Re: Why Apple //?

[John_L._Graham@adbbs.antioch.edu (John L. Graham)]

Hi Brian!
               I liked your post :) I've been hearing the "get a real"
computer for over a decade. The problem I have with it is the apparent
definition of "real computer" changes rapidly. It seems "real computers" only
exist for a short time, then they become just "comuters" and within a year to
18 months they revert to "why don't you get a real computer". For a while
everytime someone said that to me I'd pull out a little notepad and ask them
to itemize what makes a "real computer" so I'll know what to get. Not brand
name or model, but fundamental specifications. At what speed, memory, MSDs,
etc. does a computer become "real". After a while they stopped pestering me
as they can't do it. There's a lot of things the Apple II does _extremely_
well that are either impractical or very difficult to do on "real computers".
An example I work with everyday is computer interfacing to laboratory
hardware. While workstations (mostly off-brand PCs) are becoming rather
common, when we need a custom interface to an experimental piece of hardware
by far the prefered platform is the Apple II. It's hardware design is so
simple and it's so easy to program we can usually have a new system
prototyped in a few hours and running in a day or so. We always have plans to
port the system to "real computers" once the protocol has been figured out,
but in 10+ years of doing this we've never done it :) At most what we usually
do (if the project duration is long eneough to justify the cost) is bump the
system up to a GS simply because they're readily available, cheap, and have
healthy amounts of easily access memory for storing and processing large
amount of data.

Don't get me wrong, even in research "real computers" have their place and
we're darned glad to have them. But the Apple II still plays a valuable role
that would be difficult to fill with any other platform. Goodness knows we've
had folks that've tried.... but that's another story.

-John