Re: PC or Mac?

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <slrna5jn29.2q.byron@b60z27hbb464i.ab.hsia.telus.net>,
Byron Q. Desnoyers Winmill <byron@b60z27hbb464i.ab.hsia.telus.net> wrote:
 
>> It is different whether you buy one brand because you've had previous
>> good experience with it, or whether you buy it because it's the only
>> available brand.
> 
> Lots of users have good experiences with Apple.
> 
> If somebody gets tired of Apple, they can go elsewhere.  They may not
> get a Mac but that is their choice.
 
You just made my point here: if they want a Mac, they have only one
brand to choose: Apple Computer...
 
> It is not as though they have to leave computers behind altogether.
 
:-) .... no, and I don't think anyone every claimed that.
 
>>> (Why are 3D video cards required for people who are interested in
>>> web browsing, word processing, and email?)
>> 
>> Who told you so?  I sometimes browse the web, write email and do
>> word processing even in text mode, i.e. no graphics at all!
> 
> Sure.  I know that.  You know that.  But why is it so difficult to
> find machines without 3D video?  I would gladly pay less for a
> computer without features which I will never use.
 
Perhaps for the same reason that it's nowadays almost impossible to
find machines without built-in FPU....  And if these varieties of
machines were available, would these machines really be cheaper?  I
seriously doubt it: by including these features as standard features
available in every machine, they can be manufactured in large volumes
which will make them cheaper.  If you instead had 4711 different
varieties of the computer, each corresponding to the minimum
requirements of some particular kind of user, then each variety would
probably be _more_ expensive than if one standard variety included
everything required by at least a fairly large minority of uses.
 
So you end up with 3D video, an FPU, and probably several other
features as well, which you don't need but also really don't have to
pay for (at leasts not much).  That's not so bad really - should you
one day want some of these features, then they're there already - for
free!
 
BTW why is it today almost impossible to find a brand new
black-and-white TV set?
 
>> There once was:  back in the early 1980'es [...] Yep, you had more
>> choices back then, but first these systems cost an arm and a leg,
>> and second they didn't communicate well with one another.
>
> So it is acceptable to have a handful of companies dictating how we
> use our computers because it is cheaper and easier to exchange data?
 
I don't think any company is "dictating how we use our coumpters":
each computer can be used in many different ways and it's up to you
what you want to do with it.  BTW don't you ever exchange data with
owners of other kinds of computers?  If so, you ought to know it's a
Good Thing to make such an exchange easier.  Also: if you're willing
to still pay an arm and a leg for your computer, then the number of
machines available to choose among increases, and you can probably
find some really oddball machine which has a hard time communicating
with other machines, if that's what you really want.
 
>> In turn, Apple has borrowed some other ideas because they were
>> good:  expansion slots (missing in early Mac's), IDE harddisks
>> (cheaper), and the PC diskette format (good because then you can
>> transfer diskettes between machines).
> 
> Expansion slots were in the Apple II.
 
Yep, and they were removed in th early Mac's so Apple apparently
considered them a Bad Thing.
 
> The Macintosh Plus offered external expansion capabilities.  And SCSI
> has some advantages over IDE (namely the number and variety of devices
> which can be attached to a single bus).
 
I'm well aware of the advantage of SCSI, thank you, but the major
advantage of IDE is low price, which matters in a mass market.  And
even if SCSI is better, IDE is still good enough for most users.
SCSI is really needed only on servers and other machines having a
heavy load of disk activity.
 
> Apple never really switched over to PC format floppies.  All floppies
> are formatted with the Macintosh filesystem by default, but we can
> read PC floppies.
 
Then how come I can read, on PC's, the floppies created on my wife's
Mac?  (she has a Powerbook).  Those diskettes contain resource forks
and the like (as hidden files), but I can access all those files
without problem - and I'm not using any kind of special software - it
works fine right on my 14-year old PC.  If that Mac isn't using the
PC format on diskettes, how come I can do this?
 
>> Was the GUI ever patented?
> 
> Who knows?  From what I hear the mouse, colour graphics, and alpha
> channels are patented so it would not surprise me if the GUI was as
> well.  Maybe the courts even overturned the latter.  The patent on the
> computer was overturned after all.
 
Two of these - the mouse and colour graphics - was invented decades
ago by Hakan Lanz, a Swedish inventor....
 
However, if the GUI was patented, we would most likely have heard
Apple point this out loudly in the media, when they tried to sue
Microsoft for "look and feel infringement" in Windows: if there
had been a GUI patent, then Apple would have had a real case, and
probably would have won.



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