Re: Apple advertisement

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

In article shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford) writes...

>In article <261576164-970224110200@rook.wa.com>,
>Brian Hammack <brian.hammack@rook.wa.com> wrote:
>> Dr. B0Z0 Ratte spewed forth:
>>
>>> > (nathan@visi.com) wrote:
>>> >   'multimedia is standard on macs while you have to install it on PCs'.
>>> >   News to me. My PC came with a CD-ROM, nice fast video board with MPEG
>>> >   decompression, sound card, etc. All built in and preinstalled...
>>
>>And bundled with Windows 95.  The PC producers keep trying to make the
>>systems simpler to run by already putting everything in they think
>>you'll need before they sell it to you.  Which wasn't always the case.
> 
>The P133 box I use at work can only make beep sounds since it has no sound
>card. On the other hand, my Quadra 840AV at home has 24 bit video, S-video
>in and out, NTSC in and out, and 16 bit stereo audio in and out. All this
>with all three expansion slots empty. I can take sampled sounds and play
>them on my Mac Plus. The point is, built in and installed are different
>things entirely.

    Well, my own 5x86-133 box does more than just make "beep" sounds.
Right now I have a Gravis UltraSound Classic with 1MB (basically the
next generation of the Ensoniq in the IIgs) and I'm about to replace
it with a Roland SCC-1 (about the best, most professional sounding 
music synthesizer board available today). The thing I dislike about
the Macintosh is the lack of _any_ music synthesis boards, and from
my knowledge, the built-in hardware is not capable of doing any sort
of real music synthesis (at least not beyond mixing digital channels 
to do things such as playing MODs, etc). A Macintosh would simply not
offer me what the PC can in terms of sound, a big minus for me.

    I have 24-bit video with MPEG acceleration, also on a separate
card, but I think this makes the system more flexiable/expandable,
parts are modular (not eternally affixed to the motherboard). There
are enough slots too, 7 in total, just like my Apple II's. :) (4 
ISA and 3 PCI). It's also worth mentioning not everything requires 
a slot card on PC's these days, my system has built-in motherboard
support for high-speed serial and parallel ports, as well as an IDE 
and floppy interface. Changing motherboards is simple too, I can 
easily drop in a Pentium board into my towercase. On a Mac that's 
not so simple, only certain boards drop into certain cases (and
there aren't dozens of clone makers to buy one from, just Apple).

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca