Re: Apple II-Or Come on people, It's a 20 year old computer

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <395446FC.BDD81851@wanadoo.nl>,
ruud.dingemans <ruud.dingemans@wanadoo.nl> wrote:
 
> Paul Schlyter wrote:
> 
>>> It was neither. It was not "open" for others to copy, and it was
>>> certainly not practical (put yer average grandma behind the original
>>> MS-DOS PC's and get my point;
>> 
>> Put the engineer who wants to hook up some custom designed hardware
>> to the PC and have it controlled from there, and get my point;
> 
> Irrelevant. We were talking about historical impact, not engineer's
> preferences;
 
Engineers are part of history too !!!
 
> besides, both machines had slots for accepting "custom designed hardware".
 
You've admitted that the Macintoy lacked such slots...
 
>> Well, the WIMP (Window, Icon, Mouse, Pointer) interface is most common
>> now -- no need to argue about that anymore.
> 
> Glad you agree.
>  
>> The original IBM PC came with a curcuit diagram for the motherboard,
>> as well as an assembly source listing for the ROM BIOS.  If that's not
>> an open computer, then exactly WHAT is an open computer ???
> 
> Well, not a computer that has it's rom bios assembly listings published
> which then need to be reverse engineered to be copied, that's for sure.
 
You're really twisting the meaning of "open" here.....
 
> Not the only one. But the only relevant one for users,
 
Depends on which category of users you're talking about.  Not all
users have the same preferences....
 
> and for *this* discussion about reasons for historical impact.
 
Perhaps for *your* prefered view of this discussions.  But there are
other views, which you stubbornly refuse to admit...
 
> The IBM PC was not a practical machine for users OR engineers
 
Nonsense!  I know of many engineers who liked the PC because there
you had access to everything.
 
> (remember the 640 K limit,
 
640K is actually an awful lot if you don't use the bloated software
of today.  And it was 10 times as much as the earlier norm: 64K
 
> the non-autoconfig bus, the DOS (non-multitasking,
 
Non-multitasking simplified things a lot if you wanted to control
your own custom-bilt hardware....
 
> non-memory protected,
 
Ditto
 
> non-gui,
 
Irrelevant for most engineers.
 
> etc), the 8/16/32-bit issues,
 
Well, the PC was never an 8-bit machine, was it?  Yes, the pre-286 PC's
had 8-bit external data buses, but that was transparent to programmers
and merely meant longer access times to memory.  Addressing/etc was
still 16-bits.
 
> the tiny return key, etc etc etc)?
 
If that bothers you, GET ANOTHER KEYBOARD !!!!!!  That's what adaptable
means: if you don't like one part, change it -- no need to change the
entire computer.
 
> Again, that's not too relevant if you get sued like wildfire the second
> you actually try to copy it.
 
It means you could use the computer in almost any way you wanted, though.
 
> Hence, there was a reason for reverse engineering.
> 
>> It's "obvious" only to Macintoy freaks, who try to close their eyes
>> and ears to all acheivements except those performed by Apple Computer
>> Inc. 
> 
> I'm not one of those. My background is entirely different. I have used,
> or owned, most types of computers, from the PDP-11 to the Lisa, the
> Amiga, the IBM PC, the VAX, the VIC and the BBC. I can compare. But
> it's no use not recognizing Apple's contributions either - they *were*
> important.
 
I've never argued against that.  But they weren't alone in being
important....
 
> Maybe. IBM certainly benefitted from Apple starting the mass PC market
> FIRST, with the Apple II.
 
Yes, many computer companies benefitted from one another.  Wozniak
probably used some mainframes to help design the Apple II for
instance.  Microsoft certianly used a cross assembler, run on some
mainframe to create Applesoft Basic for the Apple II.
 
>> ...only if they're all put on the same chip
> 
> Prove it. Show me hard data that this can't be done. Circuits can be
> made on microns these days. Prove me that several *separate but tiny*
> circuits laid beside each other can't fit on one centimeter these days.
 
What's the practical difference between "on a chip" and "on separate
chips one micron from one another"?  Not much, eh?
 
To old grandma, both will appear as one chip ....  <evil grin>
 
> Hm. You haven't actually proved *your* opinions resemble facts, either.
 
I don't present my opinions as facts either....
 
>>> That's Blinkenlights' choice,
>> 
>> Yes -- and you pointed me to Blinkenlight, so you must have approved
>> of their choice, or else you wouldn't have pointed me there.
> 
> Just because they have several personal computer types preceding the PC
> and the Altair doesn't mean I approve of anything they include in their
> list. They include enough models to prove my point, though.
 
Why didn't you say you didn't approve of their conclusing about
the world's oldest "personal computer", when you pointed me there?
 
If I would, in some discussion, point you to a web site with no
further commetns, wouldn't it be reasonable to conclude I approved of
the conclusion of that web site?  And if I didn't approve of their
conclusion, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect me to explicitly say
so?
 
>> The bill of such a computer would be huge: 100 million worm gears/etc
>> in the same cabinet.  How many MIPS do you think you could get from
>> a mechanical computer?  <evil grin>
> 
> <Cough> Ever hear of nanocomputers and nanomachines?
 
Sure -- in the X-files and in science fiction.  But such small
mechanical computers do not exist today -- right?
 
>> The Alto wasn't a personal computer on the market though.
> 
> So?? It existed, and it worked, though! Not being on the market has
> *nothing* to do with being there first.
 
Which means Lisa wasn't first in introducing the GUI, as you've tried
to claim so many times...
 
> Besides, afaik some Altos were actually sold to private customers.
 
How many?  Numbers, please...
 
> Yeah, but that's *your* problem. You just had to do some more homework
> in order to be able to compare, and be able start an argument here about it.
 
Now you're getting arrogant too....
 
>> But you're talking about appearance all the time, aren't you?  You
>> think all that matters on a computer is a WIMP interface.
> 
> Appearance is not the same as using a gui or a cli. Q.e.d.
 
You mean the difference between a GUI and a CLI isn't visible, or what?
 
Now, that was a REALLY stupid argument of yours.  User interfaces are
all about appearance to the user.
 
> Apart from that, your whole argument is getting sillier by the minute.
 
That's your opinion....
 
>> We've been through this already, and we agree -- why do you bring
>> it up yet once more?
> 
> Because you keep digging it up. I'm more than happy to slap it around
> again, then.
 
Who's digging stuff up here, really ???
 
>> "Years" is a time measure while "lightyears" is a length measure, and
>> they are not convertible into one another.
> 
> The term 'lightyear' is directly linked to, and loses its meaning
> without the component '(earth) year'. Q.e.d. Let's
> not get into semantics here, it's pretty silly as it is.
 
The length unit "light year" is pretty silly -- use Gigameters instead,
or at least parsecs.
 
> I only feel grief about what I know *could* have happened (in a positive
> way), but didn't, because many airheads could do no better than copy a
> second-rate design with a high-profile label on it.
 
So why didn't you + your bright fellows do it differently, and better
then?  Shame on you!  You missed the opportunity, and lost, and now
you're just whining....  but whining don't make things any better.  Sorry!
 
> Easy, if you think about it. If the PC clone industry had built better,
> more imaginative and more innovative designs (which it didn't), Apple
> would have been forced to compete against those, and at least in theory,
> this would've resulted in better computers all around. But we
> all know that didn't happen, marketing won over technical excellence,
> and even Apple lost its way for a while. Understand, I'm not as much an
> Apple-fan as a fan of innovative and fun computers - like the Mac,
> although that has it's faults as well.
 
But if Apple's computers were so much superior to the PC's, as you
claim -- why didn't they win that competition?
 
-- 
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