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From: jbr0@cbnews.att.com (joseph.a.brownlee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Time for Apple to move on from Mac (I agree)
Message-ID: <1991Feb6.152917.7581@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 6 Feb 91 15:29:17 GMT
References: <143454.27AE5944@cmhgate.FIDONET.ORG>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 49

In article <143454.27AE5944@cmhgate.FIDONET.ORG> Adam.Frix@p2.f200.n226.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Adam Frix) writes:
>231b3679@fergvax.unl.edu (Mike Gleason) writes:
> > Me too.  If you are programmer, I'll bet you've noticed how
> > amazingly kludgy everything is getting;  but that's not Apple's
> > fault, though, they were the ones who pioneered GUIs (yeah, I
> > know, Xerox...) and I complement them that their foresight was
> > really pretty good.  But now they know exactly what to do,
> > perhaps they should put out a new machine, maybe an 88000 based
> > machine with new ROM built from scratch [...]
>
> I have to agree here.  It's time for Apple to stop fixing things up to run on
> 68000 Pluses and Classics, and start building a new set of machines, including
> a brand new OS, from scratch.

To me, I agree and what Adam Frix said about the OS is the key.  The Macintosh
hardware platform isn't bad on the newer machines; it just needs a few tweaks
and updates, such as the faster NuBus standard, 68040 support, and perhaps an
on-board graphics co-processor (for which the Mac cries), but the OS is
starting to get to be layer after layer of patches and obsolete routines.  Want
to find out about you machine?  Use Gestalt(), which superceded SysEnvirons(),
which replaced Environs().  Want color in your window?  Call NewCWindow(), not
NewWindow(), except if you don't have Color QD.  You get the idea.  And I won't
even go into the things that they can't touch because of the problems it would
create, like the 680x0 supervisor modes and protected memory.

Apple has done a pretty darn good job of trying to keep up with new software
advances, while not destroying backward compatibility.  Speaking as a software
engineer who has been in many similar situations, you do things you don't like
because they are compromises between compatibility and progress.  But there
does come a time when you have to make some kind of break.  Apple's foresight
had allowed them to make many major changes to the system, while (for the
most part) maintaining compatibility.  To go from the days of 128K being more
memory than any other PC of its day to competing with low-end workstations
is something Apple can be proud of.

So, perhaps Apple could work on a Mac OS II (OS/2 :-).  Something we could use
with current machines, perhaps by upgrading the ROMs and perhaps some of the
boards.  Maybe our old software wouldn't work as is anymore, but if things
aren't too radically different, the software publishers could port existing
code without too much trouble (mostly be taking out all the backward
compatibility hacks), and then we could go from there.

Food for thought...

-- 
   -      _   Joe Brownlee, Analysts International Corp. @ AT&T Network Systems
  /_\  @ / `  471 E Broad St, Suite 1610, Columbus, Ohio 43215   (614) 860-7461
 /   \ | \_,  E-mail: jbr@cblph.att.com     Who pays attention to what _I_ say?
 "Scotty, we need warp drive in 3 minutes or we're all dead!" --- James T. Kirk