Re: Pirates of Silicon Valley

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Mon, 28 Jun 1999 16:58:37 -0500, phoenyx <phoenyx@texas.net> wrote:

>There was alot more involved than marketing. All the computer mag's spouted
>PC sales pitches. This gave the general public the idea this was the only way
>to go. Unless you were a tech you probably didn't have access to some of the
>better os's like DRDOS.

The computer magazines spouting the PC sales pitch was part of the
marketing behind the success of Microsoft.  Let others push the
hardware for you and you can follow up with pushing your own operating
system.  More bang for your buck.

>Yeah, MS Windows was crammed down our throats but the basic system is easy
>to use. I have friends all over the country whom I help via voice. With most
>os's this would be very difficult but win95-98 makes it very easy for the
>novice user.  If you are used to the MAC os then Windows is probably harder
>since they do lots of thungs differently.

Well, I'm definitely not a Mac person.  I gave up on Apple when they
gave up on the II.  So the differences between the operating systems
doesn't really enter into it.

I have taught A+ certification, helped people with MCSE training and
ran my own computer service business helping people with PC problems
and I can tell you there were very few times that I could help people
over the phone.  There was no way that these people could fix the
problem, or even give me a decent description of the problem for me to
diagnose, over the phone.

Running that business was driving me nuts because of how difficult it
is to get Windows to behave so I've given it up and now am a freelance
programmer subcontracting work from my brother who is also a freelance
programmer.

>But back to the Apple II. I liked the geos system, too bad they didn't
>release tech notes so developers code add applications to it. For a 
>128k system it was very well designed.

GEOS was pretty decent for the 8 bit machines.  Another problem it had
was that on the Apple II it was copy protected which made it difficult
to make backups, modify to suit your own needs or install on a 3.5"
floppy or hard drive.  It could have been quite popular had they done
like they did on the C-64 and left it unprotected.

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