On Mon, 4 Jan 1999 21:18:40 -0600, Jay Maynard <jmaynard@xxxxxxxxxxx> jammed
all night, and by sunrise was overheard remarking:
> On Mon, Jan 04, 1999 at 05:33:37PM -0800, Jan Steinman wrote:
> > All I'll say on the topic is that the Mac should appeal to the same sort of
> > person Olympus appeals to -- someone who isn't afraid to buck the crowd,
> > regardless of the reason.
Actually, Amiga was the Olympus of computers: small and advanced,
compared to the PC and Mac behemoths. We had real multitasking going in
256K back in 1985, ten years before Windows had it, and well, we're
still waiting for MacOS X to add this to the Mac. And I'm not just
saying this as a fan of OMs and a former Amiga systems engineer.
They're also in much the same state today, with Commodore defunct and
any new Amiga developments (the Amiga technology is currently owned by
Gateway) in as much question as any new OM-series developments.
> True, as far as it goes...To be fair, though, you should also note that the
> Mac tends to lag behind the Wintel world in a lot of ways...
That's a fairly recent development, though you could see it coming for
awhile. It wasn't simply that it became Apple vs. Everyone Else on the
hardware front (though it did), but the fact that, while Microsoft
blundered their way forward, technology-wise, they absolutely wrote the
book on marketing tricks to support their position. Meanwhile, Apple did
practically nothing on the technology front, pulled the rug out from
under developers and users alike on the few advanced developments they
did have (OpenDoc, AppleScript, CHRP and the Open Mac, etc).
Bottom line, though, is that your choice between the two isn't
substantially different than the choice between Canon and Nikon, other
than the fact Canon is 550f the market and Microsoft is more like 95%.
And really, that's not entirely fair to Canon or Nikon, since while
they're both building wonder bricks, there is some degree of "wonder"
there. On the computer side, MacOS today lacks the wonder, while the
only wonder I have about Windows is how it can possibly be taken so
seriously as bloated and unreliable as it is today (and because of work,
I'm running both NT and Windows nearly everyday).
You have to look elsewhere for real innovation or reliability. Linux is
hard for non-experts to use, by far more reliable than anything
Microsoft or Apple has ever made. The BeOS is where more innovations
have been applied than anywhere else in the last 5-10 years, and it
might actually be ready for prime time (eg, users, not just developers)
this year. But I digress...
> > This is not meant as a put-down to Wintel users on the list, but those who
> > prefer "safe" choices compute on Wintel and shoot Nikon or Canon.
> Well, you should also note that folks who make their living with their
> computers tend to pick Wintel for many of the same reasons...
People go where the work is. Many large companies don't see any future
in Apple, and that has much more to do with the way Apple has been run
over the last 5 years than anything Microsoft has or hasn't done. In
other cases, it's simply a matter of economics. For circuit design, the
only reasonable tools run on Windows NT or UNIX systems like Solaris,
and even ignoring hardware costs, the software prices run 5x-10x as
much for the same basic thing on UNIX. At least today. The market
doesn't get me a viable choice on this, simply because it doesn't have
to: you will run Windows to get a particular function you need, if it's
specialized enough.
The OS has such a control over the whole industry, this is exactly why
Microsoft is currently on trial -- they have done most everything they
can to exploit that position and grab increasing shares of the
marketplace. Not bad decisions, business-wise, but it has done wonders
to stifle innovation in the PC market.
I rather suspect you would see the same thing happen in cameras if
Canon's share ran up to 750r more of the market -- people would not
acknowledge anyone else's models as a viable choice, no matter what they
did. That would change Canon's focus from bettering Nikon or Minolta or
whomever to controlling their market share and expanding it into other
areas.
> How about someone like me (see http://www.c-com.net/~jmaynard/homebox.html
> for the list of computers I run), with one of everything?
Wow! I _only_ have ten systems here (eleven CPUs, since two are
multiprocessor), and all but four are currently in storage, as a I build
out the cellar to house the whole collection.
--
Dave Haynie | V.P. Technology, Met@box Infonet, AG | http://www.metabox.de
Be Dev #2024 | NB851 Powered! | Amiga 2000, 3000, 4000, PIOS One
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