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

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

Paul Schlyter wrote:

> >> perhaps oldest coputer company in the world.  But the PC was open,
> >> and it was practical.
> >
> > 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; besides,
both machines had slots for accepting "custom designed hardware".
 
> > Also note which design is more different from what average people are
> > using now - DOS or GUI).
> 
> 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.

> application for the Mac.  If that's not practical, then what IS
> practical in your book?  You don't need to answer, I already know:
> the only practicality you know about is a WIMP interface....

Not the only one. But the only relevant one for users, and for *this*
discussion about
reasons for historical impact.
The IBM PC was not a practical machine for users OR engineers (remember
the 640 K limit, the non-autoconfig
bus, the DOS (non-multitasking, non-memory protected, non-gui, etc), the
8/16/32-bit issues, the tiny return
key, etc etc etc)?

> minimum required to use the computer.  IBM published a lot more than
> this bare minimum for its IBM PC.

Again, that's not too relevant if you get sued like wildfire the second
you actually
try to copy it. Hence, there was a reason for reverse engineering.

> > Even without the mechanical 'toys' it's obvious the pc didn't really
> > "start" anything.
> 
> 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.

> lowering the price in the Macintoy computers too.  So even Macintoy
> users benefit from this contribution by IBM, no matter whether you
> like it or not.

Maybe. IBM certainly benefitted from Apple starting the mass PC market
FIRST, with the Apple II.

> > They don't *require* this at all. Imagine just a 1972 PDP-11 cpu board
> > where the cpu consists of several chips. Then shrink all these several
> > chips with today's technology. It's clear that it would be *much* smaller,
> > cheaper and more powerful by now. Such a cpu board could fit on your
> > fingernail.
> 
> ...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.

> You're of course entitled to your opinion here -- just don't confuse
> your opinion with facts (only zealots do that).

Hm. You haven't actually proved *your* opinions resemble facts, either.

> >> But since you want to include mechanical toy computers in the
> >> category "personal computer".... well....
> >
> > 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.

> > but if we had such mechanical computers with *today's* sophistication
> > and complexity, I think you'd be surprised how well they'd fit the bill.
> 
> 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?

> > That's still heaps closer (1950!) in being "the first" than the Altair
> > (1975). Heck, even the Alto came before the Altair - it's from 1973!
> 
> 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. Besides, afaik some Altos were actually sold to
private customers.

> the Mits Altair was at least the first general-purpose personal
> computer that *I* ever heard of! 

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.
 
> > I don't. The iMacs bring nothing really different in a *technical*
> > sense. And that's my angle.
> 
> 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.

Apart from that, your whole argument is getting sillier by the minute.

> > it's time. The II and the PET were much more so, in 1977. We have
> > to view these things in the timeframe they were actually made in,
> > otherwise it gets silly - they couldn't see any better into the
> > future than we can today.
> 
> 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.
 
> > Because we could've had a better (computer) world in those years, and
> > "years" are "lightyears" in computing terms.
> 
> "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.

> *decades* ahead of what we are now.  Don't you feel grief and enormous
> dissatisfaction that this didn't happen?  If you're sensible, you
> don't, because it would be pointless.

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.

> BTW was Apple Computer Inc "set back a few years" too by the PC clone
> industry?  If so, why?

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.

Regards, RD