Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 22:32:52 -0800
From: Kawasaki@eworld.com
To: macway-for-guy@solutions.apple.com
Subject: Retort to Dan Farber
Message-ID: <960123223249_23186060@hp1.online.apple.com>

Reply to: dan.robinson@lightside.com

I thought this was an interesting letter to a person who wrote about 
Apple. Dan, btw, used to be the editor of MacWEEK.

Guy

--------------------------------------------------------

To: dfarber@pcweek.ziff.com Re: Exception to your column 1/15/96

Dear Sir,

Have you actually USED a Mac?

Your suggestion that Mac users would bolt to a Windows environment at the 
slightest twinge of the market does not reflect knowledge based on  
reality.

My organization has 33 locations around California and the idea that I 
should teach new employees on a Windows-based machine is laughable and 
deservedly so.

The administration of the corporation is also 100% Mac with the exception 
of a lonely little PC that UPS hooked up for free in the mail room.

We do Desktop Publishing, Accounting, Secretarial, Medical Billing, 
Personnel, and occasionally (when they think I'm not looking) Zap Aliens 
and Kick Asteroids.

I have Macs on line ranging from a Mac Plus purchased in 1988 to a Power  
PC 7500. The last time I had to yell for help was in 1988 and that was to 
ask which two wires Appletalk used on a LocalTalk network.

We have scanners, LaserWriters, color printers, CD ROMS, hard disks, 
optical disks, floppy disks and God knows what-all hooked up and running 
without so much a Pepto By-Your-Bismol.

Next door is a poor shmuck who can't get Windows 95 to install on a 486.

Now, sir, I ask you in all honesty. Do you think I give a rat's patootie 
that Apple burbled a bundle last quarter?

I'm out here computing, not playing the stock market.

I'm sticking with Mac ... or Radius ... or UMax ... or whoever's making  
Mac OS machines at a reasonable price. But I will be eternally and 
unflinchingly damned before I switch to a Windows machine.

Sincerely, --Dan

dan.robinson@lightside.com

Join "EvangeList," Guy Kawasaki's (un)official Apple listserver of good 
news about Apple, Macintosh, and third-party developers. To subscribe to 
EvangeList, send an email to: listproc@solutions.apple.com> and include 
in the body of the message the text: Subscribe Macway <Your Name>

´

From: Robbie Honerkamp <robbie>
Subject: Macintosh vs. IBM (fwd)
To: 
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 15:05:27 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: 

Just thought y'all might appreciate this.. :)

Robbie


> 
> 
> Original work written by Stephen Kroese
> 
> 
> As I was walking down the street the other day, I noticed a man working
> on his house. He seemed to be having a lot of trouble. As I came closer,
> I saw that he was trying to pound a nail into a board by a window --
> with his forehead. He seemed to be in a great deal of pain. This made me
> feel very bad, watching him suffer so much just to fix his window pane.
> I thought, "Here is an opportunity to make someone very happy simply by
> showing him a better way to do things." Seeing him happy would make me
> happy too. So I said, "Excuse me sir, there is a better way to do that."
> He stopped pounding his head on the nail and with blood streaming down
> his face said, "What?"
> I said, "There is a better way to pound that nail. You can use a
> hammer."
> He said, "What?"
> I said "A hammer. It's a heavy piece of metal on a stick. You can use it
> to pound the nail. It's faster and it doesn't hurt when you use it."
> "A hammer, huh?"
> "Thats right. If you get one I can show you how to use it and you'll be
> amazed how much easier it will make your job."
> Somewhat bewildered he said,"I think I have seen hammers, but I thought
> they were just toys for kids."
> "Well, I suppose kids could play with hammers, but I think what you saw
> were brightly colored plastic hammers. They look a bit like real
> hammers, but they are much cheaper and don't really do anything," I
> explained.
> "Oh," he said. Then went on, "But hammers are more expensive than using
> my forehead. I don't want to spend the money for a hammer."
> Now somewhat frustrated I said, "But in the long run the hammer would
> pay for itself because you would spend more time pounding nails and less
> time treating head wounds."
> "Oh," he said. "But I can't do as much with a hammer as I can with my
> forehead," he said with conviction.
> Exasperated, I went on. "Well, I'm not quite sure what else you've been
> using your forehead for, but hammers are marvelously useful tools. You
> can pound nails, pull nails, pry apart boards, in fact every day people
> like you seem to be finding new ways to use hammers. And I'm sure a
> hammer would do all these things much better than your forehead."
> "But why should I start using a hammer? All my friends pound nails with
> their foreheads too. If there were a better way to do it I'm sure one of
> them would have told me," he countered.
> Now he had caught me off guard. "Perhaps they are all thinking the same
> thing," I suggested. "You could be the first one to dicover this new way
> to do things," I said with enthusiasm.
> With a skeptical look in his bloodstained eye he said,"Look, some of my
> friends are professional carpenters. You can't tell me they don't know
> the best way to pound nails."
> "Well, even professionals become set in their ways and resist change."
> Then in a frustrated yell I continued, "I mean come on! You can't just
> sit there and try to convince me that using your forehead to pound nails
> is better than using a hammer!"
> Now quite angry he yelled back, "Hey listen buddy, I've been pounding
> nails with my forehead for many years now. Sure, it was painful at first
> but now it's second nature to me. Besides, all my friends do it this way
> and the only people I've ever seen using 'hammers' were little kids. So
> take your stupid little children's toys and get the hell off my
> property."
> 
> Stunned, I started to step back. I nearly tripped over a large box of
> head bandages. I noticed a very expensive price tag on the box and a blue
> company logo on the price tag. I had seen all I needed to see. This man
> had somehow been brainwashed, probably by the expensive bandage company,
> and was beyond help. Hell, let him bleed, I thought. People like that
> deserve to bleed to death. I walked along, happy that I owned not one
> but three hammers at home. I used them every day at school and I use
> them now evey day at work and I love them. A sharp pain hit my stomach
> as I recalled the days before I used hammers, but I reconciled myself
> with the thought that tonight at the hammer users club meeting I could
> talk to all my friends about their hammers. We will make jokes about all
> the idiots we know that don't have hammers and discuss wether we should
> spend all of our money buying the fancy new hammers that just came out.
> Then when I get home, like every night, I will sit up and use one of my
> hammers until very late when I finally fall asleep. In the morning I
> will wake up ready to go out into the world proclaiming to all non-
> hammer users how they too could become an expert hammer user like me.
> 
>                            Stephen Kroese
>                            stevek@ceco.com
>                            Chicago, IL
> --
> Selected by Brad Templeton.  MAIL your joke (jokes ONLY) to funny@clarinet.com.
> Do not use the old site of "looking.on.ca" please.
> Attribute the joke's source if at all possible.  A Daemon will auto-reply.
> 
> 


