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

["ruud.dingemans" <ruud.dingemans@wanadoo.nl>]

Paul Schlyter wrote:

> >> FYI: the majority of today's modern computers did NOT evolve from the
> >> Lisa.  Many people frown on this, but "the grandmother of most modern
> >> computers" happens to be the IBM PC.
> >
> > Pffft. Come on, you don't think a 4.77 Mhz command-line driven 8088 is
> > more like a modern personal than a mouse/GUI-driven Lisa, don't you?
> 
> They both have an x86 CPU, an ISA bus, etc etc ......

So? Does that make any fundamental difference? Is having an x86
processor or an ISA bus (which no
same computer manufacturer uses anymore, btw) more important in computer
design than having a GUI? I think not. If my
Mac had a x86-type (perish the thought) Repentium instead of a powerpc
it would still work in basically the same way;
if it had no mouse or gui, it wouldn't. 

> And, yes, they both have a commandline.  Even GUI users on modern
> PC's are using commandlines although most of them are happily unaware

Rather silly argument, that. Well, the Mac has a commandline too if you
want it: just use the interrupt button. It's pretty
basic, and pretty much nobody uses it (like in your example on PC's) but
it's there anyway.
 
> BTW the original Lisa and Mac weren't running at clock speeds much
> faster than 4.77 MHz either, so that argument of yours wasn't
> particularly clever...

What has clock speed to do with anything? Besides, the Mac ran at nearly
8 MHz, which is a LOT more than 4.8 in relative terms.

> > The Lisa is the grandmother of all modern personal computers, if only in
> > spirit; for grandfather, it's the Alto.
> 
> ..."if only in spirit" is an interesting phrase.  You can probably
> motivate anything you want with that.  But OK, the ubiqutous GUI can
> be said to "originate in spirit" from the Lisa, and from Xerox.
> However a modern computer is so much more than just a GUI....

True. But it has been a much more important factor for computer users
than whether it has an 8088-descendant in the box,
or not. Besides, all of the pc's basic design had already been done in
the Apple II. The pc was just a bit different,
but not much better.
 
> Could you please refrain from personal attacks?

Ok, if you refrain from slightly pee'ing me off by giving the impression
that you're of the many many pc-heads who don't read up
on some basic historical information before making their argument.

> > Xerox did NOT invent the graphical computer, and did NOT invent the
> > mouse-driven computer. Go back *another*
> > ten years, to Doug Engelbart's lab at SRI, and then come tell us about

> > Apple that designed half of all GUI ideas that got
> > copied by just about everybody, later on.
> 
> Anwyay, the conclusion is that Apple didn't create the GUI, as some
> people seem to want to claim.

No they didn't. But they did create the basic gui *as we now know and
use it*. Engelbart's
and Xerox's concepts were very different from what we use today. It's
not a coincidence that
Bill Gates around 1985 was so fanatical in making Windows "like the Mac"
that its design got
delayed time and again.

> > The Mac was an extension of Lisa tech that made it affordable.
> 
> An interesting view.

It's true. The Mac's GUI is *so* similar to Lisa's that that part's
obvious; also, its designers
used Lisa's Quickdraw graphics routines and the same processor to drive
the higher level software.

> The RAM was cut back from 1 Meg to 128 K -- is that an "extension"?

Now you're nitpicking. They had to cut SOMETHING down to avoid a
Lisa-type price tag. The Mac was
like a mini-Lisa, just more affordable and faster - hence, an 'extension'.
 
> Was Lisa really a personal computer?  It did cost about as much as
> the IBM 5100, but at http://www.blinkenlights.com they dismiss the
> 5100 because it was too expensive for most people.  That argument
> ought to be valid for the Lisa too.

It's valid for the Alto too, but that doesn't mean that these weren't
the machines that
basically changed the world. They were. The 5100 wasn't (it wasn't the
first in anything). It's true that virtually nobody could afford them,
but they started into the direction that virtually all personal
computers would follow. And they were the first.

