gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (07/09/90)
by doner@aerospace.aero.org (John Doner): | Do that, and they won't be around for the long run, or if they are, we won't | care. The money for all that R&D, developing and improving user interfaces, | innovative software like Hypercard, etc., let alone the hardware, has to come | from somewhere. What a load of horsesh*t. First, it is evident that Apple squanders a lot of bucks on "image advertising", not on user interface R & D. Have you watched any TV lately? Second, it is apparent to me (being a former network software developer), that Apple is blowing a lot of money on LAN software, 99% of which, home & education users cannot take advantage of, and will probably never take advantage of. Third, many user interface breakthroughs arise in new application software, not from some user interface bozo in a think tank. Is Hypercard the last piece of application software Apple will develop? Then you can kiss user interface innovation GOODBYE. I'd like to hear you mention a "user interface breakthrough" Apple has made since 1987. (Knowledgeable net readers know that most of the Mac II ROM innovations were copied from other systems). In fact, if we discount tear-off menus, we can go all the way back to 1985. Fourth, it is apparent that personal users are still being milked to fuel Apple's push into the business market (i.e. some large fraction of every SE purchase is probably spent on postscript printer support, appletalk / appleshare upkeep, IIfx design, developer support for high-end Color Retouch & CAD programs, etc. etc. etc.) Don't kid yourself that high macintosh hardware revenues is being spent on "The Rest of Us" as Apple used to say. It's being spent on "The Rich of Us", e.g. business users. Don W. Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801 ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies
russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto) (07/09/90)
In article <70400019@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > >by doner@aerospace.aero.org (John Doner): >| Do that, and they won't be around for the long run, or if they are, we won't >| care. The money for all that R&D, developing and improving user interfaces, >| innovative software like Hypercard, etc., let alone the hardware, has to come >| from somewhere. > >What a load of horsesh*t. First, it is evident that Apple squanders a >lot of bucks on "image advertising", not on user interface R & D. >Have you watched any TV lately? What the h*ll is wrong with advertising? Now that they have finally started SAYING 'Macintosh'... > >Second, it is apparent to me (being a former network software >developer), that Apple is blowing a lot of money on LAN software, 99% >of which, home & education users cannot take advantage of, and will >probably never take advantage of. Education users? Funny, in high school we had a Corvus disk server that Apple ][s ran off of. At UMCP, we have LAN's of all sorts. (and at home, I've got a two-computer Appletalk LAN). Why would LANs not be useful for education users? -- Matthew T. Russotto russotto@eng.umd.edu russotto@wam.umd.edu ][, ][+, ///, ///+, //e, //c, IIGS, //c+ --- Any questions? Hey! Bush has NO LIPS!
gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (07/10/90)
> Education users? Funny, in high school we had a Corvus disk server that > Apple ][s ran off of. At UMCP, we have LAN's of all sorts. (and at home, > I've got a two-computer Appletalk LAN). Why would LANs not be useful > for education users? I guess it boils down to whether you consider Appletalk to be a LAN. I don't, and my statements about LAN support weren't meant to apply to 240kbaud appletalk.