´

X-Sender: robbie@mindspring.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 1995 05:53:28 -0400
To: boys@snip.com
From: Robbie Honerkamp <robbie@mindspring.com>
Subject: Ralph Nader on WINDOWS 95 Problems

>Date: Mon, 31 Jul 1995 08:30:59 -0400 (EDT)
>From: James Love <love@Essential.ORG>
>X-Sender: love@essential.essential.org
>To: com-priv <com-priv@psi.com>
>Subject: Ralph Nader on WINDOWS 95 Problems
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>TAP-INFO - An Internet newsletter available from listproc@tap.org
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>TAXPAYER ASSETS PROJECT - INFORMATION POLICY NOTE
>July 31, 1995
>
>     MICROSOFT WINDOWS 95
>
>-    Ralph Nader and James Love send letter to Clinton
>     Administration outlining criticism of two features of
>     Microsoft WINDOWS 95.
>
>-    Letter objects to Microsoft decision to "bundle" its new
>     Microsoft Network (MSN) with WINDOWS 95, and the Microsoft
>     "Registration Wizard," which provides Microsoft with
>     information on files located on customer hard disk.
>
>-    Nader and Love express support for Department of Justice
>     (DOJ) antitrust action to address both problems, and ask
>     Clinton to prevent federal agencies from buying WINDOWS 95
>     until the information gathering features of the
>     "Registration Wizard" are disabled or modified.
>
>     jamie (love@tap.org; 202/387-8030)
>      
>     The letter follows.
>
>
>
>                         Ralph Nader
>                         P.O. Box 19312, Washington, DC 20036
>
>                         James Love
>                         Consumer Project on Technology
>                         P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
>                         love@tap.org; voice 202/387-8030
>
>July 26, 1995
>
>President William Clinton
>the White House
>Washington, DC
>
>Dear President Clinton,
>
>     We are writing to ask you and your administration to take
>actions which address problems arising from Microsoft's near
>monopoly position in the market for personal computer operating
>systems.  As you know, two features of Microsoft's WINDOWS 95
>software have been widely criticized -- the "bundling of
>Microsoft Network (MSN) and Microsoft's online "Registration
>Wizard."  These issues are discussed below.
>
>1.   Microsoft Network.
>
>     The "bundling" of Microsoft Network (MSN) with WINDOWS 95
>has raised alarm among Microsoft's competitors that Microsoft
>will use its dominate market position for operating system
>software to give MSN an enormous advantage over its rivals in the
>market for online service providers.  In brief, Microsoft has
>written its new version of Windows with a built-in way to
>register for its new online service.  According to reports by
>beta users of the product, Microsoft has given the MSN a very
>high priority, including a special icon which cannot be deleted
>by the user, and periodic queries by the operating system to the
>user, encouraging registration.  Apparently no other rival online
>services vendor will have the opportunity to receive similar
>status within Windows 95.  In our view, Microsoft's actions are a
>predictable attempt to exploit its dominance in the operating
>system market to benefit its penetration into other fields that
>are potentially more competitive. 
>
>     One analogy to this practice is in the area of airplane
>reservations.  American Airlines operated the dominant online
>service for airline reservations, and arranged the available
>flights in alphabetical order, giving American Airlines what
>turned out to be a large advantage over its rivals.  The
>government subsequently regulated this practice, so that the
>online reservations systems would not be used in an anti-
>competitive manner.  We believe it is appropriate and justified
>for the Department of Justice to take actions that would prevent
>Microsoft from bundling MSN with WINDOWS 95 as has been done in
>their beta releases of the product.
>
>2.   Registration Wizard.
>
>     Another objectionable feature of WINDOWS 95 is the Microsoft
>online "Registration Wizard."  This part of the program is
>designed to scan automatically a user's hard disk, dial-up
>Microsoft, and download information to Microsoft about the files
>on the user's hard disk, including the titles and versions of
>software applications.  Critics of this practice, including the
>Department of Defense, have questioned the impact of this
>practice on data security and privacy.  Microsoft's rivals also
>believe that it will give Microsoft an enormous advantage in
>marketing by virtue of the fact that it gives Microsoft excellent
>intelligence on its competitors, including the names and
