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From: espen@well.UUCP (Peter Espen)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: IBM vs. Mac debate
Message-ID: <978@well.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-Apr-86 21:20:42 EST
Article-I.D.: well.978
Posted: Wed Apr 23 21:20:42 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Apr-86 05:21:47 EST
References: <2515@sdcc6.UUCP> <1019@runx.OZ> <13351@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 71
Summary: A great IBM flame!

> Right, they will know all right. If the future is modelled on the past, it
> won't be good.
> 
> What I think that you don't understand is the concept of UPWARD COMPATIBILTY.
> Upward compatibility means that if I develop software today, I can run it 
> tomorrow.  It DOES NOT MEAN that you can spend more money and buy new goodies
> to attach to the old box.
> Larry Mazlack
>

	Here is a great reply that I pulled off a local BBS. It was written
by an un-named third party.......

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
  
 Just a few points to spur your memory:
  
  Disk drives:  Do you remember that the original IBM PC came out with
  single-sided diskette drives (holding a vast 160Kbytes per diskette), and
  that as soon as double-sided ones came out (less than a year later, as I
  recall) the singles were instantly worthless? Did IBM offer an upgrade (as
  Apple does on its internal drive, at least)?  I have a pile of them in a
  back room of my shop.  They're yours if you want 'em.  So now we have a
  double-sided "standard" that allows a puny 360K per diskette, though
  current technology permits drives with up to 5 times the storage to be very
  affordable.  Now the PC AT (of which I'll say more in a moment) has a 1.2
  Mbyte drive, a big improvement.  Does anyone distribute software on such
  diskettes?  Does anyone carry data from place to place on such diskettes? 
  Does anyone use them for anything?  Do they even work reliably reading and
  writing good old 360K diskettes?  No:  PC diskette storage won't get any
  better until IBM bites the bullet and comes out with, you guessed it,
  3-1/2" double-sided drives storing 800Kbytes, sometime Real Soon Now.
  
  Memory and processors:  Do you have an IBM PC with 640Kbytes of memory on
  your desk? I do.  Do you wish you could have more?  Have you read the
  articles in PC Week about all the squabbling over competing "extended
  memory" formats?  Have you looked at how those boards work to see what
  dreadful, bug-engendering kluges they are?  Have you sighed realizing that
  any program wishng to take advantage of such memory has to be upgraded and
  redistributed?  IBM's "power" machine is the AT, which doesn't even have
  the same processor as those 5 million regular PCs out there, but still
  can't handle any more memory without being incompatible.  Even in crippled
  (8086 emulation) mode, it's still easy to write a program that runs fine on
  a PC and blows up on an AT.  Most popular programs did, until they were
  upgraded by their manufacturers.  It's IBM-compatible, though, by
  definition if by nothing else.
  
  Operating systems:  Do you remember DOS 1.1?  Do you remember spending a
  lot of time switching diskettes from 8-sector unlabelled DOS 1.1 format to
  9-sector labelled DOS 2.0 format?  And then to 2.1 again a few months
  later?  Do you remember waiting for your favorite compiler to work under
  DOS 2.1 (not to mention supporting 8086 "large model" and floating point)? 
  I do.  Does good old WordStar support DOS 2.1 pathnames even now in 1986? 
  Meanwhile, many manufacturers still distribute software on single-sided
  8-sector unlabelled diskettes.
  
  Display hardware, etc.:  When I sit down with a new piece of IBM PC
  software I try to figure out if it will run on my PC at all by looking at
  the "hardware requirements" section of the manual, if there is one.  Then I
  look through the "foolproof" installation batch file to see what ghastly
  things it wants to do to my disk directories to install itself.  Then I
  configure it for the type of monitor and display adapter I have, then for
  the type of printer I have.  Then I come back the next day and, assuming
  all of the above works, I start to learn to use the program.  (I couldn't
  use a very expensive program I was supposed to demo today, because it
  insisted that I have a Hercules card.)
				  When I sit down with a new piece of
  Mac software, I stick it in the drive and start working, probably without
  looking at the manual.