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From: steele@unc.cs.unc.edu (Oliver Steele)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Apple Hates You and other Misconceptions
Message-ID: <1630@unc.cs.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, 14-Oct-87 21:05:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.1630
Posted: Wed Oct 14 21:05:00 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 16-Oct-87 06:45:54 EDT
References: <1629@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <7367@dartvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: steele@unc.UUCP (Oliver Steele)
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 57
Keywords: Monitors

earleh@dartvax.UUCP (Earle R. Horton) writes:
>In article <1629@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>, bc@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU 
>	(bill coderre) writes:
>> DISCLAIM: This is my opinion, not one of Apple or MIT.
>> 
>> AS FOR THIS BUSINESS OF APPLE "HATING" PEOPLE:
>> 
>> I honestly can't believe people who think that Apple would "unload"
>> inferior monitors on anybody. Seriously, why would Apple bother to
>> ship inferior product if they knew that it would reduce its company
>> image and also cost money since people will send broken stuff back?
>
>I don't know about this, but Apple has been known to:

[Mr. Horton then gives examples where Apple shipped (1) unfinished
software, or (2) hardware that wasn't designed as well as it could have
been.]

There's a difference among shipping people unfinished versions of a
piece of software, with a promise that they'll get a finished version
later; shipping people hardware that wasn't perfectly designed; and
shipping people bad instantiations of well designed hardware.  In the
first two cases, Apple couldn't really do anything else -- nothing
else *existed* (keyboards with working shift-cursor keys, or
System 3.1).  In the last, if Apple did ship people bad monitors, it
wasn't because good monitors didn't exist.  Therefore, any accusation
that Apple has been unloading monitors like this can't rest on their
past practices, which may have been poor engineering (although I don't
think they were), but were not poor quality control or deliberate
shoddyness.

>Ship two models (SE and Mac II) which required rather a large volume of
>patches to the ROM in order to operate properly.

I used the II with System 3.1 (*no* ROM patches) for quite a while, and
didn't run into any problems, so it isn't stuff that will *always* show
up.  The PTCH code is pretty large, though; do you know what it fixes?

>I wouldn't say that Apple "hates" anybody, but isn't there the slightest
>chance that there are people in their organization who think Apple will
>look good for coming out with a large number of new products at a fast
>rate, whether such products are ready for sale or not?

I agree with your implicit point here, but as far as the straight
question:  obviously, the people who make the decisions think Apple looks
better coming out with a large number of almost-working products at a fast
rate than coming out with completely done ones at a slower rate.  And for
what it's worth, their released software tends to be pretty polished
except when it's pushed up to meet a hardware deadline.  Take a look at
the Presentation Manager and everything begins to fall into perspective.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oliver Steele				  ...!{decvax,ihnp4}!mcnc!unc!steele
							steele%unc@mcnc.org

	"'As it were' means 'I think that I sound very erudite.'
	 'Per se' is Latin for 'as it were.'  As it were."