>addresses of their customers.
>
>     Microsoft has defended the Wizard by saying that the
>information is gathered to help its product support personnel
>debug its software, and that consumers can choose not to send the
>information to Microsoft.  We believe that both arguments are
>disingenuous.  First of all, the registration process is separate
>from customer service, and if Microsoft really wanted to use the
>information for customer service it could devise far less
>intrusive methods of doing so, such as a program to printout
>relevant information for use during a consumer service call,
>rather than at the point of registration.  Secondly, consumers
>are likely to be confused and intimidated by the registration
>process, because of concerns that this complex software might not
>function correctly if they refuse to give Microsoft the
>information it wants to collects. 
>
>     In our view, the Registration Wizard is an intrusive measure
>that uses technology to erode customer privacy, and we urge you
>to take steps to discourage its use.  Specifically, we urge you
>to ask OMB officials Sally Katzen, Administer of the Office of
>Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), and Stephen Kelman,
>Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy, to issue a
>directive to all federal agencies, advising them not to purchase
>WINDOWS 95 with the Registration Wizard.  This would be similar
>to the very successful actions taken by federal agencies in the
>1980's to refuse to purchase spreadsheet and database software
>that placed "hidden" files on hard disks as part of copyright
>protection schemes, a proactive measure which moved the entire
>market away from such ill-conceived practices.  
>
>     We also believe it is appropriate and justified for the
>Department of Justice to take actions that would prevent
>Microsoft from sharing the information gathered from the
>Registration Wizard with its marketing personnel.
>
>     Please let us know what you will do about these important
>matters. 
>
>Sincerely
>
>
>Ralph Nader                        James Love
>                              Consumer Project on Technology
>
>ps:  Of course, we were pleased to read press reports that
>Microsoft recently said it would make the MSN abide by the
>European Union's Directive on Data Protection, and we urge
>Microsoft's competitors in online services, such as American
>Online, Prodigy or Compuserve, to embrace these rules which
>protect customer privacy.
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>TAP-INFO is an Internet Distribution List provided by the Taxpayer
>Assets Project (TAP).  TAP was founded by Ralph Nader to monitor the
>management of government property, including information systems and
>data, government funded R&D, spectrum allocation and other government
>assets.  TAP-INFO reports on TAP activities relating to federal
>information policy.
>
>TAP-INFO is archived at gopher.essential.org in the Taxpayer Assets 
>Project directory, and at http://www.essential.org/tap/tap.html
>
>Subscription requests to tap-info to listproc@tap.org with
>the message:  subscribe tap-info your name
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>Taxpayer Assets Project; P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC  20036
>v. 202/387-8030; f. 202/234-5176; internet:  tap@tap.org
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>

´

X-Sender: robbie@mindspring.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 15:27:51 -0500
To:strutton, mcameron
From: robbie@mindspring.com (Robbie Honerkamp)
Subject: Re: WWW Server  (grin)
Status: RO


>
>>We're planning to setup a Window 95 WWW Server.  
>>With t1 line.  Expect to run 300-500 pages to start.
>>
>>Anyone else doing this?
>>
>>Any strong advise not to?
>>
>>Will advise how it goes.
>>
>>Thanks, Kevin
>>
>
>[this is a playful poke, not a flame]
>
>I'm planning to jump out of a plane and flap my arms really fast.
>
>Anyone else doing this?
>
>Any stronger way to say not to do this?
>
>Will scream loudly when I hit the ground.
>
>
>I would STRONGLY suggest [command if I could] that you NOT use Windoze 95
>for anything like this.  Dear God!  NT, their strongest package for
>networking doesn't deal with the Internet well.  I have watched 95 go down
>trying to dial in to a standard SLIP connection.  The system went DOWN!
>Completely, black screen, no mas, esta muerto.  We rebooted the puppy and
>watched it attempt a self-diagnostic that would chill your blood, then go
>black screen again.  Finally, after calling Microjoke and begging for an
>answer, the solution came from on high, re-install.
>
>That was from logging into a SLIP account.
>
>Be afraid.  Be very afraid :)
>
>Malcolm Mead
>
> 
>
>
>
´

