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From: baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: What's going to happen to the IIcx
Message-ID: <2907@esquire.dpw.com>
Date: 6 Dec 90 18:44:18 GMT
References: <127062@linus.mitre.org> <1990Nov30.214642.26534@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <1990Dec1.170223.7309@world.std.com> <1990Dec5.200743.5242@slhisc.uucp>
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Reply-To: baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten)
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In-reply-to: ken@slhisc.uucp (Ken Stamm)

In article <1990Dec5.200743.5242@slhisc.uucp>, ken@slhisc (Ken Stamm) writes:
>>As for me (for what it's worth), I think I'll leave my IIcx as is and
>>start saving up for a SparcStation of some kind.
>>
>
>Funny thing. In the current MacWeek, it seems more and more people are doing
>that very thing.

I wish I knew what those people were running on their SparcStations.
I've got one at work, and there's really no software of any value
available for it.  I run emacs and write code on it -- that it does
fine.  But what about *real* people?  What do *they* run?

Oh, sure, you can get FrameMaker, and WordPerfect (in character-based
mode -- whoopee!) and now Lotus (welcome to the 1980's, folks).  But
not much else for people who spend a lot of time working with
documents and need a friendly environment in which they can draw
charts, graphs, pictures, etc., and use a decent word processor that
supports nice Adobe fonts.

No Illustrator.  No MacDraw (though there's a Sun version now, I
hear).  No Nisus (I don't consider the lack of Word to be a drawback).

And of course you get Unix, which is a royal pain.  I can already run
multiple programs at one time on my Mac.  Big deal.  

On top of which, X is a dog compared to the Mac's interface.  It runs
slowly, the cursor jerks around, there's little consistency between
programs...

What the heck do people run on these boxes?  What good does a
gazillion MIPS box do if you can't get your work done on it?

Remember when the Mac first came out it was *woefully* underpowered
compared to the PCs around in those days.  But people bought and used
them because of the software.  In those days, the software was truly a
breakthough -- there was nothing else even remotely like it
(forgetting for a moment about the ill-fated Lisa).

Software makes or breaks a machine, not MIPS.  Until someone starts
writing decent applications for Suns (and other Unix boxes), they're
going to remain workstations always -- not personal computers.

The Unix Expo at the Javits Center in New York City looked like an
auto show -- all you saw was hardware, hardware, hardware.
WordPerfect had a booth, Lotus had one.  That was about it for
software.  Compare that to any standard PC Expo or MacWorld Expo --
it's like night and day.

I suppose if I had to use a Unix box for personal use I'd pick a NeXT.
At least then I'd be able to run some interesting software....

(Just one long-time Mac owner and Unix programmer's opinion.)

--
   Steve Baumgarten             | "New York... when civilization falls apart,
   Davis Polk & Wardwell        |  remember, we were way ahead of you."
   baumgart@esquire.dpw.com     | 
   cmcl2!esquire!baumgart       |                           - David Letterman