norman@d.cs.okstate.edu (Norman Graham) (07/10/90)
From article <70400023@m.cs.uiuc.edu>, by gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu: > >> Education users? Funny, in high school we had a Corvus disk server that >> Apple ][s ran off of. At UMCP, we have LAN's of all sorts. (and at home, >> I've got a two-computer Appletalk LAN). Why would LANs not be useful >> for education users? > > I guess it boils down to whether you consider Appletalk to be a LAN. > I don't, and my statements about LAN support weren't meant to apply to > 240kbaud appletalk. No No No. AppleTalk is a collection of protocols that conform to the OSI network layers model. It runs on LocalTalk cabling (the slow stuff), EtherTalk cabling (ethernet), and TokenTalk (Token Ring--I believe this is a recent addition). As usual, the speed of your network is directly related to the amount of money you sink into the networking hardware. For local peripheral sharing, LocalTalk is adequate; For a diskless work- station you'll need something faster. [Aside: AppleTalk will also coexist with other network protocols on the same cabling.] -- Norman Graham Oklahoma State University Internet: norman@a.cs.okstate.edu Computing and Information Sciences BangPath: 219 Mathematical Sciences Building {cbosgd,rutgers}!okstate!norman Stillwater, OK USA 74078-0599
ngg@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM (Norman Goodger) (07/11/90)
In article <70400019@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > >Fourth, it is apparent that personal users are still being milked to >fuel Apple's push into the business market (i.e. some large fraction >of every SE purchase is probably spent on postscript printer support, >appletalk / appleshare upkeep, IIfx design, developer support for >high-end Color Retouch & CAD programs, etc. etc. etc.) >Don't kid yourself that high macintosh hardware revenues is being >spent on "The Rest of Us" as Apple used to say. It's being spent on >"The Rich of Us", e.g. business users. >Don W. Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois This above is a just about a good an arguement that was being rebutted. ie its BS, every company, even the one you are working for is in business to make a profit, if they weren't, you would not have a job. Saying that the personal user is taking it in the wallet because of the business market is a crock, personal purchases of Apple Computers should not be paying any more than anyone else. It would be like saying that anyone who got a educational or developer discount got cheated because they didn't get it thru the business discount, which in most cases is not that much better if anything at all then the discount given most knowledgeable buyers would get in the first place. Give it a rest, most all I ever see you do is Apple bash, and it hasn't changed much of anything that I can see. And most of your analogies carry no weight as they make little or no sense. -- Norm Goodger SysOp - MacInfo BBS @415-795-8862 3Com Corp. Co-SysOp FreeSoft RT - GEnie. Enterprise Systems Division (I disclaim anything and everything) UUCP: {3comvax,auspex,sun}!bridge2!ngg Internet: ngg@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM
baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) (07/13/90)
In article <70400019@m.cs.uiuc.edu>, gillies@m.cs writes: >Third, many user interface breakthroughs arise in new application >software, not from some user interface bozo in a think tank. Is >Hypercard the last piece of application software Apple will develop? >Then you can kiss user interface innovation GOODBYE. I'd like to hear >you mention a "user interface breakthrough" Apple has made since 1987. I've seen previews of System 7, and in my eyes System 7's publish and subscribe technology counts as a breakthrough both in user interface and operating system design. It is easy, intuitive, much more useful than traditional IAC designs (since the publishing application need not be available at the same time as the subscriber), and in my opinion quite a remarkable piece of work. This technology will be available to every user on every Mac, just like cut and paste is. But the beauty of it is that you get greater and greater benefit from it as you add to your hardware, or connect to a network, etc. >(Knowledgeable net readers know that most of the Mac II ROM >innovations were copied from other systems). In fact, if we discount >tear-off menus, we can go all the way back to 1985. I'd like to take issue with this, too. I don't know of any other system that allows for the use of multiple montiors with different bit depths, or systems that allow you to change the bit depth or colors on the fly. That's a real advantage for the average novice user. Though PS/2 users can now take comfort from the fact that they don't have to worry about DIP switches any more, they still can't add a new monitor, and move windows between them just by using something equivalent to the "Monitors" cdev. >Fourth, it is apparent that personal users are still being milked to >fuel Apple's push into the business market (i.e. some large fraction >of every SE purchase is probably spent on postscript printer support, >appletalk / appleshare upkeep, IIfx design, developer support for >high-end Color Retouch & CAD programs, etc. etc. etc.) It's rather hard to reconcile this with Apple's new Personal LaserWriters, which are quite obviously not aimed at the business market. And developer support is developer support; so what if Claris makes Claris CAD? They also make MacWrite and MacDraw -- tools for the rest of us. Why shouldn't Apple spend money on developer support? How else can they support their market (and our investment in Mac hardware)? I'd like to hear some support for your arguments. In another posting you claim that