X-Sender: robbie@snip.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 1995 18:34:10 -0500
To: snip
From: robbie@snip.com (Robbie Honerkamp)
Subject: You Shoulda seen it....


You shoulda seen it.

The CS department at a local College..

They don't teach UNIX or TCP/IP.

They only teach Windows NT networking and Windows software
development, using all microsoft packages (SQL Server, Access, etc..)
The head of their CS department and about 5 students took me out to lunch
today, and told me stuff like "We have no idea why someone would want
to use UNIX as a server platform.. It's so difficult to use with all the
cryptic commands.. NT is so much more powerful and easy to use".

It was hard to eat pizza and listen to these guys without
cracking up.. They were all dead serious. Miscosoft has given
these guys all sorts of grants, free software, college
scholarships, etc.. I mean, it was like "The Bill Gates
Stepford Children"... :)

Robbie


--
Robbie "Shorty" Honerkamp
MindSpring Network Operations
robbie@mindspring.com
http://www.mindspring.com/~robbie
             Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.
             
             
´



Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 11:04:59 +0900
To: Mike Cameron <mcameron@mindspring.com>, rking@snip.edu,
        jp000035@snip.com, gt6999b@snip.edu
From: fox_pro@bekkoame.or.jp (Fox Productions, Inc.)
X-Sender: fox_pro@pop.bekkoame.or.jp
Subject: Windows 95
MIME-Version: 1.0

Something that came across my mail-box...

>Date:         Thu, 10 Aug 1995 10:50:06 -0400
>Reply-To: Macromedia Director for Macintosh and Windows
><DIRECT-L@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU>
>Sender: Macromedia Director for Macintosh and Windows
><DIRECT-L@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU>
>From: Webster Thompson <webster@CHEM.COLUMBIA.EDU>
>Subject:      Windows 95
>To: Multiple recipients of list DIRECT-L <DIRECT-L@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU>
>Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-Length: 1857
>Status:   
>
>>>
>>>> For you Windows users ....
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Believe it or not, this is not Net humor but serious.  It would otherwise
>>be
>>>> outstanding satire!
>>>>
>>>> Subject: Windows 95 Warning on comp.risks, in Information Week
>>>>
>>>> Microsoft officials confirm that beta versions of Windows 95 include a
>>>> small viral routine called Registration Wizard.  It interrogates every
>>>> system on a network gathering intelligence on what software is being run
>>>> on which machine.  It then creates a complete listing of both Microsoft's
>>>> and competitors' products by machine, which it reports to Microsoft when
>>>> customers sign up for Microsoft's Network Services, due for launch later
>>>> this year.
>>>>
>>>> "In Short" column, page 88, _Information Week_ magazine, May 22,1995
>>>> The implications of this action, and the attitude of Microsoft to plan
>>>> such action, beggars the imagination.
>>>>
>>>> An update on this. A friend of mine got hold of the beta test CD
>>>> of Win95, and set up a packet sniffer between his serial port and the
>>>> modem. When you try out the free demo time on The Microsoft Network, it
>>>> transmits your entire directory structure in background.
>>>>
>>>> This means that they have a list of every directory (and, potentially
>>>> every file) on your machine. It would not be difficult to have something
>>>> like a FileRequest from your system to theirs, without you knowing about
>>>> it. This way they could get ahold of any juicy routines you've written
>>>> yourself and claim them as their own if you don't have them copyrighted.
>>>>
>>>> Needless to say, I'm rather annoyed about this.
>>>> So spread the word as far and wide as possible: Steer clear of Windows 95.
>>>> There's nothing to say that this "feature" will be removed in the final
>>>> release.
>>>>
>>>> ---End of forwarded mail from tonyw@dawn.Corp.Sun.COM (Tony Wong)
>
 _____________________________________     /\_/\  __________________________
\ Fox Productions' & pers. Home Page: |   ( ^ ^ ) |Fox Productions, Inc.   /
 \ http://www.bekkoame.or.jp/~fox_pro/| ooo\   /  |Fox Productions, Japan /
  \  http://www.st.rim.or.jp/~tony    | \o/ \O/   |fox_pro@bekkoame.or.jp/
   \__________________________________| | |/   \  |_____________________/
   
