Re: A Tale of Two Apples

[pubpc1@library.ucla.edu]

bjblackbear@ibm.net (B.J. Major) wrote,
in response to my reply:
>As I said before, some day very soon that backwards compatibility is
>going to have to be severed--completely--for your beloved PC as well.
>I'm not the only person who knows this for a fact, either.

Sure, but NOT IN A SINGLE STEP.  Each model should be backward
compatible with at least its immediate predecessor.  See the
"GS modification" thread you started for your friend, Lewin.

On another subject, I think there is a misunderstanding.  You
are saying that an AppleTalked GS with 4MB is all that you need.
I believe you but this is because you do your productivity
work on Macs.  My only problem is when you start claiming that
Apple equipped the GS properly and only "power users" needed
a hard drive and more than 256K when the GS came out.  This was
not the case.

Consider, in late 80's a user goes out and buys an Apple IIGS.
He or she wants to do word processing and page layout on it.
Now this user expects Apple to have equipped the GS properly
for this task, but the GS initially shipped with 256K.  The
user can't run AppleWorks GS on it or print to the laser
printer.  The user buys 2MB of memory.  Now the user has
another problem: AWGS is almost impossible to use without a
hard drive.  The user shells out for a hard disk.  Meanwhile
a some time has passed and Macs come with hard drives.  No
new GS appears.  The user is no power user, but when he can't
finish his project in time because the spell checker is
crawling along, he gets depressed and turns on the TV.
He sees Apple, represented by Jean Lois Gassee claim that
they didn't make the GS slow deliberately to make the Mac
look better and suddenly the founder of Western Design
Center grabs the mike and says that Apple is lying and he
has much faster CPU chips.  Knowing that WDC has faster CPU
chips, the user buys an accelerator.  Finally, the GS is
a fun to use and efficient word processor and DTP engine
(the Mac at this time only had an early version of MSWorks),
but now a Mac user comes buy and says: gee this GS can
actually do the job of a Mac LC, you must be a power user.

Now the user explodes.  What do you think I bought the
GS for, he says.  I'm not a power user, just an average
user and I got the GS believing that Apple has properly
equipped it to do the expected tasks such as word processing.
I found the computer was deliberately crippled by Apple.

-Scott G.