Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!jarthur!spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu!tybalt.caltech.edu!toddpw
From: toddpw@tybalt.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: More Macweek Rumors
Message-ID: <1990Mar17.033808.10161@spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu>
Date: 17 Mar 90 03:38:08 GMT
References: <1848@crash.cts.com>
Sender: news@spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 98

You'd better batten down your hatches, Joe, because you don't understand the
Mac any more than most of them understand the Apple II.

jabernathy@pro-houston.cts.com (Joe Abernathy) writes:

>In-Reply-To: message from nagendra@bucsf.bu.edu

>> As far as I can see, the gs is no competition for the Mac II.

>But of course you have no idea what you're talking about.

No, it's you who don't know what you're talking about. Have you ever used one
for what it was DESIGNED to do, and not for what your GS was designed to do?

>The Macintosh -- anything less than the $10,000 Mac, to be accurate -- is a
>kinda sort of desktop publishing machine. It's useless for numerics, it's
>useless for graphics, it's crippled with sound ... and it's handicapped by an
>amateurish user base that's incapable of minimizing its inefficiencies.

Desktop publishing packages on the Macintosh kick anything on the GS into the
ground, and the Mac's square pixels are one of the secrets of it. If you don't
know how easy it is to publish on the Mac I suggest you keep your mouth shut
until you find out for yourself.

The Mac II and up all have math coprocessors of the kind we get when we buy
the Floating Point Engine. Nothing beats a dedicated FPU for numerics, so I
suggest you shut up about this too.

Useless for graphics? The Mac was designed around graphics! That may have some
drawbacks but in many more areas it's a strength. There are awesome Paint, CAD,
and Page Layout programs for the Mac that the GS will never touch for simple
economic reasons -- nobody who wants a GS will want the extra power these
programs have or be able to handle their cost.

Crippled for sound? I don't think 8 bit stereo at 22 khz is crippled. It's more
than adequate for what most macintosh users do. The rest buy MIDI interfaces.
Besides, the GS's motherboard doesn't support it's own sound chip enough, but
at least we can get around it with stereo decoder cards like the Sonic Blaster.

The Mac user base was supposed to be fairly ignorant! The whole point of the
mac was that an computer illiterate could use it without having to know little
technical details! If you can't tolerate people who couldn't care less how
their machine actually works then I suggest you shut up and let them at least
get their questions answered. We're here to make computers more useful, not
spite at each other, and you ought to lighten up about machines that suit
other people's needs better than they suit yours.

>If you'll take a moment to remember, the Macintosh was designed by a man whose
>genius was marketing. He had a great idea in desktop publishing, and for that
>he is to be commended. But don't try to pretend you can do quality desktop
>publishing with an average Macintosh, and don't even try to suggest that it is
>the proper solution for anything more strenuous.

You simply don't know what you're talking about. The orginal idea behind the
Mac was to build a machine that was friendly enough and simple enough to use
that anybody could do the normal types of work (word processing, paint, draw)
on it with almost no training. The desktop interface is what made that possible
and I wouldn't bite the hand that fed your GS.

As for desktop publishing, we have two Mac labs here at Caltech and the #1 use
of them is desktop publishing. I use them to add fonts and run my papers off
the laserwriter because I don't have enough memory to use Appleworks GS.

The Mac has managed to handle some pretty powerful desktop publishing programs
all across its product line, and they have done a damn good job getting things
to run on any mac from the Plus to the ci. The speed and screen size are the
only real differences and for many 'more strenuous' things the Mac is currently
a much better solution than the GS.

>I don't give a rat's ass about the computer label wars, but those owners of
>any brand of computer who spread misinformation based on the latest press
>releases give me a case of chapped lips. You guess which lips.

Your misinformation is a hell of a lot worse. You obviously think that a Mac II
only has more memory and a color screen. Well it's got a hell of a lot more and
the last thing I want to see coming from an Apple II user is machine slandering
like the Amigeeks love to engage in. Every machine on the market today has its
own best uses and NONE OF THEM are perfect for everything. The mac is perfect
for desktop publishing, the GS is perfect for hacking and sound, the Amiga is
perfect for animation, the PC is perfect for cheap number crunching...

Don't base your opinion of a machine on what it wasn't designed to do, base
your buying decision on what YOU want it to do. Don't tell me somthing sucks
because you can't use it, it might be perfect for someone else. I may love my
GS but no way in hell am I going to feist one on somebody who wants do
something that another machine can do better. It's about time we ran the
fanatics out of town, and especially the ones at Apple who want to nuke the
Apple II for most of the reasons you've tried to heap on the Mac.

>Why don't y'all go find a nice Red Ryder host and trade some rad wareZ. Take a
>load off your overstrained mental capacities.

Don't treat us like BBS junkies. We grew out of that a long time ago.

You, however, don't sound like you have.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu