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From: johnston@minnie.me.udel.edu (Bill Johnston)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: 'Dirty' ROMs - A Partial Answer <-- NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
Message-ID: <54279@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Date: 21 May 91 23:51:02 GMT
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Nntp-Posting-Host: minnie.me.udel.edu

In article <170@eclectic.COM>, kenh@eclectic.COM (Ken Hancock) writes...
>In article <54183@nigel.ee.udel.edu> johnston@minnie.me.udel.edu writes:

>>Forget I said anything, Apple.  Go ahead and screw things up.  Your 
>>customers will hate you for it, but "experts" will make a killing.

>With an attitude like that, if I were Apple, I'd tell you to take a
>flying leap.  Fortunately, they have infinitely more patience with
>your type than I do.

"My type" is somebody who reads and THINKS before posting.  Before 
anyone else follows up on the excerpts used by Mr. Hancock in his 
condescending "they have more patience with your type than I do", 
I hope that they read what I actually said.

This is one of the worst hatchet jobs of editing that I have seen 
in a USENET posting.  I wrote an article that described what I saw 
as the likely outcome of an Apple decision to pass the 32-bit buck 
on to unsupported 3rd-party solutions.  The lines quoted about
were the deliberately ironic end to a constructive article.

It was posted into a thread which had degenerated into an angry debate
about class-action lawsuits with the suggestion that Apple should
think carefully before simply passing the buck to 3rd parties.

I imagine that Connectix has done an excellent job with MODE32,
and my posting did not suggest otherwise.  What it did say is 
that unsupported 3rd-party solutions could lead to a situation
in which Apple could end up having to support several versions
of a very fundamental part of the operating System.  If Apple 
decides to merely "tolerate" MODE32 without backing it, what's
to prevent several companies from jumping in -- perhaps even
with less well written 32-bit fixes that Apple will eventually 
have to support if a few big clients end up buying into it?

This scenario is quite contrary to the pattern has served 
Apple well in the past.  Control over the details of the OS
has given us a degree of consistency and quality in the Mac OS
that is unequalled, even unrivalled in the personal computer
industry.  Even if Apple does not GIVE us a the 32-bit solution
that more than 500 of us have petitioned for, they would be
foolish not to try to exercise some influence over the form
that that solution takes.

Bill Johnston (johnston@minnie.me.udel.edu)
Bill Johnston; 38 Chambers St.; Newark, DE 19711; (302)368-1949