Re: Apple's ways

[wbdesnoy@acs5.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron Desnoyers Winmill)]

Roy Miller (millers@inebraska.com) wrote:
: BTW, what about post `95 Macs compared to modern PCs?

I have not seen a large enough sample to comment on this, but I am not very
happy with Apple cutting corners on keyboards, mice, and the floppy drives
which can not properly read/write Apple II disks.  ;-) 

: But upgrading is usually done on a three year (or less) cycle.

Who cares what the rich folk do, especially if you can't put on the guise of
affording it?  I'm still not happy with an upgrade which I felt forced into
(I did not, of course, have to buy a new machine but the social pressures).

: In that case salvaging some of the older hardware reducing the cost from
: just buying a whole new machine.

Even on a three year upgrade cycle, the old hardware would only last two or
three machines.  Even then, it would be mostly small ticket items (keyboard,
mouse) and the occasional big ticket item (monitor, printer).  Even so, my
printer works from the Apple //e to pre-New World machines.  My 16" display
will work on my IIfx to the TiBook.  Likewise for my SCSI peripherals (an
enhanced //e to pre-New World machines).  The stuff which won't work on New
World Macs will usually work with some sort of bridge.  The extra hardware
may throw another $50 to $200 onto the machines price, but most of the stuff
worth keeping would cost more to replace anyway.

: > A five year transition period is insufficent.
: 5 years ago, on the PC Win 95 was the top of the line, and fast 486s were
: still common.

I still consider a Quadra 950 to be my primary machine (primary because it
is the fastest machine I trust, and there is a lot of good hardware in it,
not to mention that it runs MacOS, unlike the iMac).
 
Five years is nothing.

: Did you do no upgrading of anything in that time period?

The 486 was upgraded a number of times before it became to expensive to
maintain.  After that, I was using a IIe for several months.  From there
anything can be considered an upgrade.  After the IIe came an SE, after the
SE came and SE/30, after the SE/30 came a pricy IIci (which I regret selling
because the portrait monitor was a beauty), and after the IIci came an
Quadra 950.  Then came the iMac, then came a PowerMac 6100.  But the Q950
has all of the interesting hardware and is almost as fast, so I stick to
it.

: While that might be smart, in terms of cost and training, I doubt that you
: could use Netscape 4.7 to web browse in 7 years

Even today, my web browsing is split up to about 30% Netscape 4.7, 45% lynx,
15% links, 10% iCab/Wannabe/other.  If you asked me to work without Netscape,
I would gladly do so.  If you offered me Netscape 3.0 for Linux/PPC, I would
probably use Netscape more often.  Fast machines with slow software simply
don't make sense in my mind.

Byron.