gregr@tekig1.UUCP (09/18/83)
Well, what an enlightning experience participating in this net can be! A while back I posted a REPLY to another's article that maintained that Apples were only useful for playing games and useless for any REAL work. Since this same theme had appeared many times in this newsgroup, I thought it would be fair to enlighten the writer, critics, and most importantly owners stuck with their useless Apples that with some relatively inexpensive add-ons that this PC could perform very capabably. I specifically called the Apple an "old warhorse that still has some life left in it". Well friends you should have read my mail. You have of course read the posted replys which I also enjoyed reading very much. Some of the mail sent to me was also enjoyable (both agreeing, disagreeing, and raising new topics). However, a very few letters were amazing to read! You would have thought I had kicked someone's pet (I almost said dog, but I can only imagine what would have been made out of that innocent remark). It seems that for some people who have bought an expensive new computer to be told that an "old warhorse" may still be updated to do something useful somehow brings out insecurities about their purchases. Anyway I would never have spoken of this again except for the recent net posting by an IBM owner that didn't read my article too carefully. (I omit the name here, no reason to get personal). He made several inaccurate statements that I really must correct. I hope he will reread my original reply more carefully but I feel I must set the record straight. I apologize if any inexactness in my orignal statements led to his confusion. 1. It was stated that the purpose of my article was to claim the Apple was superior to the IBM. Nothing could be further from the truth. I clearly stated that the reason for my REPLY was that another writer had claimed Apple's were only good for playing games and I wished to dispute that thesis. I never claimed the Apple was generally superior to any machine and only mentioned the IBM at one point in the article. (I stated that I thought the 80 column display of my Apple was superior to that of MY IBM. Sorry I still do. I look at my IBM during the day and my Apple at night and this is my personal opinion. Surely one claim of superiority for one parameter doesn't constitute an endorsement of an entire machine.) 2. Next follows an number of specific arguments on why an IBM is superior to an Apple including such issues as directly addressable memory space (rather than bank switching), MS-DOS vs CPM 3.0, etc. I generally agree with these statements, again it is implied that I was arguing Apple vs IBM. Nonsense! The feature's I described for the Apple were intended to show that it could be made very useful. I compared it to no specific PC. I only asked the question to the user if his PC could be configured as flexibily. My purpose was to encourage the user to compare his PC versus the Apple. (The brand of his PC was never even identified). 3. I was accused of calling the 6502 a wonderful, powerful uP. The writer also stated that if he had an S-100 system he would take offense, claiming that I had implied the Apple was as good as an S100 system or better. I absoulutely said nothing about the 6502 being great or powerful. I did say that I believed more software was available for it than any single processor. I further said that between Apple DOS and CPM that more software was available for the Apple than other PC's. I still believe this to be true. I have seen few disputes on this. I likened the Apples peripherial expandability to the S-100 bus with an advantage of letting card manufacturers focus on a specific machine. This exact same thing can be said of the IBM or IBM lookalikes but I wasn't comparing Apples specifically to IBM's. No claim of buss superiority was made, no S-100 owner wrote in protest. 4. I was accused of being ill-informed, prejudiced, taking a position on a soapbox to shout false information, and rejecting any new ideas. Wow! I really have become a dinosaur. Perhaps this is the type of reaction to expect if you try to say something not generally accepted as gospel by the REAL PROGRAMMERS on net.micro. Actually since the writer freely volunteered that he had never even seen an Apple with an 80 column display, can we conclude that he has seen none of the other enhancements of which I wrote? If this is true, then I would ask who is ill-informed, prejudiced, etc. etc. If anyone would like to debate the superiority of the Apple vs Brand Y then that would be great and I would even take the Apple over SOME brands. However the IBM is obviously a superior PC over the Apple (that doesn't make the Apple bad). Remember I purchased an IBM for everyday use at work (my choice). Now just so all the IBM fanatics can have something else to flame about let me finish by saying the IBM isn't perfect (surprise). I ordered mine with a Keytronics Keyboard for all the well known reasons and therefore have a $300 piece of plastic and metal (old keyboard) sitting in a drawer. MS-DOS 2.0 will be fine when its finished, notice no other PC manufacturer is using it yet. I would have purchased a different monitor for the IBM but couldn't because IBM used a nonstandard sync rate. I wished the 8088 ran at 8.0 Mhz, because I find the machine slower than I would like. I'll stop there - that should keep the flames warm. gregr