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From: burton@fortune.UUCP (Philip Burton)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: IBM-PC as a 370 ??
Message-ID: <2156@fortune.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Jan-84 14:34:26 EST
Article-I.D.: fortune.2156
Posted: Tue Jan  3 14:34:26 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Jan-84 05:11:02 EST
References: <1684@ihuxf.UUCP>
Organization: Fortune Systems, Redwood City, CA
Lines: 32

About five years ago, when the Apple // was the newest (only) game in town,
there was some discussion in Datamation about putting OS/370 on a micro.
One very perceptive person, it could have been Portia Isaacson, raised the
point that OS/370/micro would not be very exciting.  Who needs that batch
orientation, the author wrote, with that ##@&*& JCL, etc.  (Anyone who has
ever worked with JCL, TSO, etc., will think that even cp/m is nice, let alone
UNIX.)

Unless VM/CMS is **much** improved over what it was when I last used it in
1979, that too isn't exactly user-friendly, including the manuals for which
IBM is famous.  (Obfuscation raised to a fine art.)  At that time, the editor was
awful, simply awful, to anyone who had used even TSO, let alone WYLBUR.  

So, one might conclude that a PC running CMS isn't really a
personal computer in the sense of spreadsheets, easy word processing,
etc.  Rather, it's a low cost 370, or 4300, another "fighting machine" designed
to keep the Fortune 1000 all Blue.

If I'm were a programmer who is used to CMS COBOL or FORTRAN or whatever, then
I'd love the new PC.  If I were my secretary struggling to learn a simple
communications program, I'd quit before reading all those CMS manuals.

-- 

  Phil Burton, Fortune Systems:
  
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