Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uupsi!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: New Thread: What _REALLY_ makes a product successful? Message-ID: <1991May26.194047.15948@sugar.hackercorp.com> Date: 26 May 91 19:40:47 GMT References: <24947@well.sf.ca.us> <1991May24.015243.4846@sugar.hackercorp.com> <25042@well.sf.ca.us> Distribution: usa Organization: Sugar Land Unix -- Houston, TX Lines: 57 In article <25042@well.sf.ca.us> farren@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) writes: > I said, with any kind of mass marketing. Onyx didn't, at all, and Cromemco > was pretty much computer-rag advertising only. OK, if you have to limit things to Apple, Radio Shack, and IBM then maybe you have a point... though Pro-DOS on the Apple III was a much better piece of software than MS-DOS. > Hmm? You have never seen the inside of an Eagle or Columbia, I take it. Not in person, but I *have* seen the inside of a couple of other incompatible MS-DOS machines of the era and none of them were as badly made as the old IBM-PC. Some of them, such as the HP and Victor, were far better. > Yep, like their keyboard. A departure from the ASCII-mapped designs that > were popular then. Again, if you consider the competition Apple and Radio Shack that's true. None of the CP/M machines, including such gross machines as the Superbrain, had that particular design flaw. > Much closer to a standard typewriter (although, admittedly, > not the formal Selectric layout), full upper and lower case (a rarity), Again, you're confusing Apple and Radio Shack with the real world. > and > about the best feel of any terminal keyboard before or since (IMHO). Ick. Give me a VT100 any day. > Untrue. DEC used only 0x0d (line feed) to indicate end-of-line. ^^^^ ^^^^ Carriage Return. DEC used variable record files internally, and separate CR and LF externally. > >(b) The ASCII code allows and (some might say) recommend LF as the sole line > >terminator. > Some might say. I don't. Both characters have a use, and should be used > as such. A carriage return is not a line feed, nor vice versa. And neither is a *line terminator*. That's why ASCII recommends LF as the sole line terminator. Look it up. > Perhaps. I'm certainly not claiming that it was the end-all and be-all of > personal computers; but it is the case that is was a significantly more > flexible and powerful machine than anything else commonly available at the > time. State of the art counts for little if you can't go into a shop and > buy it. You'll have to explain away all the people going into stores and buying multiuser CP/M boxes, from Cromemco and other vendors, if you want to make this claim. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' .