Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!uokmax!d.cs.okstate.edu!minich
From: minich@d.cs.okstate.edu (Robert Minich)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Mac CD-ROM mount
Message-ID: <1990Dec3.213156.26091@d.cs.okstate.edu>
Date: 3 Dec 90 21:31:56 GMT
References: <4249@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Organization: Oklahoma State University
Lines: 48

by simsong@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Simson L. Garfinkel):
| You can use the Mac CDROM drive with no problems.  
| 
| Using Mac CDROMs may cause problems, however, since the majority of Macintosh
| CDROMs are formatted with the Macintosh HFS file system and not with the
| High Sierra or the ISO 9660 file systems.
|
| This incompatability problem typifies Apple's thinking: why bother following
| a standard?  After all, if you follow a standard, people aren't "stuck" with
| the Apple solution.  Just look at the Macintosh RS232, SCSI, Mouse, ...  None
| of them follow any standards; as a result, things developed for the Macintosh
| cannot be easily moved to Apple's competition.

  Isn't NeXT RS232 == Mac RS232? What standard does the NeXT mouse follow? Can
you just plug in a MickeySoft Mouse? What is non-standard about Mac SCSI? (I
know about the software side, but what about the hardware?) What standard did
NeXT follow with NeXTstep? It's not X. It's not OpenLook or Motif. You have a
good idea but you've picked extremely poor examples. :-)
  There are problems with using ISO 9660 file systems with a Mac that are best
solved by using the Macs native file system. Although the Mac FS is, to my
knowledge, unique, it is that way for a good reason. Standards aren't
worthwhile if they hinder more than they help.
 
| For CDROM this is especially upsetting, since the point of CDROM was to make
| it easy to transport data from operating system to operating system.

  I thought the idea was to have gobs of data on a cheap medium. If I want to
transport data across OS boundaries, a network is probably more useful and some
sort of mass storage device (DAT, hard disk, tape, ...) would also be
appropriate depending on the circumstances.
  Sure, some data should be easy to use across OS platforms (GIFs, textual data,
etc.) but what are you going to use, say, MicroSoft Office (Mac version) for on
non-Mac platforms that outweighs the pain involved in using a non-Mac file
format. If you want to be cool and show me how flexible UNIX is, why not just
write a driver for Mac formatted volumes? Read only media should be a snap and
read-write media aren't _too_ difficult. Or might UNIX choke with a different
file sys philosophy? You can get the documentation in Inside Macintosh... <grin>

| The Macintosh CDROM driver will read 9660 disks, and some of the new Macintosh
| disks are in this format.

  The mac will read any ISO 9660 format volume. Except for a cute test floppy, I
don't know of anything available that utilizes this.
-- 
|_    /| | Robert Minich            |
|\'o.O'  | Oklahoma State University| "Get bent."
|=(___)= | minich@d.cs.okstate.edu  |               -- Bart Simpson
|   U    | - Ackphtth               |