Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac.hardware:9028 comp.sys.mac.misc:9010 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu!csn!ccncsu!mozart!klingspo From: klingspo@mozart.cs.colostate.edu (Steve Klingsporn) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware,comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: MS-DOS -- Just say "Why?" Message-ID: <13297@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> Date: 28 Feb 91 23:45:24 GMT Sender: news@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU Organization: Colorado State University Lines: 266 Originator: klingspo@mozart Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: give me solid facts: why is the mac better than MeSsy DOS/WINDOWS Summary: Friends don't let friends use MS-DOS Expires: References: <91.056.16:01:18@ira.uka.de> <91057.162111CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu> Sender: Steve Klingsporn Followup-To: Distribution: world Keywords: Old technology, outdated, crap, kludge, textual Dear fellow readers of comp.sys.mac.groups, If I may "vent" on the comparison between DOS and Mac, I'd appreciate it. First of all, there is literally no comparison between the Macintosh and any MS-DOS machine. It just doesn't work. As a 4 year veteran Macintosh user and "informed" pseudo-member of the personal computing industry, I feel obligated to clarify a few things. First of all, as far as hardware is concerned, I hear that the Motorola chips are far superior to Intel's architecture. Though I've heard "nice" things about the i860, the 80386, for one, is WAY BEHIND the 68030 CPU. I read a report of test results conducted by the Chicago Tribune. It took a Macintosh 6 minutes to perform a calculation that took 11 hours on an IBM. The Macintosh was the IIci, and the IBM was a PS/20 Model 70. If you believe *everything* you read, you can believe this -- personally, I doubt it a bit. The Macintosh has no GUI built on top of it. Let's clarify this right now. The Macintosh sports Apple's Human Interface (commonly called the "Macintosh Interface," yet it's used on the Apple IIGS, don't forget), and the Human Interface is implimented at the ROM level in the Toolbox code. The Macintosh is never in a "text/debug" state where you are given a "joe text screen." MacsBug, which loads at boot time, draws a graphical screen -- it's in Geneva 9 font. This is not a "text mode" that the Macintosh "drops into." Sure, you can have little dinks like "Oasis," but that's just the Mac interface at work once again. You can run under MPW or an A/UX shell and type commands -- doesn't matter. These are "command-line" interfaces to the Macintosh, and should not be interpreted as being "alternatives" to the Macintosh interface. If you want the Human Interface to disappear, blow out your screen or close your eyes. You cannot escape it. As far as "modes" are concerned, the Macintosh is fortunate to have been developed as a virtually "modeless" screen. Where MS-DOS applications tend to lack event loops and the like, the Macintosh is basically an event-oriented system; you do whatever you like whenever you like, and the machine handles these events as they come. No more "Do 1 to Quit, 2 to Run, 3 to..." You get the point. As far as graphics are concerned, QuickDraw is wonderful, and once you get into it, not very hard at all to program. Beats the hell out of different hardware cards/configurations, etc. On a Macintosh, you don't have to worry about which video card is installed, which resolution you have, etc -- if you develop your applications properly, they look the same on any other Macintosh. Macintosh may be "held back" by this fact, yet it's truly amazing that the Macintosh is almost 100% backward compatible. I'm not talkinga bout "this app. is a color one and needs color; it won't work with this mac," but rather the mere fact that applications that were written and compiled in 1984 will still run on my Macintosh IIfx under System 7.0b3. To me, this is truly amazing. The Macintosh System Software people are a wonderful and amazing group. "A Macintosh is a Macintosh is a Macintosh" is a true statement -- not just a cheap marketing slogan. You can take basically any application from one machine to another, regardless of configuration, and use it. This is wonderful, and not always the case with the MS-DOS world. e.g., old 5.25" disks, etc. MultiFinder has evolved more from a "cheap hack" to a "real implimentation" in System 7.0 with the advent of the Process Manager. What you others bitch about as "Real multitasking" verses (fake?) multitasking is trivial. The true fact is you are productive on the Macintosh regardless of what's really happening, and you are truly running more than one application at once. Besides, on the Amiga, if you hold down the mouse button in a foreground app., you notice that the other apps that are doing something animated stop too? Interesting... :) System 7.0 adds quite a bit of functionality to Macintosh without sacrificing compatibility, etc. In my testing of System 7.0, I've found very few applications that don't function -- amazing to me. The only things that really seem to have problems are those that make dumb assumptions as to fonts, screen-depth, locations of specific routines, etc. If you follow the rules, your applications function perfectly in 7.0. If you take a bit more time, you can take advantage of the other wonders, those being Inter-Application-Communication (Edition Manager, AppleEvents, PPC Toolbox), control how Virtual Memory fragments (or doesn't) your application, give your application a nice set of color icons, impliment the Communications Toolbox (standard communications "tools" across all major applications), etc. System 7.0 is a new level of functionality that IBM/MS-DOS users will NEVER approach. Apple, with 7.0, has pushed Macintosh technology way past what was initially devised in 1984 and lately refined in 6.0.7 and earlier releases. 