Re: PC or Mac?

["Byron Q. Desnoyers Winmill" <byron@b60z27hbb464i.ab.hsia.telus.net>]

In article <a2trle$ld4$1@merope.saaf.se>, Paul Schlyter wrote:
> We're talking about the real world here, not about some ideal utopia.

And you suggested earlier that the Macintosh was not the real world.
People use the 'real world' to describe *their* world and not anything
which is intrinsically real.  I will not accept such arguments.

(I could say, for example, that the majority of the world lives in
poverty and cannot afford computers.  Hence your discussion of the
real world should not include computers: Macintosh or Wintel.)

>>> Why can't the Mac be made to write a file as just a simple ASCII
>>> files
>> 
>> That is news to me, my Unix box, and my Apple II.

You still haven't addressed why you cannot write ASCII files.  You
suggested that line endings were an issue, but that is an issue
whichever platform you are using.  Every FTP client will handle
this translation for you.  Virtually every mail program.  You can
use vi or sed to do the (whatever)->unix line ending translations
under unix.  Under the Macintosh, TeX edit or BBEdit will translate
from anything to anything (these are general text editors).

And which software creates a forked text file?

> FYI: I'm writing this on a 14-year old PC which still works fine.
> It's used daily to read mail and news.  Using an old system for
> that has one great advantage: it's completely immune to all those
> worms and viruses floating around nowadays.

The same goes for newer Be, OS/2, Macintosh, and Unix boxes.  Very
few people are interested in writing virii and worms for them.

> Fortunately I don't really need that old hardware anymore -- there
> are plenty of good emulators, and I've now transferred all my old
> Apple II disks to disk images.

On your 14 year old PC?
 
> Aren't you twisting the facts here?  The image quality of modern PC's
> are always clearly superior to the image quality of the good ol'
> Apple II+.  Yes, nostalgia is fun, but you shouldn't let it take
> over your mind completely.

I was talking about Macintosh with the 13" and 17" monitors.  The
images are brighter and crisper on those old monitors than the
monitors shipped with most cheap PCs.  The resolution is another
issue.  Clearly a modern PC or Macintosh would win.
 
>> Do not count on compatibility unless you plan on upgrading your
>> hardware or software regularly.
>  
> I upgrade mine irregularly, usually skipping every other version or
> so.

I use a version of Word from 1992 or so.  I simply don't need anything
more sophisticated, except maybe to exchange files.  AFAIC skipping
every other version is still upgrading regularly.

>> Adobe's software is garbage.  I cannot get Acrobat to print to a
>> PostScript printer with genuine Adobe ROMs reliably.  Illustrator 9
>> will not even print to my PostScript Level 1 printer (or so it
>> claims).  This is both in a PC and Macintosh environment.
>  
> I've never had any problems with Acrobat Reader on PC's.

Have you ever tried printing to a six or 10 year old printer?  A
printer is something which I do not need to upgrade regularly
either.  300dpi laser printers are good enough for the work I do.

> So if the Acrobat Reader cannot be installed on the Mac, are there
> any other alternative to read PDF files on the Mac?  Or do I have
> to transfer it to a PC to read it?

Install Linux, then run xpdf or ghostscript.  ;)  Actually, I think
there is a port of ghostscript to Macintosh.

>> OTOH, the Macintosh of the olden days was easy to use, just like
>> the Apple II is easy enough to use, because of its relative
>> simplicity.
>
> ....and because people only expected these older computers to do
> simpler tasks.  My old Apple II+ cannot print a PDF file either,
> but I never expected that.

But you could print a PostScript file from your old Apple II+,
which is the father of PDF.

Many of the demands I view as being artificially created.  For
example: why can a 68030 handle most (if not all) aspects of word
processing, yet trouble free web browsing require a Pentium or
PowerPC?  Similarly for PDF: it is simply presenting a canned
formatted document.

Now these are not Apple II's, but the point is this: if the
hardware can handle a task, the software should be written to
support it.  This does not always seem to happen.

> But thanks for your comments - I think yours is the first balanced
> view about this I've read here.

Thank-you.  That's only because I think all computers suck, and no one
sucks less.  I simply choose not to use Windows because of Microsoft's
near monopoly status.

Byron.