eugene@statvax.UUCP (Eugene miya) (02/12/84)
One thing not mentioned by any of the reviews which should have significance is that the Mac runs the new IEEE Floating Point standard. (Are you reading this Stu Feldman? Richard Fateman? Bob Kahan at UCB?) Two of us demo'ed the calculator (It has problems). The highest number we multiplied to was 1E200 before we got bored and tried: 1/0 This is not an error, but INFinity! Similarly, -1/0 is Negative INFinity. We did not try underflow conditions. Regardless whether the Mac is a 16/32 bits machine, this use of the floating point standard will have an impact on MacBasic and MacPascal. Beware applications programmers using the Mac! Opinion: this will be a significant machine, especially if it sells to University students in the $1K range. The $3K, 68K, IBM/CMU project will be blown out of the water if it cannot top this one.