Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!ANDREW.CMU.EDU!jm7e+ From: jm7e+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU ("Jeremy G. Mereness") Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: Danger of IIgs+ Message-ID: Date: 9 Jun 88 18:38:40 GMT References: <8806091250.aa17392@SMOKE.BRL.ARPA> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 74 >After reading and chuckling over Phil Goetz write-up on the IIgs+ I was >amazed to see his warning borne out by the response subsequently posted >by Todd South. >what Phil posted was clearly of humorous and satirical intent. That anyone >should take personal umbrage is beyond belief. Could it be that Phil hit >the nail on the head with his whimsy? I don't know... I also responded to Paul's "satire," and upon rereading his post the first paragraph or two does have the taste of good, healthy sarcasm. However, dig this... > The relation between users and machines is evident in the history of the >Apple II line. Owners of the original Apple II were hobbyists who often got t>heir Apple with the specific intentions of rewiring the motherboard to see >what would happen. Owners of the II+ were on the whole not as deeply >into electronics, but were not afraid to install various proven hacks >on their motherboard, or at least to do the shift-key mod and video EPROM >installation themselves. This is true. He might as well have mentioned that the Apple 1 was orginally designed for electronics hackers; it wasn't powerful enough for anything else. >Then came the IIc, which Apple specifically designed for the anticipated >next generation of users who would quake at the prospect of inserting a >card into a slot themselves. This also is true. Take a look at your local high school and explore how the teachers and librarians view the idea of opening up a computer and fiddling with the insides. >people who, upon buying IIes or IIcs, >lose this rationality for a kind of pseudoreligon in which the computer >is treated as a holy object which is meant only to run precanned software, >and whose lid may be opened only by members of the Priesthood of Dealers >who have proved their right to work on the machines by successfuly charging >$40 to open the lid. This is true as well. You see, I responded because Mr. Paul touched on some issues in his article that are a little too true as computers become more powerful. As computers can more handily perform the work we don't want to, programmers have become lazier, code has become fatter and more inefficient, and now, Macintoshes and even //GS's aren't practical w/o a hard disk and require programming environments (avail. for another $100 or more) to program on them. There is an arcane elegance to the old ]['s of yesteryear that made us work a little harder and encouraged us to understand the inner workings of the machines instead of trusting a compiler and figuring the damned thing is so fast that no-one will know the difference between good programming and a heaping mess. Luckily, the GS may still be programmed and understood in this manner. Not the Mac, nor the IBM's, and probably not any other system to ever appear on the market again. Nope, Paul started off with a farce, but then got a little serious. When he implied that the GS+ would be another closed-system machine such as the Mac or IBM, he touched upon some truth; enough to have made the article credible. Thus, my response. Capt. Albatross jm7e+@andrew.cmu.edu ============ disclaimer: These opinions are mine and will remain so until more intelligent or insightful or informed people are kind enough to show me the error of my ways. Remember: A mind is a terrible thing to baste.