Tabakal@UB.CC.UMICH.EDU (01/18/89)
Normally, I'm a peaceful guy. I love flowers, children, and walks in the park. But, in recognition of MLK day just passed, I am sometimes reminded that a little resistance never hurt anyone. In this case, when I read the following: > "I would hope the Mac displaces the Apple ][ at a rapid rate; > it is a dead-end architecture, while the Mac is a mature system," > said Ken King, president of Educom, a university computing > consortium based in Washington, D.C. ... well, my blood pressure went up a bit. You see, I really do believe that Apple still wants to support Apple ][ owners most of the time. Their support has waivered (sp?) in the past as acknowledged by John Sculley at AppleFest September, but it's still a fairly viable market, and I don't think they're going to throw us to the wolves. Maybe do some market merging, but keep some type of Apple ][ around for the future. $SET Farenheit-451-style-kerosene-hose streaming On the OTHER hand, it's folks like Ken King who really make me mad. It seems to me that the President of Educom would have a well publicized E-Mail address (I wish I knew what it was off the top of my head). I don't know how others feel, but for me, if I were to find out such a well publicized E-Mail address, I'd use it to send Ken King a diskful of my thoughts on replacing the Apple ][ with the Mac. You see, Ken represents Educom which is a university organization. The Mac is already well supported there. Let him mind his own business on the Apple ]['s "dead architecture". No one is saying that the Apple ][ is the ultimate college/university machine. It's just an option that Apple should continue to support. If people want to use it for that level, fine. For example, the University of Michigan is the largest Mac site outside of Apple, itself, I believe. It's true. Recently written up in Forbes or Business Week. If I'm off, then maybe we're #3 in size. In any case, the campus installs hundreds and hundreds of public access Macs every year. There's still an Apple ][ user group here. Small, but providing support for those who want it. In a survey last year, 79% of incoming Freshmen indicated that they had used an Apple ][ in high school. Many people such as myself brought them from home to school as our parents upgraded to some MS-DOS architecture machine. The market isn't growing at the level it once was, but we continue to support what we can. In any case, the Apple ][ support does not hurt the Macs on campus, and the Macs *should* not hurt the Apple ][ support. The two not only co-exist, but work together nicely in some cases. Macs and GS's use the same sound files. We have one storehouse for GIF files for these and other computers. So, Ken King is not being fair when we makes statements like the one above. If I had his well publicized E-Mail address, I'd call him on it, and also send the address to the list to start a mail-in campaign to let him know how we feel. Is this very nice? Well, maybe not. But, someone with his stature in the computing community does more damage to our cause with these statements than most people realize. Sculley listens to people like these. So does IBM, Sun, Apollo, DEC, and name your own favorite computer manufacturer. If Apple wants to prime the college computer market by dumping on the Apple ][, they're going to have to listen to educators on what is needed in a K-12 Mac.' $Set flaming-hose Off I've gone on too long already. Most people will have skipped out of this message and gone on to the next. But, I'd like to suggest that people not accept statements from Ken King and others without challenging them. Send a letter. Talk to them in person (the Educom confererence is here at University of Michigan next year). Do whatever, but don't let others destroy the Apple ][ by doing Apple's dirty work for them. I'll try to go back to being a nice person now, but wait until I find out his address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Todd A. Bakal Cubs Magic Number: 163, tied for #1 U of M Apple User's Group Ann Arbor, Michigan ARPA: Tabakal@ub.cc.umich.edu BITnet: Tabakal@UMICHUB