tm2f+@andrew.cmu.edu (Terence David Murphy) (04/30/88)
This message comments on several of the discussions that are currently being discussed here, mostly in reply to the "A Programmer Praises the Mac" bulletin and a more recent discussion that is starting to become a "my computer is better than your computer" discussion regarding the Mac and the IBM. I will state now that I own a Mac SE with internal 20 meg HD (from Apple). I also have a roommate with a Mac II, AppleColor monitor, 2 megs of memory, and Apple's 40 meg HD. I am a freshman at CMU, and I work on IBMs for my father and for a small business as a data entry clerk. >>In response to the recent questions from Amiga users that the large screens available, and easily useable, for the Mac are too costly and do not constitute an advantage of the Mac over other computers. I would like to mention a program called Stepping Out II. This program, available for around $60, emulates a large screen on the Mac Plus, SE, and II (I don't know about 512k machines, but it should probably work also) by setting off a portion of memory (for a 1024x990 black and white resolution, it takes up 192K) and making a virtual screen. It then transfers a 512x342 (or various Mac II resolutions) window of this virtual screen to the actual screen for viewing. Thus, what you see is like holding a piece of cardboard with an appropriately sized hole cut in it over one of these big screens and moving it around to see everything. This may seem silly, but this program quickly becomes addictive and is a very economical alternative to the large screens. It is VERY fast, will hold the menu bar and other sections of the screen always being visible (under user control, of course), and offers enlarge and reduce features so you can work with the big picture a bit better. But its main ability comes from the way it follows the mouse so you can move your view. This process quickly becomes subconscious and it allows you to use programs more efficiently than you ever could before. If you always wanted a big screen on your Mac, see if any dealers around your area carry this product and check it out. I highly recommend it for normal use and it is a MUST if you have at least 2 megabytes and are using Multifinder (it means you don't have to have overlapping windows anymore, or even change their size, if you have several applications open and want to see information in all of them). It will also work in color on the Mac II (up to 8 bit color, due to the lack of true standards among 24 bit cards, it hasn't been made to work with those). It will most likely not work with big screens on the Mac Plus and SE, according to them (it's from Berkeley System Design, if you want to know that), but should work with current big screens on the Mac II (I recall reading that somewhere, but I may be wrong about it). Now this program could not exist if it wasn't for the versatility in the Mac OS to accept large screens. I personally don't see any other personal computers out there that do something like this so well, with virtually no compatibility problems (well, Strategic Conquest wouldn't run with the big screen but that could have been a number of problems other than Stepping Out directly). And I'd really like to see something like this working on an IBM or Amiga (not as a "Mac is better than those computers," but by the simple fact that I think all computers should be capable of something like this. But "should" isn't always true, and I'd think this would be impossible on IBM and have many more compatibility problems on the Amiga). >>A recent IBM vs. Mac post was bringing up the age-old question of open-architecture vs. closed-architecture machines and also mentioned a few things with multitasking. Here are my personal comments on these matters. There were also a few things about color in there, too, and I can't resist that one. From about four years of experience on IBMs and one year of experience on Mac, I'd like to mention a few things about practical, average machines. First off, the execution of open-architecture on the IBM has been devistating to customer sanity and the development of software. This stems mostly from having the video circuitry on a card. If I recall correctly, the major different choices between screens are: IBM Monochrome, Hercules Graphics, IBM CGA (discontinued, I believe), IBM EGA, VGA, and a few little miscellaneous cards, but the choices aren't what matters. What matters is that a given program must a) ask the user what kind video card you're using and b) have different drivers to compensate for these different screens. Thus we wind up with the rather complicated installation procedures for IBM programs (I've done quite a few software installations and I've never liked them). The Mac II, now having gone to a system of letting the user choose his video system, is avoiding many of these problems because software simply has to be written to run on any size screen (which is rather simple, really) and call things in the way Apple wants them to and it will have very few compatibility problems. You can see this when you run a program that was written before the Mac II ever existed on a Mac II with its higher resolution screen and you find out that this program will use the extra screen space and run without a glitch. Whereas, on the IBM way of handling video systems, if a program was written before this new video standard existed and your card does not support multiple video standards (EGA, CGA, and Hercules Graphics or typical combinations like that), then this software is unusable on your computer. I don't see why this has to be the case when I can go use my roommate's Mac II and run a very old version of MacPaint on it. It may not use the whole screen, but it works (in two color mode, of course, but it is still runable). One reader pointed out that a large majority of the things that are put on cards in IBMs are built into the Macs, thus meaning you don't need cards. I personally would have always like a slot or two, but I agree with this statement. With my Mac SE, the only card I might want to put in it is an accelerator. So why do I need a lot of slots in there? Cards have only caused me problems in the past (IBMs and Apple IIs) as I'm trying to configure a computer to have the hardware I want. Granted, there will always be things that a specific person might want, such as a D/A converter or a transputer on a card, but that's why I would like one or two slots. Just don't design a computer that depends on them for everything, like the IBM (the PS/2s have put most stuff onto the main board and thus made cards less useful, just like all the PCompatible manufacturers have, but if you've got a computer like that I'd like to see you come up with a common use for still having those slots). Various people have been talking about the Mac not