Re: Wozniak vs Jobs

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

regnirps@aol.com (Regnirps) wrote:

>supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:
>
>>By this time, Apple decided that Macintosh was Apple's
>>future.  Now heres the irony: they finally come out with an
>>Apple IIGS and it has better graphics and sound than the
>>IBM clones of the day (which were doing EGA and not yet
>>SoundBlaster).  Its speed was not spectacular, but comparable
>>to an IBM AT revision 2 (8Mhz 286).  By releasing the IIGS,
>>Apple convinces many Apple II users that this was Apple's
>>future.  BUT, there is virtually no A2 development after this.
>>There was no Apple IIGS to Macintosh transition.
>
>I must also point out that it is impossible to write an event driven
>deterministic GUI OS for the Apple II family or Wintel boxes because of the
>type of floppy drives they have. The Sony self ejecting drive was crucial for
a
>properly executing system. You can not cover all the possible error syndromes
>if the user can pop a disk out (or switch disks) without the OS knowing, let
>alone if the OS needs to read or write. That is why Wintel stuff is full of
all
>those "are you sure" dialogs and disk grinding noises as it checks for
>presence.

Charlie, I usually agree with everything you write, but there is one glaring
omission in the above: GS/OS on the Apple IIGS.

System 6.0.1 for the GS is a true event driven deterministic GUI OS.
The Apple II could and can use the same floppy drives used in the Mac.
Under GS/OS in System 6.0.1, many programs make extensive use of
this disk ejection capability -- backup software and installers, for
example (the disk pops out and a dialog box asks "please insert disk
xyz of set").

On the GS, the disk is not frozen in the drive...a user can press the
eject button at any time, unlike a Mac...BUT, the drive SENSES that
the disk has ejected and the disk's icon is DIMMED in Finder.  That's
a pretty event driven deterministic GUI OS to me!