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

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <3951917B.DDA5FFFE@wanadoo.nl>,
ruud.dingemans <ruud.dingemans@wanadoo.nl> wrote:
 
> Paul Schlyter wrote:
>> 
>> In article <395042D8.F250D99A@wanadoo.nl>,
>> ruud.dingemans <ruud.dingemans@wanadoo.nl> wrote:
>> 
>>>> I've never seen a more impotent computer than the Apple Lisa....
>>>
>>> Hey, a bit more respect for the grandmother of all modern personal
>>> computers, ok.
>> 
>> 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 ......
 
And, yes, they both have a commandline.  Even GUI users on modern
PC's are using commandlines although most of them are happily unaware
of it: as soon as you clock on some icon, a corresponding commandline
is sent to the command line interpreter, which then executes the
commandline.  If you right-click on the icon, and choose
"Properties", you can edit the commandline of that icon, to modify
the behaviour when you (left-)click at it.
 
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...
 
> 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....
 
>> No it didn't.  The original idea was stolen by Apple from Xerox, so
>> Lisa wasn't the original computer with a GUI.
> 
> (Sigh) Another newbie trying to show off some bits of historical
> knowledge thinks he's got the whole picture.
 
Could you please refrain from personal attacks?
 
> 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
> "the original ideas".
> 
> Also, Apple did *not* steal the ideas from Xerox; they DID use some
> parts of it, so you could say they copied things; but the basic ideas
> had already been demonstrated in 1968, the pre-Xerox era. And it was
> 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.
 
>> And the Lisa was simply too expensive to start a "revolution" on
>> the market -- the Macintosh did that.
> 
> The Mac was an extension of Lisa tech that made it affordable.
 
An interesting view.
 
The RAM was cut back from 1 Meg to 128 K -- is that an "extension"?
 
Since you claim the Mac "extended" the technology of Lisa, why was the
Mac so much cheaper?  Extensions usually means a higher price.
 
> But it was the Lisa that put the GUI onto personal computers.
 
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.
 
> 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.
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 won't leave much of a revolution to the Lisa, right?
> 
> Wrong. Dead wrong.
 
Why?
 
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".
 
>>> (Besides, this thing had some *cool* hardware specs that the Mac
>>> didn't have at the time.)
>> 
>> Possibly -- I never immensed myself into the architecture of the
>> Lisa.
> 
> Then maybe you should; dig up one at Logan, or read up on the tech
> specs, and marvel.
 
Are these specs available online?  If so, and if I somehow would get
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.
 
> This *was* one cool machine
 
I fully agree with you here -- it wasn't hot at all!  Yes, I played
around with it when it was brand new, and very soon felt this was
not a computer for me  (I've already given the reasons: why pay
10 times as much for a computer with a lower performance?  At the
time I was comparing to my Apple II ...)
 
> (and yes, I've got one). I'll only mention auto-save at auto-shutdown,
> multitasking, protected memory thru a custom MMU design (remember: this
> was *before* the Mac!),
 
And you say the Mac "evolved" this technology?  Then how come it was
all so easy to have one Mac application overwrite another Mac application,
bringing the whole system down?  Yep, that happened to me several times,
back in 1985 or 1986.
 
> three expansion slots,
 
<sarcasm_mode>
WOW !!!!!    THREE EXPANSION SLOTS !!!!!    I'M STUNNED !!!!!!
</sarcasm_mode>
 
FYI: the Apple II had 8 expansion slots.......
 
> 1 MB RAM
 
...which was downgraded to 128K in the Mac...
 
> and a completely modular/extendable design.
 
...and a lack of a numerical coprocessor.... which of course made
perfect sense on a machine which boasted the GUI over actual performance.
 
> 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.
 
>> Lisa.  I noted that, besides being expensive and slow, it also broke
>> a tradition from the Apple II:  the Lisa, and later the Mac, were much
>> more closed systems.
> 
>> The tradition of being an open system was carried over by the PC line
>> of computers 
> 
> 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
ISA bus, and into that you inserted a CPU card, memory cards, I/O cards.
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.
 
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.
 
> Don't talk to me about completely closed systems unless you know what
> you're talking about. The Mac was closed (and deliberately so), the
> Lisa was not.
 
OK, so I was mistaken here when assuming the Lisa was as closed as the
Mac.  One point to you.
 
>> pathetic when people advicating the Mac, Atari and Amiga got together
>> to hotly debate *which* GUI was the "best"....
> 
> 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.....
 
BTW how do you rank these GUI's compared to X-Windows ????
 
>> Today, things have calmed down a bit: all modern computers use a GUI
>> of some kind.
> 
> Yeah, and the Alto (grandpa) and Lisa (grandma) spawned this all. It's
> not the IBM PC that was among the greatest revolutions in personal
> computer design.
 
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.
 
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
as open as the Apple II.  This enabled:  2) A lot of clones appeared,
which made this line of computers much more affordable - thus more people
did buy them (IBM's PC was just as overpriced as Apple's Macintosh or
even Lisa).
 
If Apple had opened up the Mac as much as it did open up the Apple II,
then computer history could have been different.  Then the most common
computer could indeed have been the Mac, or some Mac clone.  Yes,
clones are vital here, because they give the customers alternative
manufacturers, and help bring the cost of the computer down.
 
> 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.
 

-- 
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