> > Not the Mac, since it came along one year later. The Lisa simply
> > came first and it spawned the Mac - not the other way 'round.
> 
> The Lisa never made it to a mass market.  And it's questionable
> whether the Lisa was a "personal computer", due to its very high cost.

Of course it was, and of course it made it onto the mass market. This is
silly. Being affordable is not a technical reason for not being
'personal', nor is it an economical one - FEW people could afford it but
some still could (especially when the price was lowered).
But that's beside the point. Lisa did it, it was there first, and it
captured other people's imagination so much that others started to
follow - including the Mac's designers.

> Therefore I still claim that the Mac introduced the GUI to a
> mass market personal computer, despite the fact that it arrived
> one year later than the Lisa.

That's a matter of defining "mass market". Personally, I have little
doubt that mine is better, since the Lisa was a personal computer aimed
not only at businesses or millionaires but consumers too, albeit
a)computer-fanatic or b)cash-heavy ones.
The Lisa may have not reached its goals, but it was there, it got sold
in the thousands (oh yes - check it on the Lisa sites)
and it was there first.

> >> That won't leave much of a revolution to the Lisa, right?
> >
> > Wrong. Dead wrong.
> 
> Why?

Because it was there, and it started the revolution in a way the Alto
couldn't, because it basically never
got beyond the lab (and some private buyers).

> Note that it's mostly a matter of opinion whether something is a
> "revolution" or "evolution".  Therefore you cannot say "Dead wrong"
> here -- but you can say "I'm of a different opinion than you".

I say "dead wrong". A revolution is a fundamental paradigm/reference
shift, and the difference between
commandline and a Gui/mouse computer is so fundamental that it can be
considered a revolution in that respect.

> time to spare, I might do that.  But it's not particularly high on my
> priority list - after all the Lisa is a dead computer, and since
> I never had one, or used it much, I have no nostalgic reason to
> check this up.

Well, since you don't know it, it's perhaps not such a good idea to
start an argument around it.
And yes, there are several Lisa sites to look this up (start at lowendmac.com).

> > This *was* one cool machine
> 
> I fully agree with you here -- it wasn't hot at all! 

It was *red hot* in terms of hardware and software design. It was ice
cool in price and only
barely lukewarm in terms of performance. But performance is irrelevant
here, where we're talking historical milestones - if it worked, it
worked (albeit slowly).

> And you say the Mac "evolved" this technology?

It evolved and extended in the sense that the Mac was cheaper and faster
(8 instead of 5 Mhz). The basics
were there in the Lisa, but the Mac made it more affordable. And it lost
some features in the process, which
made the Lisa a cooler machine hardware-wise, apart from the clock speed.
 
> <sarcasm_mode>
> WOW !!!!!    THREE EXPANSION SLOTS !!!!!    I'M STUNNED !!!!!!
> </sarcasm_mode>

No need to - just don't blab about closed systems when they're not.

> FYI: the Apple II had 8 expansion slots.......

So what. My Amiga 2000 had nine. The number is rather unimportant.

> ...and a lack of a numerical coprocessor.... which of course made
> perfect sense on a machine which boasted the GUI over actual performance.

A socket for such a mpu *was* available. Just like in the IBM PC, btw.

> > Oh yeah, and then there was a GUI and a mouse, too.
> 
> Yep, that's the only thing which was new on that desktop computer.

Glad you acknowledge my basic point.

> > Sigh. Lisa had *three slots* and it's based on a modular breadboard
> > design - you could take out the cpu, i/o and RAM cards separately (try
> > that on the IBM PC).
> 
> I've seen several PC clones where the motherboard just contained the

But we were talking about the original *IBM* PC here. The PC just could
not do this - it's cpu was
on the motherboard.

