[no subject]

"Lotus 1-2-3 is the Apple II of software..."

"Unfortunately, it looks as if Lotus is internally hog-tied by an
infrastructure of 1-2-3 diehards the same way Apple was nearly
strangled by Apple II loyalists.  Luckily, Steve Jobs at Apple had a
personal stake in sinking the Apple II and pushing the Macintosh
forward."

"This product [Lotus Improv for Windoze] is Lotus's Macintosh, just as
1-2-3 is its Apple II.  Imagine where Apple would be if it were still
pushing the Apple II line and leaving the Mac to languish."

--end of selected quotes--

The column was primarily about Lotus' continued promotion of 1-2-3
instead of trying to ram a "new" product (Improv was just recently
ported to Windoze, but has been out for the NeXT for a couple of
years).  In the process, Mr. Dvorak manages to thoroughy insult those
of us who continue to use Apple IIs, as well as anybody smart enough
to stick with what works instead of constantly replacing expensive
hardware and software everytime something only marginally (if at all)
better comes along.

"Strangled by Apple II loyalists?"  I'm sure that's news to the few
people within Apple Inc. that are still working on the II.  I didn't
realize that Matt Deatherage, Tim Swihart, et al. had such an iron
grip on Apple's corporate destiny. :-)

"Imagine where Apple would be"...let's see, maybe they wouldn't have
disillusioned millions of Apple II owners.  Maybe they wouldn't have
lost so many people (including myself) to other architectures--be they
IBM, Amiga, NeXT, Sun, or whatever else is out there.  Speaking of
architectures, consider this: the basic architecture of IBMs and
clones is almost as old as that of the Apple II, yet we don't see
people badmouthing DOS boxes on account of their essentially "ancient"
(by Mr. Dvorak's standards, anything more than one year old must be
"obsolete," while anything more than two years old must be "ancient")
system architecture--in fact, more people are buying these "ancient"
machines than ever before, and getting useful work done with them.  To
a lesser extent, the same applies to the Apple II.  Millions continue
to use Apple II systems on a daily basis.  Why can't Mr. Dvorak simply
let sleeping dogs lie and realize that not everybody needs (or wants)
his idea of computing nirvana--a slothful, bug-infested system propped
up on fast CPUs and inordinately large amounts of RAM and hard-drive
space?

As recently as six months ago, I was running an IBM-clone 286-12
(egads!) and an Apple IIe (an 8-bit system--he must be insane!).  The
IIe has since been upgraded to a IIGS and the 286 has been upgraded to
a 386SX-25.  Both systems have 4 megs of RAM (4.25 in the GS,
actually), both have monochrome monitors (NTSC composite for the GS,
TTL mono for the clone), both have hard drives (40-meg SCSI for the
GS, 125-meg IDE for the clone), and both primarily run text-based apps
(ProDOS 8 for the GS, DR DOS and DESQview for the clone).  Both of
these systems serve my purposes well--I write papers and letters, call
BBSes and online services, publish the local Apple users group's
newsletters, and do some maintenance work for my BBS (including
holding files for later transfer and generating batch files for
execution on the clone) on my IIGS, while my clone runs my BBS, is
used for reading QWK packets from other BBSes, and is used for 8086
assembly-language programming for a course in which I'm currently
enrolled.  I have System 6 installed on my GS, but boot into ProDOS 8
90% of the time--it takes less time to load and allows me to get most
of my work done.  I considered putting OS/2 on the clone, but I would
have needed to play the upgrade game--more RAM and a VGA monitor, and
I would've lost a large chunk of HD space.  What I have now serves my
needs just fine, regardless of what Mr. Dvorak or other naysayers
would say.

  _/_   Scott Alfter                             Internet: sknkwrks@cs.unlv.edu
 / v \  Call the Skunk Works BBS today!           Ask me about SoftDAC--digital
(IIGS(  (702) 894-9619 300-14400 V.32bis          audio for your Apple IIe/IIc!
 \_^_/  ----=====##### Don't blame me...I voted for Bush/Quayle! #####=====----