   
´

Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 18:35:56 +0900
To: Mike Cameron <mcameron@mindspring.com>
From: fox_pro@bekkoame.or.jp (Fox Productions, Inc.)
X-Sender: fox_pro@pop.bekkoame.or.jp
Subject: long & rambling, but worth the read
MIME-Version: 1.0

All,

Came across the following in (of all places) the Director mailing list. 
(No, Bob, it's not a rant against Windows! :)

--Tony

***********************************************************
Date:    Sun, 27 Aug 1995 17:09:52 -0500
From:    Charles Wiltgen <cwiltgen@FANCYMEDIA.COM>
Subject: The Geodesic Network, OpenDoc, and CyberDog (long)

If you're at all interested in Big Picture sorta stuff, read the following
post once or twice and let it sink it.  I'm posting this because I think
it's important to people on this list -- we're essentially in the
communications business, after all.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everyone remembers the old saw <ahem...>, "When all you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail." These days, I think see nails everywhere.
Here's why.

Almost a decade ago, now, in one of my more entrepreneurial moments, I read
Peter Huber's 1986 "The Geodesic Network", the US Government Printing
Office version of his report to Judge Green, the judge who broke up the
Bell System, on the status of the breakup and what Huber thought the next
steps should be.  Peter Huber's a smart guy. Doctorate from MIT, JD from
Harvard. Wrote a great book about junk science and tort law. The upshot of
Huber's report was a polite version of "Deregulate 'em all and let God sort
'em out".  It took 10 years, but Regional Bell Operating Companies are now
(not too successfully) competing in the information services business, and
it looks like it's a matter of time before the last bastion of the
telephonic monopoly, the local central office, will be utterly deregulated
and competing for its customers like every other business.

The reason Huber gave for his conclusion was something called Moore's Law,
more of an observation, really, named for Gordon Moore, who was one of the
founders of Intel.  Moore figured out something that is painfully obvious
to anyone who's bought a computer: the cost of some given semiconductor
"horsepower" falls by half over a very short period time: every 18 months
when Moore first looked at it. You would think that Moore's Law would
bottom out eventually, but it's hard to see that any time soon. Moore
himself figured that it would happen around 1980 or so, and if anything,
this "half-life" of semiconductors has decreased since. It's now half every
12 months.  That means that your brand-new whizzy PowerPC-604-based Mac
could be worth half what you paid for it in as little as a year. Moore's
Law is why Guy Kawasaki wrote in one of his columns a few years ago that
smart people start saving for the next computer the day after they buy the
one they have.

This implosion of the price of microprocessors really got Huber's
attention. Telephone switches are microprocessors.  Because the cost of
switches (operators) was so expensive, and because lines were much cheaper
in comparison, the telephone system was originally set up as a hierarchy.
Operators switched long distance calls up the network's hierarchy and then
back down to complete a call.  The further a call had to go, the higher up
the "root" structure of the net the call had to go. The faster "switches",
or rooms with more operators, were at the top. Remember that picture from
the 1920's with an operator supervisor on roller-skates supervising
hundreds of operator switchboards?  So, this couldn't go on forever, people
cost too much just to switch phone calls, and switching evolved from
electromechanical (pulses, or "clicks") to transistors (tones) to
semiconductors.  Shockley, the guy who invented the transistor, worked for
Bell Labs, remember?

With the advent of semiconductors, you could build really small switches.
You could even build one called a Private Branch Exchange, or PBX for
short, which really just put a small central office on your premises, if
your company was big enough.  Once companies could switch their own calls,
however, all bets were off.  The was no reason you couldn't just string a
bunch of private lines between your headquarters and your branches and
build your own minature version of the long-distance network.  You then
wondered how you could lower the costs of your private lines, and you
couldn't, because you were buying them from a telephone monopoly. There
wasn't any competition for long distance direct lines between a company's
various PBXs, much less switched traffic, which is how most normal long
distance calls are handled.

We all know where this went: MCI sued AT&T, and Judge Green broke up the
network. He hired Peter Huber three years later, who looked at all these
switches, *and* their collapsing prices, and decided that instead of lines
being cheaper than nodes (switches), which necessitated a hierarchical
network, things were the reverse, and accellerating with a vengence.  In
other words, the network had changed from a "root"-like hierarchy to
another familiar network, the network of lines and nodes one finds in Bucky
=46uller's geodesic domes, or, as Huber called it, a "Geodesic Network",
which is what he titled his report to Judge Green.  In a geodesic network,
there is no up or down. A packet of information could be going through a
switch in any direction, in and out of any line. The information content of
the network is so huge that if it were concentrated at any one node, or
switch, the switch couldn't be built big enough to hold it all. It would
choke.

You can see the rise of the geodesic network model in all sorts of things
(remember what I said about everything looking like a nail?), the
ubiquitous computing stuff they're doing at Xerox PARC is the most famous
example, and my favorite really outrageous one is the capital markets and
the financial system, particularly when you look at the long term
consequences of digital bearer certificates like digital cash, or digital
stocks and bonds.