LocalTalk isn't a network. I don't know what that means -- we certainly use it as a network. It's not fast, that's true, but it's fast enough for our purposes and it has two great advantages over PC networks: It's free, and it's built into the system. So we can buy one LaserWriter and share it among several Macs without having to know anything about networking or Ethernet cards or system administration. Just plug it all in and it works. Where's the equivalent functionality in Windows? It's all fine and well to take Apple to task for high prices, but from what I can see they still are really the only company that's spending any time and effort to make computers more useful and more useable for the entire personal computing population. The fact that they're not always 100% successful, or that they sometimes go more than 6 months without developing a major new technology shouldn't detract from this. -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." baumgart@esquire.dpw.com | cmcl2!esquire!baumgart | - David Letterman
gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (07/16/90)
> I'd like to take issue with this, too. I don't know of any other > system that allows for the use of multiple montiors with different bit > depths, I saw it in Xerox PARC's Cedar system in 1985, and assumed that it existed in other graphics-based computer systems. Maybe not. > or systems that allow you to change the bit depth or colors on > the fly. Ooops, you're probably right here. I forgot to count this feature. This apparently requires a device-independent (or intensity- independent) PICTure language such as the mac's to make it work, so it is much easier to check if it existed in another system prior to the macintosh. ------------------ It's easy to attack my message as it stands, but recall it was in response to the following quote: by doner@aerospace.aero.org (John Doner): | Do that, and they won't be around for the long run, or if they are, we won't | care. The money for all that R&D, developing and improving user interfaces, | innovative software like Hypercard, etc., let alone the hardware, has to come | from somewhere. Let's try it again. What are the results of all this "R&D spending" recently? (1) Apple hasn't released a new machine under $3000 since the SE in 1987. When was the last change in the Imagewriter II price or performance? The mind boggles. (2) With the exception of tear-off menues Apple hasn't produced its own user interface innovation on *all* macintoshes since 1985 (remember, color does not come cheap). The other menu improvements were cheap (i.e. little R & D) ripoffs of existing systems. (3) The only improvements Apple has released (after a moment's thought) are Macromaker and Hypercard. What percentage of the Macintosh markup did this cost, over the multi-year period before its release? Why not improve some existing system software like the klugey backup program or the oh-so-limited DiskFirstAid facility? (4) I happen to know Apple has some *appletalk* (not localtalk) products in the wings -- products in an area I worked on while at Xerox. I'm guessing that these products will be of little use to home users, unless they contain major industry-wide technical innovations. Now, people chime in, "Just wait until system 7.0 comes out!!!" Well, four years is an eternity in the PC business. I'd like to see Apple improve things more than token amounts for mainstream users, rather than splurging on specialty markets such as - color processing, - scanning - appletalk - CAD - A/UX for government - astronomically expensive platforms such as the IIfx etc. How long will it be before QUICKDRAW will know how to rotate objects on the screen and in printouts, for example? How long before Apple gets the flakiness out of the (currently broken) 3rd-party printing architecture? How long before the macintosh has a sound language to complement its picture language? Maybe forever because system software innovation does not pay. To an outsider like myself, Apple seems to use the CPU markup to capitalize other hardware and software projects, some of them flops (Laserwriter SC, Imagewriter LQ, Apple Hard Disks, Apple Modems), or narrow specialty items (IIfx, $2000 color acceleration systems, Apple scanners, 32-bit quickdraw). Where is the mainstream innovation, Apple? If Apple can't afford to fund major improvements from CPU sales, then they should charge for system 7.0. At least then, Apple would find out whether it was earning its keep among mainstream users. Don W. Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801 ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies
landman@hanami.Eng.Sun.COM (Howard A. Landman x61391) (07/24/90)
In article <2178@esquire.UUCP> baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) writes: >I don't know of any other >system that allows for the use of multiple montiors with different bit >depths, or systems that allow you to change the bit depth or colors on >the fly. That's a real advantage for the average novice user. That's funny. I just added a color monitor to the hi-res B&W one I already had on my Sun 4. The bit-depths are 8 and 1. But a "real advantage for the average novice user"? Since when did the average novice user have a 2-screen system? The average Mac user has a Mac Plus! >It's all fine and well to take Apple to task for high prices, but from >what I can see they still are really the only company that's spending >any time and effort to make computers more useful and more useable >for the entire personal computing population. I won't blow the company horn and claim that we're *succeeding* (not in a Mac group where it could only start a flame fest), but I *know* Sun is spending time and effort. :-) -- Howard A. Landman landman@eng.sun.com -or- sun!landman