Re: Is this true?

["Byron Q. Desnoyers Wimill" <bwinmill@kernigham.sympatico.ca>]

In article <jalapeno1-2BFDD8.22391717112002@nntp.mindspring.com> you wrote:
> Of course, my iMac still doesn't have a serial port for the Localtalk 
> adapter and my IIgs doesn't have an Appletalk stack that works with 
> ethernet so I still don't see how kegs and mac-on-linux will help.

True, I have a IIci running Apple's LocalTalk bridge.  Kegs has issues
with the serial port, so I doubt that it supports AppleTalk.  I usually
use disk images in that case and Mac OS 9 for file sharing.

I was actually taking a cheap shot at Mac OS X, because MOL runs under
Linux.  In some respects, Apple has not been a good compatibility
citizen: they did not bother fixing ProDOS support after it was broken,
and they are forcing users to move away from AppleTalk.

But Apple offers good software compatibility.  There have been some
problems, but they have done a great job over all: offering multitasking,
adding a 32 bit address space, switching processors, and now switching
operating systems.  In all cases, the transitions were smoother than the
transitions Windows users faced -- and Windows users have not faced a
processor transition yet.  (They may not either, since the Itanic is
not doing very well.)

I also think that Windows users fail to remember the troubles they had
with their transitions: people often quit Windows 3.x to run MS-DOS
applications, may it be for memory, speed, or compatibility; there
were also compatibility issues when moving to Windows 95, even though
OS/2 and Windows NT were highlighting these issues years in advance.

Byron.