in the SCSI bus. It's how
productive a machine makes you. And that's why people are still using Apple II
computers.

- henrik