Re: Apple's ways

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

johnw_94020@yahoo.com (johnw_94020@yahoo.com) wrote:
: PC's on the other hand have followed a different route which I think
: is one reason why more than 85% of the computer market in PC based. 
: Most PC's use the X86 processor, and it has been this way for a long
: time.  Most PC's include support for legendary hardware (serial,
: floppy,PS2,etc), and probably always will.  This means that a MSDOS
: based program that ran on a 386 under DOS 6.22, in most cases will run
: under a recent OS with a Pentium.  But my ProDos based games from my
: Apple II days will not run under the recent Mac OS X without a OS X
: emulator of some kind, which do not exist (to my knowledge).

This is not entirely true, as the PC has dropped a lot of baggage over the
years.  EISA and VESA slots died with the introduction of PCI, and ISA is not
so common nowdays.  Software is not 100% compatible either.  Some stuff broke
with the introduction of Win95.  Many DOS applications (particularly games)
would certainly fail to recognise todays video and sound cards, beyond the
lowest common denominator.  Indeed, a VGA card which I pulled from a 386
had refused to work in a 486 (reason unknown).  The new world Macintosh
probably dropped ADB and RS-422 and floppy support due to cost.  Undoubtedly,
Wintel machines will follow suit when USB is more common.  So while Wintel
machines may have better legacy support, I would not venture that it is a
perfect solution.  (And certain components, RAM being the first one which
comes to mind, are virtually impossible to share across different generations
of machines.)  I would also challenge you to use a 'winmodem' or 'windows
printer' running MS-DOS 5 and your favourite communications software or
word processor.  You can still buy (more) expensive hardware which is more
compatible with MS-DOS, but the same can be said for Apple II's and Macs.

That said, Apple does appear to be more of a 'great ideas' company.  How
great many of those ideas are, I will leave up to you.  The Apple II was one
of the earliest consumer-oriented computers.  The 6502/65816 aside, Apple
also used more sophisticated processors (the 680x0 and PowerPC were both
common in powerful workstations) which did not enjoy the market leverage of
Intel processors -- probably forcing the transition to the PowerPC.  The
6502/65816 seemed to meet the same fate, as the rumoured 65832 illustrate.
(This is not an argument for Apple switching to AMD/Intel.  Quite the
contrary, I believe in healthy competition -- which is why I use my old
Apple IIs and Macs.)

OS X is pretty much the same idea, the industry moved to a preemtive
multitasking and protected memory model for operating systems, so Apple
followed suit.  They probably selected a Unix kernel because it would be too
difficult and expensive to develop an in house solution.  Besides which, if
Mac-on-Linux is any indicator, the OS 9 support should be quite good.  If
it is not, it really should be possible to port a Unix emulator over.  Kegs
would be a good example if you run the X Windows system.  XFree86 will run
under Darwin (including OS X).  Still, running OS 9 on a virtualized machine
demonstrates that this shift is nowhere near as significant as the shift from
the Apple II.

Just some ideas,
Byron.