Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!van-bc!ubc-cs!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ucrmath!alchemy!bbs
From: bbs@alchemy.UUCP (BBS Administration)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Woz giveth, Scully taketh away
Message-ID: <181@alchemy.UUCP>
Date: 1 Oct 90 07:38:03 GMT
Reply-To: bbs@alchemy.UUCP (BBS Administration)
Organization: Alchemy Software Designs
Lines: 69

In article <5658@mace.cc.purdue.edu> asd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth) writes:
>In <28361@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> fadden@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Andy McFadden) writes:

>>since all those English majors in college need a 33MHz processor to print
>>out their papers.  And Macintoshes are SO much better suited for education,
>>being black & white and more expensive.

>Absolutely!  Heaven forbid a school have a few dozen machines vs. just
>a dozen Macs or so?  Oh, WAIT, I forgot, you can buy low-end Mac's for
>less than you can get a II ($649 for a Mac Plus, high ed discount (I'd
>imagine it'd be same/close for low-ed)).  Oops.  Sorry.

Usually, I wouldn't want to stick my neck out here since I'm part of the
minority, but I just have to say something about this. It is truly amazing
how people react. If something goes against them, everyone is suddenly
"the enemy." These comments about how "if my next computer isn't an Apple
II, it won't be an Apple" really impressed me. Maybe "impressed" isn't
the right word, however.

First off, let me site and example from real life. While attending college,
I still had my trusty Apple //e and loved it to death. I used to write my
English papers with it, and thought how vastly superior my work was in
appearance as compared to people who wrote their papers using a typewriter.
There was no comparison, and people took notice. Soon, everyone was using
a computer and great rejoicing followed :). Then one day, in 1985, I saw a
paper someone had composed on a Macintosh. When compared to the output of
my Apple II, I wanted to learn more about the Mac. Being a computer nerd,
this was to be expected. The interesting thing was that I was not alone!
At the public computer labs on campus, they had several rooms full of
computers that any student could use for whatever purpose they chose. Of
these machines (some 70 at the time) only 5 were Macintoshes. One was a
Mac Plus, the others Mac SEs. The remaining 65 or so were PC clones running
MS-DOS. I guess they took this route because the Macs were (and still are)
quite expensive, especially when compared to PC clones. The interesting
thing was; almost nobody used the PCs, while the Mac were cnostantly in
use, usually with some sort of line waiting to use one of them.

In this case, it would appear that the Mac, overpriced, using old tech-
nology, and relatively slow as compared to the PC, provided a much more
"popular" solution to the problems faced by most college students. It's
also not suprising that many graduates, when looking for a computer for
personal use go on to buy a Mac. To me, it's a matter of getting my work
done, as quickly and painlessly as possible. For myself, the Mac suits
me well and I use it every day. For people to say that because Apple is
not going to support their machine any longer and that buying a machine from
that same company is not a possibility is, to me, both shortsighted and
ignorant. When I saw the number of software and hardware solutions
available for the Mac, and how long it has been around, I thought it would
be a good choice. I think that still holds true today (though the new
NeXT does offer some serious competition) and thus find it difficult to
understand why people have this attitude towards the Mac.

It should be pointed out that I'm not necessarily an evangelist for the
Mac (though I do own a IIci) but rather an enthusiast of all computers
like I'm sure most everyone who reads this (and many other groups) are.
I don't want to get into a heated argument about which computer is
better (I prefer Unix machines myself) but rather obtain an understanding
of why the Mac is such a hated machine by people who are fans of the
Apple II. I was there, I moved on, why can't everyone?

Hoping to be enlightened,

-- John

John Donahue, Senior Partner | UUCP: ucrmath!alchemy!{bbs, gumby}  | The Future
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