Re: Apple and the Holy War

[Roy and/or Janet Miller <millers@inetnebr.com>]

Paul Schlyter wrote:

>   Back in the olden
> > days of computing, the task most people used the
> > computer for was word processing.
>
> I positively DON'T think so!!!  Back in the days of the Mark I and
> II, the ENIAC, the IBM 701 (which was made famous because it was the
> first computer with a compiler for a high-level language available:
> FORTRAN I, bakc in 1957), the UNIVAC, and others, CPU cycles were
> considered far too expensive to waste on word processing.

You two gentlemen keep talking past one another. Paul sees the "olden days"
of computing as when the first "mainframes" were created. Supertimer is
talking about the early days of "microcomputers/desktop computers/pcs" And
you are both right, from your own timeline perspective, and wrong from the
other's. But Paul, one of the early programs written on the DEC PDP -1 at
MIT was a program called "Expensive Typewriter" the first known word
processor. In the late 1950s.

We still use the terms "mainframe" and "minicomputer" but pc has become
identified with IBM, and microcomputer has been lost (does it apply when the
Apple ][ was about as powerful as the PDP -1?) Today, when most people say
"computer" they are referring to personal computers, so, for the sake of
this thread, and that usage be adopted??

Roy