Anyway, my favorite analogy (and you can see I use way too many as it is
;-)) for the effect of microprocessors on information is that of a
surfactant: plain old soap.  Like the Dawn commercial, where a drop of dish
soap breaks those big grease globs into smaller and smaller pieces until
they seem to disappear, Moore's Law does the same thing to information, and
by extension, information hierarchies.  Now it seems that information
hierarchies are the central fact of modern life, and everything from
governments to corporations to *practically* any organization imaginable
evolves into one when it gets big enough. However, let's dance around the
sociology a bit here and apply this strictly to software on the internet,
which is the mother of all geodesic networks, specifically the internet as
a glaring exception to the rule of organization as information hierarchy.

There is of course, sizable argument about whether the internet is in fact
organized, but it *is* organized, and it is because it is *out* of control
that it works. In fact, Keven Kelly's excellent book, called, ironically
;-), "Out of Control", speaks precisely to that point.  Kelly talks about
organization "emerging" from chaotic circumstances, about biological
analogs to this, like a beehive, and about why the net works. It's a great
read, and I reccommend it highly.

When I went to the recent Boston MacWorld, to get into the exhibits free
(and to get a free lunch in the process), one of my friends, who's a VAR,
signed me up to an Apple product road show as an "associate". I mean, I
*am* an associate of his, and I *do* send my systems integration hardware
buys through him, so I was probably even legit, in a backhanded sort of
way.

Now,  I'm a Certified MacBigot=81, but I haven't been paying much attention
to microcomputer markets much in the last year or so because I've focused
so much of my time on the net, in particular, on internet commerce. I have
gotten to the point that where the net is the only thing that gets me
really fired up creatively.  To paraphrase Gibson a little, sometimes I
think that hardware as just "meat"; the Real Stuff is on the net. It's
certainly true the thrill is gone. Used to be, when you went to MacWorld,
you saw at least one thing which really surprised you, because you couldn't
have imagined that it could even exist. Now, when you go to MacWorld, you
see something which has been announced for months, or years, in advance,
and is usually just a new wrinkle on an old thing.  Not so on the internet.
You have everything from news and mail groups to the web, discussing
everything from why the Brits have the new Babylon-5 episodes and we don't,
to digital cash and cryptoanarchy.

=46or someone with the attention span of a gnat, like me, the net is heaven.
You can pretty quickly find the bleeding edge of some new field, get spun
up in a few weeks and actually ask intellegent questions, and even make a
conceptual contribution or two, if you bring something new to the table.
Things are changing so fast that everyone's knowlege gets retreaded almost
yearly. *Thank* you, Mr. Moore.

I used to think, "if only you could get paid to do this stuff", and now,
it's beginning to look like you can. With the advent of internet commerce,
someday pretty soon you'll be able to live anywhere you want, and sell what
you do, or what you think, even, to anyone, anywhere. For cash.  The
ganglia twitch. I love this place.

So. I'm in MacWorld, marvelling at how the outrigger on some of the new PCI
PowerMacs allows you to tilt the whole guts of the machine away from the
motherboard so you can plug memory into it, (to loud applause ;-), and the
next thing they talk about is OpenDoc.  I've heard about OpenDoc, but
remember I've been a net.head for the past year and a half, I've given up
arguing with idiots about why the Mac is Better then Windows, and my
MacWeeks get a cursory glance, if at all, anymore: Hardware is Meat, and
all that.  So the guy demos a clock part, and then a database part, and
then a chart part, and light dawns on Marblehead: and epiphany worthy of
O.Henry.

What I'm looking at in OpenDoc is geodesic software. The code only gets
used when it's needed, just like that surfacted information on a geodesic
network. It can point to a process or information anywhere, on your
machine, down the hall, in New South Wales, anywhere.

That's nothing new, of course.  McNeally(sp) of Sun has said the "network
is the computer" for a decade or more, and we're still wrestling with stuff
like CORBA to get it all organized and under control, and no one has
figured out how to *really* implement the object model on an
enterprize-wide basis and all of that gark, and meanwhile I'm looking it
all in the face, right here at MacWorld, between bites of a ham and cheese
sandwich.

The beauty of OpenDoc is that it *doesn't* have to be organized, or more
precisely, *controlled*.  The user picks his parts and puts them together,
the user figures out what he wants to see, the developer has no idea what
his OpenDoc part is going to actually be used *for*, doesn't care too much
about what it interacts *with* besides what it needs to run, and only cares
about what his part *does*. Organization from chaos.