7.0 is literally incredible. If you're going to bitch about it requiring 2MB of RAM, I'm sorry -- go out and buy some -- it's not that expensive anymore -- if you think it is, you're living in the past. Nobody is going to force you to change over to 7.0 -- it's a natrual process. Applications and other people will be able to do things you can't, and you'll re-think your stubbornness. As for the "leap in RAM use," come on -- MultiFinder has always required more RAM -- the Finder is running always. If you want to stay ahead, you have to pay. At least Apple is doing something wonderful "that they don't have to" for the Macintosh community -- providing FREE added functionality to your initial purchase, be it in 1990/1991 or way back in 1986. Think about this. As for you MS-DOS users, I'm sorry, but you just don't have the power that we Macintosh users do. Arguing that your machines "crunch numbers" faster isn't really all that true -- the Motorola math chips are usually faster. Arguing that your machines draw screens faster may sometimes be true -- it doesn't take all that much processing time to flip on a boring page of text, does it? Arguing that your i486 will beat the Mac is bull, for the Motorola 68040 has been proven the winner there. Trying to say that Windows is "the cure all for MS-DOS" is also a crock, for I've used Win3, and it's truly a kludge. :) Hey, at least the IBM world will have one thing to look forward to -- Microsoft will be using Apple's TrueType font technology in future versions of Windows. Take care & have a good time with your "falsely fast" machines -- put unix on a Mac and it's fast -- draw text on a Mac, it's fast... Try rendering a 3d image (ray-trace) on your IBM, Try building applications that can talk to virtually any other applications. Try sharing files from your Macintosh with just system software. Network your machines by buying cables and little connections boxes. I dare you. Ahead of you MS-DOS users (and besides, I can run it in emulation in a window with SoftPC 1.4) -- at 40MHz, my IIfx seems to do a pretty good job of emulating DOS -- then again, it doesn't take much power, does it?! Steve Klingsporn From: klingspo@mozart.cs.colostate.edu (Steve Klingsporn) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware,comp.sys.mac.system Subject: MS-DOS -- just say "Why?!" References: Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: world Organization: Colorado State University Keywords: Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: give me solid facts: why is the mac better than MeSsy DOS/WINDOWS Summary: Friends don't let friends use MS-DOS Expires: References: <91.056.16:01:18@ira.uka.de> <91057.162111CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu> Sender: Steve Klingsporn Followup-To: Distribution: world Keywords: Old technology, outdated, crap, kludge, textual Dear fellow readers of comp.sys.mac.groups, If I may "vent" on the comparison between DOS and Mac, I'd appreciate it. First of all, there is literally no comparison between the Macintosh and any MS-DOS machine. It just doesn't work. As a 4 year veteran Macintosh user and "informed" pseudo-member of the personal computing industry, I feel obligated to clarify a few things. First of all, as far as hardware is concerned, I hear that the Motorola chips are far superior to Intel's architecture. Though I've heard "nice" things about the i860, the 80386, for one, is WAY BEHIND the 68030 CPU. I read a report of test results conducted by the Chicago Tribune. It took a Macintosh 6 minutes to perform a calculation that took 11 hours on an IBM. The Macintosh was the IIci, and the IBM was a PS/20 Model 70. If you believe *everything* you read, you can believe this -- personally, I doubt it a bit. The Macintosh has no GUI built on top of it. Let's clarify this right now. The Macintosh sports Apple's Human Interface (commonly called the "Macintosh Interface," yet it's used on the Apple IIGS, don't forget), and the Human Interface is implimented at the ROM level in the Toolbox code. The Macintosh is never in a "text/debug" state where you are given a "joe text screen." MacsBug, which loads at boot time, draws a graphical screen -- it's in Geneva 9 font. This is not a "text mode" that the Macintosh "drops into." Sure, you can have little dinks like "Oasis," but that's just the Mac interface at work once again. You can run under MPW or an A/UX shell and type commands -- doesn't matter. These are "command-line" interfaces to the Macintosh, and should not be interpreted as being "alternatives" to the Macintosh interface. If you want the Human Interface to disappear, blow out your screen or