Re: Amelio's ouster

[Geoff Kaiser <SuperKais@MacConnect_REMOVE_THIS.com>]

In response to some of the comments lately:

> The majority of Macintosh users (except those
> who perhaps once owned Apple IIgs's with Ensoniq chip) have no idea
> what music synthesis is, they just hear a digitized music recording
> (from a TV, compact disc, stereo) 

> ...you'll notice when it comes to music Mac
> software is either: A) Dead silent, B) Playing a looped digitized sound
> recording or C) Playing music off a compact disc from a CD-ROM drive.

> ...QuickTime MIDI uses the DAC to emulate wavetable synthesis (through
> mixing channels) but this requires an extremely fast and raw CPU speed
> to do it properly. If your machine is too slow, your going to get very
> distorted sounding instruments and playback.


That's BS. Many Mac games use Quicktime for their high quality stereo
music, not just SND and AIFF files like in the old days. A few days ago
I tried out Bedlam II and its music via Quicktime is great, and I sure
don't see any performance hit; playability is great--no problem at all.
And I definitely don't have an "extremely fast CPU"...

It's true that the IIgs had a built-in synth and the Mac doesn't; I will
concede that it'd be nice if it did have one built-in, but my point is
that in many cases it's not needed. (And by the way, most average
Windows users don't know what "wavetable synthesis is, either)


All the talk about the floppy ejecting amused me...

>Try this:
>Insert a disk, open it, use it for something (say.. write a page of a
paper), and then OA-E(ject) the disk, so it becomes "ghosted"

My heavens! Come on, the Mac's 'Eject Disk' command was created for only
one reason; to allow for copying to another floppy with only one floppy
drive. When you need to eject one floppy (nothing nore, nothing less)
just drag it to the trash! 
(Besides, in today's world, if you need to duplicate a floppy it's
faster to copy it to a hard disk first.)

Re: Mac/PC SCSI... 

> The point about having SCSI built in is a good point, but the ease of 
> drive installation is not specific to the mac.  Any machine with a SCSI 
> interface "only takes a minute or 2" to set up.

My point was that when I hook up a SCSI drive to the Mac, I'm done. I
never, ever have any drivers to install, no "Add Hardware Wizard" to
consult, no having to tell the Mac that it needs to recognize the
device. EVER. 
And it's not just SCSI, of course. Today I hooked up a two-year-old
video card to my Mac and I spent more time putting the case back on than
I did doing anything else. Then I started up, and before the OS had
started loading I had a confimation that the Mac had recognized the new
monitor. Just like that, I had two monitors. Now I have Windows 95
running in one monitor (via Connectix' Virtual PC) and the rest of my
Mac in the other. The convenience and functionality is wonderful.

And that brings me to the multiple OSes thing; The Mac can run more OSes
than you'd think:

- MacOS
- BeOS
- MkLinux
- Win95/Win3.1/NT/DOS, OpenStep, OS/2, RedHat Linux (via Virtual PC)
- I've even seen an Amiga port that tuns on PowerPC Macs (no emulation)

If anything it reminds me of the Apple IIgs because it could run about
as many OSes (DOS 3.x, Pascal, ProDOS 8, ProDOS 16, GS/OS, some early
ports of MS-DOS, etc. If anything, I'd say Apple machines in general are
very versatile.


> Most PC users...are not interested in experimenting with machines 
> which cost 2-4 times as much as PC 

2-4 times as much? Yeah, whatever. That was partly true a long time ago.
You can get UMAX mac clones for as low as $877 (140 MHz) now. They come
loaded with ClarisWorks and all kinds of other stuff. Macs are not just
the high end anymore. PCs aren't exactly immune to being expensive,
either. All the Toshiba laptops I see at work cost between $6500 and
$7000. The most expensive laptop from Apple (3400c - 240 MHz, 32MB RAM,
3 GB HD, 33.6 modem, ethernet jack) can be ordered for $5799.


It's been fun chattin'...
GK