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From: t-jacobs@cs.utah.edu (Tony Jacobs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Xerox sues Apple!!! (Expandability)
Message-ID: <1989Dec22.124712.22887@hellgate.utah.edu>
Date: 22 Dec 89 19:47:12 GMT
References: <6767@tank.uchicago.edu> <1989Dec17.112127.27333@me.toronto.edu> <14960@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <4574@ur-cc.UUCP> <37366@apple.Apple.COM> <625@bogart.UUCP> <1989Dec21.010731.5240@hellgate.utah.edu> <630@hepburn.UUCP>
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 61

In article <630@hepburn.UUCP> jerry@hepburn.UUCP (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>In article t-jacobs@cs.utah.edu (Tony Jacobs) writes:
>>In article jerry@bogart.UUCP (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>>
>>>the PC as well.  You get real.  There isn't one area of expandability
>>>where a Mac has more options than a PC. ...
>>
>>Oh, can the PC expand to two monitors and have contiguous workspace that
>>is user configurable??
>>
>
>Gosh, I knew I should have made myself absolutely clear...

Oh come on now, if your going to stick your overstating foot in your mouth
then your going to have to taste it. The thing that bugs me the most about
these flame wars is that too many people make these kind of statements that
assume they have all knowledge. By saying that there isn't *one* area of
expandability where a Mac has more options, or by the one statement that 
someone made that there isn't *one* command that the Mac can do faster, is just
begging for flamage. Perhaps that's what they want, perhaps they were just
being sloppy in their selection of words. 

If people are going to participate in these kinds of wars they they are going
to have to either be careful with the language they use or put up with the
replys they get.

Now back to the story line.

>I guess I was talking about USEFUL and SENSIBLE expandability options.
>Sorry, I'll try to be more clear next time.  Thanks for the correction.
>

Hey, maybe it's not USEFUL or SENSIBLE to you, *SO*WHAT*. There are people
who use these capabilities and have extremely sensible uses for them. Just
because those uses don't fit into your little world. The real point I was
trying to make is that there very well may be areas of expandability that the
Mac has *MORE* options than the PC. Here's some possiblities for some others:
(Notice I said "possible", I don't have all knowledge and I don't know a great
deal about what's available for the PC, so the following is just a guess)

-- Stereo sound digitization & playback. (Now I know ther'll be those who say
yeah I can put in a card - but can any and every application expect to be able
to use sound and use it the same way and have it work?)
 
-- Memory expansion. I'm talking about being able to stick in large amounts of
memory and be able to use it for things other than a ram disk. Big as on the
order of 2 Gig! Can the PC use that memory without the application being
specifically written to use it?

-- 24/32 bit color boards. I'll bet that any application written for the PC
will have to be specifically written for a 24/32 bit color board, whereas the
a Mac application would work with any of the number of boards available. Mind
you the Mac application still has to be written to use the color but it doesn't
have to be written for the color board.

Your point about there being *MORE* options doesn't mean much anyway. It's not
how many options you have, it's the quality of the options (and to many, cost.)
We're all trying to do some work on computers (well, some have fun too) and my
belief is that every tool has it's place. Use the tool that works the best and
don't try to tell me that your tool is the best for everything.
Tony Jacobs * Center for Engineering Design * U of U * t-jacobs@cs.utah.edu