close your eyes. You cannot escape it. As far as "modes" are concerned, the Macintosh is fortunate to have been developed as a virtually "modeless" screen. Where MS-DOS applications tend to lack event loops and the like, the Macintosh is basically an event-oriented system; you do whatever you like whenever you like, and the machine handles these events as they come. No more "Do 1 to Quit, 2 to Run, 3 to..." You get the point. As far as graphics are concerned, QuickDraw is wonderful, and once you get into it, not very hard at all to program. Beats the hell out of different hardware cards/configurations, etc. On a Macintosh, you don't have to worry about which video card is installed, which resolution you have, etc -- if you develop your applications properly, they look the same on any other Macintosh. Macintosh may be "held back" by this fact, yet it's truly amazing that the Macintosh is almost 100% backward compatible. I'm not talkinga bout "this app. is a color one and needs color; it won't work with this mac," but rather the mere fact that applications that were written and compiled in 1984 will still run on my Macintosh IIfx under System 7.0b3. To me, this is truly amazing. The Macintosh System Software people are a wonderful and amazing group. "A Macintosh is a Macintosh is a Macintosh" is a true statement -- not just a cheap marketing slogan. You can take basically any application from one machine to another, regardless of configuration, and use it. This is wonderful, and not always the case with the MS-DOS world. e.g., old 5.25" disks, etc. MultiFinder has evolved more from a "cheap hack" to a "real implimentation" in System 7.0 with the advent of the Process Manager. What you others bitch about as "Real multitasking" verses (fake?) multitasking is trivial. The true fact is you are productive on the Macintosh regardless of what's really happening, and you are truly running more than one application at once. Besides, on the Amiga, if you hold down the mouse button in a foreground app., you notice that the other apps that are doing something animated stop too? Interesting... :) System 7.0 adds quite a bit of functionality to Macintosh without sacrificing compatibility, etc. In my testing of System 7.0, I've found very few applications that don't function -- amazing to me. The only things that really seem to have problems are those that make dumb assumptions as to fonts, screen-depth, locations of specific routines, etc. If you follow the rules, your applications function perfectly in 7.0. If you take a bit more time, you can take advantage of the other wonders, those being Inter-Application-Communication (Edition Manager, AppleEvents, PPC Toolbox), control how Virtual Memory fragments (or doesn't) your application, give your application a nice set of color icons, impliment the Communications Toolbox (standard communications "tools" across all major applications), etc. System 7.0 is a new level of functionality that IBM/MS-DOS users will NEVER approach. Apple, with 7.0, has pushed Macintosh technology way past what was initially devised in 1984 and lately refined in 6.0.7 and earlier releases. 7.0 is literally incredible. If you're going to bitch about it requiring 2MB of RAM, I'm sorry -- go out and buy some -- it's not that expensive anymore -- if you think it is, you're living in the past. Nobody is going to force you to change over to 7.0 -- it's a natrual process. Applications and other people will be able to do things you can't, and you'll re-think your stubbornness. As for the "leap in RAM use," come on -- MultiFinder has always required more RAM -- the Finder is running always. If you want to stay ahead, you have to pay. At least Apple is doing something wonderful "that they don't have to" for the Macintosh community -- providing FREE added functionality to your initial purchase, be it in 1990/1991 or way back in 1986. Think about this. As for you MS-DOS users, I'm sorry, but you just don't have the power that we Macintosh users do. Arguing that your machines "crunch numbers" faster isn't really all that true -- the Motorola math chips are usually faster. Arguing that your machines draw screens faster may sometimes be true -- it doesn't take all that much processing time to flip on a boring page of text, does it? Arguing that your i486 will beat the Mac is bull, for the Motorola 68040 has been proven the winner there. Trying to say that Windows is "the cure all for MS-DOS" is also a crock, for I've used Win3, and it's truly a kludge. :) Hey, at least the IBM world will have one thing to look forward to -- Microsoft will be using Apple's TrueType font technology in future versions of Windows. Take care & have a good time with your "falsely fast" machines -- put unix on a Mac and it's fast -- draw text on a Mac, it's fast... Try rendering a 3d image (ray-trace) on your IBM, Try building applications that can talk to virtually any other applications. Try sharing files from your Macintosh with just system software. Network your machines by buying cables and little connections boxes. I dare you. Ahead of you MS-DOS users (and besides, I can run it in emulation in a window with SoftPC 1.4) -- at 40MHz, my IIfx seems to do a pretty good job of emulating DOS -- then again, it doesn't take much power, does it?! Steve Klingsporn