having color until the Mac II. I feel that I'm in a similar situation to a very strong majority of computer users when I state that over 90% of the time I have text on the screen. Having looked at a number of computers with color, I've only found one computer that has the resolution and quality of color that I think I might be able to sit in front of that screen for 10 hours straight and not develop severe eye strain (I do this on a semi-regular basis on my Mac SE, and the screen never bugs me at all). I personally find the text on Amigas and Atari STs to be unsatisfactory for this kind of work, and I don't see how various IBM columnists can be saying that IBM EGA is good enough for text since I start developing eye strain after about 30 minutes of working on one of those systems (on an NEC Multisync, I'm not sure the particular brand of video card). The computer with color that I do think I could use for extended periods of time is the Mac II (surprise), mostly because that monitor and card combination is so good at producting standard black on white images. I find it much better than IBM VGA systems (the same resolution as the Mac II, but the quality isn't there) for both text and graphics. I can't work on VGA systems for extended periods of time, either, without straining my eyes. So for people in my situation, who deal with mostly text and graphics that don't require color for anything, I strictly think of color as "neat" but don't see any advantages. I even preferred monochrome to color for games on an Apple II because of less eye strain. There will always be applications that need color, but as a percentage of typical uses, the drawbacks outweigh the advantages and I'll stick with monochrome. And if I was in the market for a Mac II, which has the only color screen that I would buy, I think I would get a two-page display instead because of the increase in utility. A short note on multitasking. My roommate uses Multifinder almost constantly and we've only found one program that does not run under Multifinder but does under Finder (the Mac II has other compatibility problems so let's leave this out of Multifinder's compatibility problems). To me, this makes Multifinder immensely useful, and I'm upgrading to 2.5 megabytes soon so I can take full advantage of this ability. I haven't had any experience with DESQview (I can't remember how to spell it, obviously), but from what I've read in Jerry Pournelle's montly article in BYTE magazine (who uses it almost constantly and seems to love it), it is much poorer in execution than Multifinder, seeming to take a considerable amount of "tricking" to get things to work properly, if they will at all. And from a very simple policy with this author, I doubt it's true multitasking (which Multifinder isn't either, since the foremost application can get the full power of the computer if it needs it and this isn't so with other multitasking systems I've used) because this author uses it and is strongly against multitasking (for a reason that says he would like Multifinder because you don't get any delayed reactions when you start doing things like you do in other systems). I think DESQview is mostly used as a way to have multiple programs in memory at the same time. But as I said, I don't have any direct experience with this product. As for OS/2, if it's going to be that big I'd rather have UNIX. I would like to mention that I'm extremely unsatisfied with a number of Apple's policies, such as the price for replacement of the SE's fan, these silly, unproductive lawsuits, and various other things that I'm sure you all know about. But when I've been asked to recommend computers to people over the past year (at least six computers purchased by people who really listened to my opinions on the matter), I still have to recommend Macintosh because I do not see a single other computer out there that is really worthy of being called a personal computer. For my definition of a personal computer, it should be one that is easy to set up and use, does not require extensive knowledge of the way the computer works in order to get it to do things, and should have software available to do any task that the user wants to do with it. If Apple maintains their current policies, the moment that another computer exists that satisfies this definition I will begin recommending it over Macintosh because I also believe that a company should act in the best interests of its customers, which Apple isn't doing. We now have three Macintoshes in my family, and the amusing thing is that this has arisen from a situation I was in several years ago. I used IBMs, I "liked" (translate: tolerated) IBMs, but I have always felt that a computer should be easy to use, bought a Mac strongly against my father's wishes (the agency he works for uses IBMs and he didn't want two different computer types being used), and now two of my brothers have Macs from my recommendations. I've even made my dad extremely jealous because of the ease of use and power of Mac programs compared to IBM. Example: I use Microsoft Word, he uses Multimate Advantage II (it comes on at least 12 disks, I think). From my experiences with both programs, Word has more features, is faster, and can be very useable without ever touching a manual (Multimate is the exact opposite with regard to the ease of use). Another example: a rather well selling set of programs on IBM called Graph Master and Diagram Master and there are a few others. They are rediculously slow on an IBM PC, but a friend of mine said their speed is "acceptable" on a Deskpro 386/20. I would hope so!! Any program like that that takes a 20 MHz 32-bit computer to make it run at an acceptable speed is clearly bad programming and has increased my negative opinions towards IBM computers and software to a very strong degree. And one last point (yes, I'm almost done): with regard to people saying how hard the Mac is to program. Yes, I will admit it is a lot to know and a lot to do, but compare Microsoft Excel on the Mac and on the IBM. Speeds of the two programs are (it's amazing that they got the IBM running this fast) comparable, but Excel on the Mac is about 500K installed and 3.6 megabytes on the IBM. Which would you rather write? (The IBM version is a full implementation, running under Windows, of the Mac version, running on an EGA screen with windows and everything else like a Mac.) I think I've stated my views adequately now. One very last thing: I would really appreciate it if this discussion would continue to be a civilized discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of various computer systems and not turn into the flaming ranting and raging that these discussions typically resort to on other bulletin board systems. Thank you. Terence Murphy tm2f+@andrew.cmu.edu Disclaimer: disclaimers are only for people with money.