I immediately had all kinds of ideas for this OpenDoc stuff. My pet one is
navigation. You know, like, boats? It's easy to see how under OpenDoc, a
chart is a compound document. There can be parts for meridians (the lines
for latitude, longitude, even loran time differences), transponders (depth,
wind, location like GPS), courses, contours (depth and elevation lines,
isobars), and marks (bouys, landmarks, other boats), and pictures (clouds,
rain, water temperature stuff from NOAA). Superimpose them on one compound
document, and bingo, a living, breathing picture of where you are right
now, with live information from wherever it comes from: NOAA, the
instruments on your boat, other boats, the bouys in the water, wherever.

All lit up like this, I then went to see a friend who works at Apple.  When
I was a graduate student at Chicago in the middle 80's, I used to work
midnight to eight in the morning at the computation center. I spent a lot
of time in my office smoking baseball-bat cigars, eating pizza with
everything, reading usenet news, and chatting with a high school crony in
Dublin. It was a lot of fun then, but I got a real job in Boston, and I
hadn't really messed with the net since.  My friend was the one who got me
back on to the net a year or so ago, by making me buy Adam Engst's book,
the "Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh".

So, when I see my friend, holed up in an Apple computer lab at the Parker
House Hotel, I told him about my little epiphany with OpenDoc, and all
hesaid was "CyberDog". At that point, I went into grinnin' fool mode.

Now, I remember people talking, and even skimming over articles, about
CyberDog, Apple's OpenDoc environment for the internet, and I thought at
the time that Apple was trying to write a Yet Another Netscape Killer. I'd
even read the various articles on Apple-Internet-Users about it. Now, with
geodesic "hammer" in hand, all I could see was nails: I could see that
CyberDog isn't a Netscape killer at all, any more than OpenDoc is a Word 6
killer.

It's Moore's law come to internet applications. It's a code surfactant,
breaking software up into smaller and smaller pieces, enabling it to exist
in more and more remote places, making it more and more ubiquitous, more
uncontrolled, more inefficient, and more powerful, and, paradoxically, more
organized, in the emergent fashion of Kelly's "Out of Control".

The internet, a creature of Moore's Law, has always had applications like
this. When I got my copy of Adam's book, they were all there. Fetch,
NewsWatcher, TurboGopher, Eudora. InterSLIP. ("Dating" myself, though it's
only been 14 months)

Mosaic was too big, so you had to download it yourself. Netscape hadn't
been released, but eventually it would dwarf even Mosaic. Why? Because
Netscape and Mosaic were web-browsers, and because although HTML is itself
a kind of compound document architecture, albeit a very primative one, it
was never actually designed to *be* one, it just grew into the role.

The problem Netscape is, as we've said here already, even though it tries
to use helper apps in a quasi-parts fashion, is *just* a web-browser. It's
like the meridian part (the latitude and longitude lines) in my example
about a compound navigation document. You need it under everything, so that
you can tell where you are, and the other parts can array themselves in
relation to it, but it doesn't need to do all the stuff that all the other
apps do. Netscape, like the any node in a geodesic software network, will
choke on all the code if it tries to control it all at once.  As we all
know, a geodesic network, like the internet itself, will automatically
route around bottlenecks.

Now, there are other architectures out there, not the least of which is
OLE, ostensibly a compound document architecture, but is in reality
Microsoft's bus for linking all its "Office" applications, and thus trying
to create with it a super-app which is supposed to be the software
equivalent of kudzu, choking all its competition out of the water. OLE may
do more to increase the market for Pentium chips than any marketer at Intel
ever dreamed, but I don't think that it's going to do what Microsoft hopes.
I think that Microsoft is barking up the wrong tree for two reasons: One,
if it plays its historic "dog in the manger" role of controlling code to
its own advantage, it will eventually collapse under the load of trying to
write it all.  Word 6 is a good case in point, and it's just a word
processor. Two, if Microsoft actually opens up OLE to the rest of the
world, by improving it so it works better, and by improving its developer
evangelism, including *not* saving the juicy bits for its own developers
first, then Microsoft gets its application code base broken up just like a
big glob of grease in dishwater breaks up when the soap hits it. Microsoft
goes back to being an operating system company, sans the efforts of Mses
Clinton, Reno, Bingaman, et. al.

Which is why I think the idea of OpenDoc on the internet, and by extension
the CyberDog project, is very interesting.  I expect that there will be a
Netscape OpenDoc part, just like there will be parts for every Mac normal
internet app, like Newswatcher, for instance. The people on the mcip list
(the Macintosh Cryptography Interface Project) are talking about a PGP part
as soon as PGP 3.0, which is modularized, comes out. I can see how internet
commerce parts, like parts for First Virtual, or Cybercash, or more
important, how MacEcash, Digicash's digital cash app, could be converted
into an OpenDoc part for CyberDog. Just drag your coins out the Ecash
part's window and drop them on the cash register icon in the Netscape
SSL-protected form (or IPSEC-protected, security's just a part, remember).

