rburns@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Randy Burns) (02/19/88)
I was noticing that Apple is making AU/X pretty freely available through VAR's. I've been thinking that one nice way to package this product might be on CD-ROM. My understanding is that most of the UNIX utilities won't be be needed most of the time. You could then copy over the most needed stuff to your 40meg hard disk, and leave make efficient use of your hardware. I plan on buying a CD-ROM drive for my Mac II as soon as one comes out that can handle both CD-ROM and some kind of WORM format at a price under $1800. This would mean that folk like me could upgrade to A/UX at fairly little marginal cost.
andrew@ems.Ems.MN.ORG (Andrew C. Esh) (02/26/88)
In article <20999@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> rburns@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Randy Burns) writes: >I was noticing that Apple is making AU/X pretty freely available through >VAR's. I've been thinking that one nice way to package this product >might be on CD-ROM. My understanding is that most of the UNIX utilities >won't be be needed most of the time. You could then copy over the most >needed stuff to your 40meg hard disk, and leave make efficient use of >your hardware. I plan on buying a CD-ROM drive for my Mac II as soon as one >comes out that can handle both CD-ROM and some kind of WORM format at a >price under $1800. This would mean that folk like me could upgrade to >A/UX at fairly little marginal cost. Well, I know some guys over at the 'U' who would let me use their paper tape reader, so if Apple were to distribute A/UX on paper tape, I could upload it over there, and then download it to my Mac over the 300 baud phone line ... 8-) Get real, guy. Apple is not going to go to the trouble of mastering and duplicating a CD-ROM for those six of eight of US who have CD-ROM drives. You are right. CD-ROM would be excellent. Perfect size for all kinds of goodies and tools. You can never lose the disk in a software crash. It would only cost a few bucks to get a new disk if your dog ate the original, and so on ... But we need a company like Sony to go out and market eight million CD-ROM drives before a company like Apple would have any interest in using it as a distribution medium. It's a classic 'catch-22'. No one wants to publish anything until the hardware gets popular, and no one wants to build the hardware until the demand is there, and there is no demand until the disks are being published. (Three parts, looped ... is that a 'catch-33" ? :-) CD-ROM CD-ROM CD-ROM C'mon, everybody, think positive. p.s I think I'll dial up MACDTS on AppleLink and suggest this, maybe a lightbulb will come on over someone's head. -- Andrew C. Esh DOMAIN: andrew@ems.MN.ORG APPLELINK: D0492 EMS/McGraw-Hill UUCP: ihnp4!meccts!ems!andrew AT&T: (612) 829-8200