cjs900@csc.anu.oz (05/04/88)
In article <EWSGwNy00V4Dy100Bx@andrew.cmu.edu>, tm2f+@andrew.cmu.edu (Terence David Murphy) writes: > state now that I own a Mac SE with internal 20 meg HD (from Apple). I also > have a roommate with a Mac II, AppleColor monitor, 2 megs of memory, and > Apple's 40 meg HD. I am a freshman at CMU, and I work on IBMs for my father > and for a small business as a data entry clerk. Well it seems that from the outset your views are going to be biased, with you, your roomie, family, friends etc etc all being rabid Macaholics. > In response to the recent questions from Amiga users that the large screens > available, and easily useable, for the Mac are too costly and do not constitute > an advantage of the Mac over other computers. This is the most frequent complaint I hear about the Mac. It's screen is a toy, hence the 'Macintoy' term coined by whoever. The full sized screens for the Mac II are very nice, but also, like the Mac II itself, outrageously expensive. I would like to mention a program called Stepping Out II. This > program, available for around $60, emulates a large screen on the Mac Plus, SE, > and II (I don't know about 512k machines, but it should probably work also) by > setting off a portion of memory (for a 1024x990 black and white resolution, it > takes up 192K) and making a virtual screen. It then transfers a 512x342 (or > various Mac II resolutions) window of this virtual screen to the actual screen > for viewing. Thus, what you see is like holding a piece of cardboard with an > appropriately sized hole cut in it over one of these big screens and moving it > around to see everything. This may seem silly -- You said it! :-) > Having looked at a number of computers with color, I've only found one > computer that has the resolution and quality of color that I think I might be > able to sit in front of that screen for 10 hours straight and not develop > severe eye strain (I do this on a semi-regular basis on my Mac SE, and the > screen never bugs me at all). I personally find the text on Amigas and Atari > STs to be unsatisfactory for this kind of work, Well I think this may be down to an individual's eyesight, and what they are sensitive to. I have never stared at my Amiga's screen for text processing for more than 4 hours tops, I would think that 10 hours continuous *any* personal computer would be enough to make anyone's eyes feel tired, regardless of resolution! A friend of mine using Draw on a Mac II for long periods of time while designing PCB's complained of headaches. Different strokes for different folks. The same can be said about Personal Computers. The Mac is a nice piece of Hardware, and I use one at work lots. (Admittedly, mainly due to Laser printing facilities...) The Mac II is even nicer albeit ridiculously pricey, but because of what it all boils down to, what an individual wants from a Personal Computer, my loyalty remains with Amiga. Have a nice day. Chris Stanek. Australian National University.
dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David M. O'Rourke) (05/07/88)
In article <41@csc.anu.oz> cjs900@csc.anu.oz writes: > The Mac II is even nicer albeit >ridiculously pricey, but because of what it all boils down to, what an >individual wants from a Personal Computer, my loyalty remains with Amiga. Then what are you doing on comp.sys.mac? David M. O'Rourke +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ | dorourke@polyslo | Disclaimer: All opinions in this message are mine, but | | | if you like them they can be yours too. | | | Besides I'm just a student so what do I | | | know! | |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | When you have to place a disclaimer in your mail you know it's a sign | | that there are TOO many Lawyer's. | +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++