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From: schitre@euler.claremont.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: The Fate of the Macintosh - Not good
Message-ID: <1991Mar22.150321.1@euler.claremont.edu>
Date: 22 Mar 91 23:03:21 GMT
References: <1991Mar22.145326.27445@rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu>
Sender: news@jarthur.Claremont.EDU
Organization: Harvey Mudd College
Lines: 34

In article <1991Mar22.145326.27445@rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu>,
	medlin@rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu (Roger Medlin) writes:
> Best I can figure (correct me if I am wrong), my Macintosh SE/30 is rated
> at somewhere between 2 and 3 MIPS (not too bad), but when you consider
> that the new NeXT (retail priced at around $5,000) checks in at around 15
> MIPS, I question the future of Macintosh.
> 
> Comments ?

	I made the mistake of becoming a dedicated Mac fan even before there
was a Mac. When the LISA came out, I got to see it, and I thought it was
really cool. After that my dad bought a Mac +, and later, when I went off to
college, I bought a Mac SE. I was broke for a very long time paying for that
SE, and even now, with all the money I spent on upgrades it's a pathetically
useless machine for the engineering stuff I want to do on it.
	Out of the entire Mac lineup the only one I think is worth owning is
the IIfx, and it's so expensive that I could buy a DEC VAXStation for less
(and my employer did just that). If Apple wants to stay competitive the price
cuts they announced are going to have to be followed by equally large cuts
very soon, and they're going to have to move up to the 68040 at its top speed,
or possibly into high speed RISC architecture.
	While my original liking for the Mac was its operating system, which
any idiot can use (more or less), it's getting pretty stale. One of the
computer gurus here likes to call "user-friendly" "expert-hostile", and I'd
have to agree. I've gotten beyond the Mac system (which sucks memory like
there's no tomorrow) and want something better. I haven't tried A/UX, since
I can't afford a machine to run it on, but I think A/UX is going to be more
and more standard for the high-end Mac. Something better than the current
system has to be developed for the low-end Mac.
	Well, that's my cent worth. Personally, given the money, I'd buy a
DEC VAXStation 3100 M38 SPX rather than a Mac IIfx. It's more powerful, and
it's not user-friendly, but I can do a lot more with it.

		Sunil