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

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <8ir9pj$22u$1@news3.isdnet.net>,
Thomas SCOLAN <thomas.scolan@libertysurf.fr> wrote:
 
>>> mmm... so you're saying that modern computer do not have a mouse,
>>> overlaping windows, menus, icons, toolboxes...
>>
>> I said none of that, and you know it!  Do you really think that a
>> computer consists of nothing but a mouse, overlapping windows, menus,
>> icons and toolboxes?
>
> I've understand what seb' (french too ?) wanted to say
> That is the most important for personals computers !
 
Only if you're more interested on what appears on the surface than
what resides below.  And to be superficial seems to be in vogue
today...
 
>>  Well, without a CPU, a bus, mass storage, etc
>
> These are the way to made the GUI working, not the thing you work with.
> what a user see and use are peripherals and GUI, not CPU or mass storage.
 
Superficiality at work ?????
 
>> you can do absolutely nothing with that stuff.
>
> you cans absolutely do nothing productive with only hardware suc as CPU
> etc...
 
So you're claiming that the team of engineers which ran Mark 1, Mark 2
and ENIAC did nothing productive?
 
True, it's HARDER to be productive with only hardware -- but it's
not IMPOSSIBLE!
 
However you weren't bringing up software in general, but GUI software
in particular.  And if you allow yourself to use non-GUI software,
it suddenly gets much much easier to be productive.  Almost as easy
as with GUI software (after all, computers were running only non-GUI
software for some 30 years, often with impressive results), and in
some cases easier than if you're only allowed to use a GUI.
 
>> most of today's computers are descendants of the IBM PC.
>
> That is for PC-Compatibles systems; do you know AS400 ? Macintosh ?
> Xerox Alto ? BeBox ? Atari Hades ? PoWerPC Amiga's ? and so on ?
 
(why did you omit all the UNIX workstations here?  Whenever I see
a computer that's not a PC clone, it's most often a UNIX workstation)
 
Sure, I'm aware of all these.  Sum them all up, and you'll find that
they're still outnumbered by the number of "descendants of the IBM
PC".  So my statement above is still valid (except, perhaps, if you
also include all those embedded systems which surround us everywhere
today; only them will outnumber the PC clones).
 
>> If you don't believe me, pick any modern PC, then try to run an
>> old PC program on it
 
> and you'll have bigs problems :
> Hard drive adress have changed since IDE drives, too faster to use old
> games, BIOS incompatibilities and so on.
 
I'm aware of these problems -- but they're next to trivial, compared
to the problems you encounter if you try to run a Mac application on
the PC... <grin> (incompatible CPU, incompatible OS, incompatible
diskette format, incompatible.... everything's incompatible.  Wanna
run it?  Forget about it!)
 
-- 
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