mo@seismo.UUCP (Mike O'Dell) (04/27/85)
The 7300 is somewhat faster than a regular Mac for loading programs, but compare apples with apples, so to speak! Compare the 7300 with a Mac with a Hyperdrive and see what you get. The 7300 isn't that much faster any more for simple program loading. The big difference is in the performance of the "window" system. The window system on the 7300 takes several (read 3-5) seconds to respond to a mouse click on the resize or drag boxes in the window frame. THIS IS ABSURD! The Mac can blast the entire screen contents around several tens of times in this time period, not to mention responding to menu pull-downs and reverse video highlighting in real time. The 7300 is more computer in many hardware ways than a Mac and it does have performance advantages, but to infer that the environment offered by the two machines is somehow similar is just wrong. The 7300 is the nominal shell/character stream command interface all duded-up with a rented tux. (NOTE: there is nothing wrong with rented tuxes, particularly in light of the constraints the developers were under when they did the product!) This is not bad - when developing code in the classic edit/compile/link/debug cycle, I get tired of Icons and not being able to put the Mac on autopilot (not to mention not having Make!). But lets get serious - program development is NOT a common activity of the vast majority of computer users. We hackers have a distorted view of the world from that standpoint. For dealing with normal people, the Mac interface is astonishing!! I have a (very) small shelf full of manuals on my collection of Mac software, most of which are largely unread! I can do financials, business planning, project management, process words till the world looks level, draw beautiful charts, do illustrations and viewgraphs, and keep track of information with embedded pictures, not to mention write programs, spending less total startup time than I spent learning VI. Don't get me wrong - for big development efforts (and even "small" programs often entail large efforts - building Mac applications certainly fall in that category!) give me a Vax/68K/32K/3b5 running a good Unix port with all the tools I need to really be effective at creating software systems. But last night when I wanted to do several front-panel layouts for a piece of hardware I'm building, did I call up my favorite Vax? No way - MacDraw let me evaluate several different panel layouts both on the screen and on paper pasted to the front of the box. Adding a few alignment bulls-eyes and a few other landmarks gave me a drilling template. THAT is productivity!!! Again - I don't want to read thousands of flames about what you do or don't do - it simply doesn't matter. Real people in the Real world want solutions to their problems - not technology which, in the hands of a suitable wizard, COULD be turned into a solution. Finally, if in the market for a small Unix box, the 3b2 and the 7300 would figure prominetly in my decision process, along with several other outstanding 68K and 32K products available. -Mike O'Dell