Re: Apple Computers-collector's items?

[gabrielr@ucla.edu (Gabriel Rossman)]

jreiter@comet.net wrote:
>gabrielr@ucla.edu wrote:
>>what really blows my mind is that apple didn't discontinue the worthless
>>things until c. 93. It saddened me that schools would by more obsolete
>>technology when they could get a less obsolete mac color classic w/ a IIe
>>compatability card for the same price.
>This posts sound as if you are working for Henrik 'Ratte' Gudat.  What you
>have posted here is pretty much flamebait.  There's a reason why the
>phrase "it doesn't matter what you use as long as you get the job done"
>applies to Apple II's: they are reliable tools for education offering many
>of the benefits of much newer computers will retaining their simplicity. I
>for one would think parents would prefer the technology that brought us
>Print Shop and Oregon Trail over the one that brought Doom and porn www
>sites. 

I don't care if its flamebait, I stick to my opinions and here's why.
The "getting the job done" idea might work except that computer education
is an end, not a mean, as schools don't have sufficient computers to use
them for every subject. The fact is that a kid who knows that it takes 10
minutes to initialize a disk, writes fluent BASIC, doesn't know what a
hard drive is, and has never heard of MS Word or Excel is going to find
that the skills he learned in school have little to no use in the real
world.
Just as it would be idiotic for UC Davis to teach it's students to do
everything with a hoe, when they'll be using combines, airplanes, and
trucks in real life agriculture, its stupid to teach kids BASIC and
appleworks when they'll be using Windows, Mac, or Unix and GUI suite
software in the real world.
There are only two practical uses for apple IIs in an education environment;
a) overcoming technophobia
b) learning to type

Besides, most kids spend more time on an apple II with Artillery, strip
poker, and swashbuckler than they do with oregon trail.
-- 
"I wanna decide who lives and who dies" -Crow T Robot