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From: SHBOUM@MACALSTR.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: The GS Axe is Not Falling
Message-ID: <0B1F523B6021339E@MACALSTR.EDU>
Date: 7 Apr 91 08:45:00 GMT
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In an earlier article, Todd Whitesel writes:

>It constantly bugs me that the market trend has been towards brute-force
>hardware and software that is way too complex for the average mortal to
>ever hope to comprehend. (never mind independent programmers.)

>What happened to elegance and truly innovative solutions?
>They're buried under virtual memory hardware that has a fixed 1 cycle penalty,
>or brain-dead bootstrap ROMs that leave the machine useless if no boot volume
>is available, or operating systems that have severely skewed I/O models or no
>concept of interactive vs. batch execution. The latest MIPS wonder is simply
>expected to run the same old O/S's better and faster and everybody happily
>throws gobs of money at the problem of technological obsolesence.

        Its a trend that has bothered me too. It seems like people are more
anxious to get a faster processor to speed things up rather than look at the
hardware they already have and try to write better software for it. The mac is
a great example of this. "You're new machine runs the software three times
faster now." Oh goody, does that mean its TOLERABLE now?  In fact, its more of
the notion for them that the only way their machines are going to run faster
is by fasters CPU's. Which is why for a state-of-the-art processor, the Mac
certinaly isn't that impressive... A mac is slow, doesn't have co-processors,
its a monster to learn to program for, and likes to crash. Ever scroll color
windows on a Mac II {just a plain Mac II}? Geez, its slower then Prodos 16
came to loading files. On the other hand, if our IIs ran at the Mac IIs 15
Mhz, we'd be zooming along. It just goes to show you that there is more than
just a good processor to a system.

        But thats ok, most people worry about how many Mhz the machine has and
not how kludgy the software is for it. Great! My IBM now runs at 40 Mhz!!! But
a lot of people don't see is that Mhz is just one of the many comparisons in a
system. If it takes 5 cycles to do an operation on a 25Mhz machine, and just 1
on a 5Mhz machine, you're going to end up at about the same speed. Not only
that, if the software is sloppily written, {which a lot is for the faster
machines because you've got so much speed to waste}, then the efficency goes
down even more. 

         One thing that the II has is a good software developer team at Apple.
For a 2.8Mhz machine, the IIGS really moves on windows including scrolling
under GS/OS. For many graphics operations, its leaves many low end macs in the
dust. I feel that this shows that good software really helps system
performance. Hopefully people will finally realize that their 40Mhz machines
can do a hell of a lot more then what they've ever imagined if they ever took
the time to do some really good programming for it.

                                                        - Hal

| Hal Bouma				| Send mail to: SHBoum@Macalstr.edu
| Macalester College			| and 		SHBoum@Macalstr.Bitnet
| GEnie: H.Bouma			| ".Sig Under Construction..."