matthews@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Jim Matthews) (12/28/89)
Well, I guess the Mac system software is getting big -- in a mailing to developers Apple has suggested some "great reasons to buy a CD drive", including (and I quote): * Beta versions of System 7 Software will be distributed *only* on CD-ROM. * All future releases of system software, after System 7 Software, are slated for distribution only on CD-ROM. This second one seems rather absolute (does "All future releases" mean those in 2001??? :-) But even if they just mean System 8, CD-ROM drives had better become cheaper or built in -- I can't imagine buying a Mac without a means to boot up the system software on it. I think this plan points out a problem in Apple's hardware strategy, the lack of standardized, high-capacity removable storage. The 800k disk is too small to hold the system, and I gather from this letter that the 1.4M disks are considered too little, too late. I would like to see Macs come standard with a 20M floppy -- that would keep the capacity of removeable media in line with the size of the system, as well as the growing size of other files people want to move around (e.g. PageMaker, the Tech Note stack, etc.). Jim Matthews Dartmouth Software Development
gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu (12/30/89)
Re: Apple Software Distribution Methods It has always seemed silly to sell a computer with a floppy drive whose capacity is less than main memory. At least the original IBM PC got this part of the system design right. They *SHOULD* have gone straight to a 2.8Mb floppy (at least) and bypassed the 1.4 floppy entirely. It is especially silly that, 12 months after offering a 1.4Mb floppy, Apple will increase the main memory requirements of system 7.0 to 2Mb >> 1.4Mb. What a lack of planning. Similar to great wines, Apple will sell no hardware before it's cheap.
dawyd@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (David Walton) (01/06/90)
In article <126900135@p.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > >Re: Apple Software Distribution Methods > >It has always seemed silly to sell a computer with a floppy drive >whose capacity is less than main memory. At least the original IBM >PC got this part of the system design right. Does this seem silly to anybody else beside me? If I get a system with 8MB of memory, then is it silly to have a floppy drive which cannot read an 8MB disk? I didn't think so. ;-) David -- David Walton Internet: dwal@tank.UChicago.EDU University of Chicago { Any opinions herein are my own, not } Computing Organizations { those of my employers (or anybody else). }
dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) (01/11/90)
In article <572@gargoyle.uchicago.edu> dawyd@gargoyle.uchicago.edu.UUCP (David Walton) writes: >If I get a system with 8MB of memory, then is it silly to have a floppy >drive which cannot read an 8MB disk? I didn't think so. ;-) Jobs put a 256MB floppy on his NeXT machines. People complain about that, 'cuz the media is $50. Moral of the story: You can't please all of the people ANY of the time. -- Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office Internet: s-dorner@uiuc.edu UUCP: {convex,uunet}!uiucuxc!dorner IfUMust: (217) 244-1765