> Yes, there were other PC's than those manufactured by IBM.  Which I
> think is the reason that computer line thrived and became the dominant
> one: you did have a choice!  You weren't forced to buy your computer
> from one single manufacturer.

Baloney. IBM didn't want an 'open system' in the sense that it wanted
everyone to copy
its design. It just got copied by Compaq (and other sheep) without their consent.

> I/O and RAM cards have existed for the PC all since its infancy.  I have
> taken out various I/O and RAM cards from PC's many times.

You are talking about clones. We were talking about the IBM PC. I know
that many clones
had (technically irrelevant/insignificant) internal design differences.
But we were comparing
the *IBM PC* and the *Lisa* as computers that *started* things, not the
1000.0000.000 computers
that followed.

> > Hey, all of these were better than Windows, certainly in the beginning
> > and in many ways they still are.
> 
> THAT's a matter of opinion.....

True. However, compare Windows 1.0 with MacOS 1.0 or GEM or Workbench
and that's pretty
obvious. That version of Windows mostly didn't even *run* on the
hardware it was supposed to be designed
for (i have magazine test reviews from the pre-Win3.0 era).

> BTW how do you rank these GUI's compared to X-Windows ????

A lot easier to use since X is partly CLI-based and a bear to set up...

> I never ever claimed it was, so please don't try to put words in my
> mouth I've never spoken.  All I said was that most computers today
> are descendants of the IBM PC.  I did *not* say that the IBM PC
> was the best, most elegant, or most revolutionary computer -- it
> certainly wasn't.

True. But saying most computers today are more like the commandline PC
(because they use an x86 derivative) than the mouse/Gui-driven Lisa is
rather silly. "Descendants" (VERY distant - hardware-wise there's almost
nothing left but some 8086-compatibility) they may be, but in practical
terms that's not too relevant. Get rid of your mouse or GUI on your own
pc, and then compare
that which changing the processor.

> The PC merely became the most dominant computer architecture.  How come?
> I think it's due to two things:  1) The PC was an open archtecture, just

Again: baloney. It was open in the sense that third parties could design
*extra cards* for it, not in the sense that IBM wanted it's *own basic
computer hardware* copied. Microsoft, on the other hand, was basically
*hoping* it's business partner would get screwed because of copycats.
And screwed they were, otherwise we could all be using ibm's right now.

> as open as the Apple II.  This enabled:  2) A lot of clones appeared,

The Apple II was cloned as well. That didn't make a lot of difference.
The difference was that a lot of
non-technical manager sheep got wind that the label *IBM* was on it. No
matter that technically it was a rather
shoddy design (because it was rushed), it had the label and that's why
everybody got on the same boat.

> If Apple had opened up the Mac as much as it did open up the Apple II,
> then computer history could have been different.

True. But don't forget Apple did just about the whole design itself, and
therefore the future of the company
depended on it much more than IBM's pc, which was a hodgepodge of cheapo
third-party parts except the bios. So they
didn't put nearly as much money or effort into it as Apple did into the
Lisa and Mac. Opening it up at that time would
have been incredibly brave, and might have been a great success, but it
would also have been an incredible risk. Same goes
for the innovative designs of (for instance) Acorn, or Amiga. If it
works you might rule the world, if it doesn't you are completely dead -
at once. Very very risky for any business. IBM didn't have the balls for
this, either.

> > That honor mostly goes to the Apple II, the Lisa, the Mac and the Alto.
> 
> ....plus a dozen or so other computers you "forgot" to include.  A
> computer isn't merely a GUI, as you seem to believe.

It's not. But there are computers which were true milestones in computer
history. The abovementioned computers
are among them, the IBM PC is not - at least not technically, since it
brought nothing new by itself. The *cloning process* was the
breakthrough where the pc is concerned, not the technology of the IBM.
And therefore it wasn't a milestone, since by itself it was nothing
really special. The Lisa and the Alto certainly were. Even if most
people couldn't afford one.

Regards, RD