It gets worse, however. Remember how Moore's law drove the terminal-host
model to client-server? Are you ready for peer-to-peer on steroids, for
server-server?  In a twisted parody of Huey "Kingfish" Long's campaign
slogan of "Every man a king", we're looking at everybody a server.  In a
geodesic model for software, concentrations of code are surfacted away by
the ubiquity of the processors on hand for the job. We already know about
farming out ray-tracing on a network of graphic Macs, one machine acting as
a massively parallel parasite of unused computer cycles on other machines.
Even this is too hierarchical, too top-down.  The cypherpunks, a
"electronic mail list of cryptographers, hackers, and mathemeticians"
according to the Wall Street Journal, are at this moment cracking yet
another rediculuously small keyspace that Netscape is forced to use to
encrypt foriegn credit card transactions, to prove that the State
department regulations calling cryptography a munition, the ITARs, are
hopelessly out of date, and that anybody can read international web-traffic
with ease. A participant's machine links to the server running the search,
requests a block of keyspace to search, searches it, and sends back whether
it's found the key.  The key server just keeps track of the processing. The
processing is actually done by the hundreds of machines requesting keyspace
to search. Nobody's in charge here.  The machine with the keyspace to be
searched isn't telling the machines searching the keyspace how to do it.
Any machine can be a keyspace server or a keyspace processor, depending
upon the circumstances.

One more thing. The machine which finds the key actually gets a reward of
about 450 of Digicash's beta digital cash certificates, called Cyberbucks,
or c$ for short, which are currently trading at US$5/c$100, or 5 cents per,
and this is a horse of a different color entirely.  Digicash did not
anticipate a secondary market for it's nonreplicable certificates, which
evidently are being given a cash value on their electronic uniqueness and
secure transmissability alone.  People are actually buying physical stuff.
A major example was a "This T-shirt is a Munition" shirt, printed with the
RSA algorithm in 4 lines of PERL and in machine-readable barcode, bought
from a server in Great Britian by someone in the US, who will be importing
something he can't then export, or even show to a foriegn national without
breaking the law.  All with these "beta" certificates Digicash had no idea
would be traded.

Welcome to the future, Apple.  It is easy to see how people who create
things can get paid in a geodesic market like this. It's easy to see how
people can be paid for their knowlege of something in particular.  It's
easy to see how, with teleoperation, even machine operators (like
surgeons!) can get paid. It's easy to see that, like the factory jobs did
to the farms and to the domestic staffs of the world, people would rather
work here than where they worked before, which is all too often an office
full of grey cubicles.

I hope that Apple, which has done it's own imitation of the dog in the
manger on occasion, and who fortunately can't hold a candle to Microsoft in
that department, will figure out two things: First, 30% of the
microcomputers hooked into the net are Macs, and the Macintosh way of doing
things is the reason for that. Second, the people who write either client
or server code for those net.macs are about to get paid, directly, by their
customers, and eventually get paid in cash, for their their efforts.

A lot of money's going to be out there for the company selling those
developers the tools and the standards to do their jobs, as long as Apple
realizes that they're not marketing transactions here, that they're
marketing relationships, and that they have to avoid hogging all the code
for themselves.  That dog won't hunt. It's too busy keeping the cows out of
the manger.

A geodesic network routes around all obstructions.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga


-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com)
Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131
USA (617) 323-7923
"Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell
>>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf@clark.net  http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<
 _____________________________________     /\_/\  __________________________
\ Fox Productions' & pers. Home Page: |   ( ^ ^ ) |Fox Productions, Inc.   /
 \ http://www.bekkoame.or.jp/~fox_pro/| ooo\   /  |Fox Productions, Japan /
  \  http://www.st.rim.or.jp/~tony    | \o/ \O/   |fox_pro@bekkoame.or.jp/
   \__________________________________| | |/   \  |_____________________/  
   
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 16:23:43 +0900
To: Mike Cameron <mcameron@mindspring.com>
From: fox_pro@bekkoame.or.jp (Fox Productions, Inc.)
X-Sender: fox_pro@pop.bekkoame.or.jp
Subject: And a good comeback
MIME-Version: 1.0

Are you on this list? Pretty neat stuff...
========================================

>Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 13:56:53 -0700
>Errors-To: list-errors@abs.apple.com
>Reply-To: Kawasaki@eworld.com
>Originator: macway@abs.apple.com
>Sender: macway@abs.apple.com
>Precedence: junk
>From: Kawasaki@eworld.com
>To: Subscribers to <macway@abs.apple.com>
>Subject: And a good comeback
>X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0 -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas
>Content-Type: text
>Content-Length: 800
>Status:   
>
>>From someone on the list: Another point. :-)
>
>>>Only in the computer industry (if your name is Apple that is) can a 
>company experience record setting growth in $ volume, units sales, carry 
>over $1 Billion in backordered sales, and STILL report an $11 Billion 
>fiscal year result and somehow be considered in trouble.<<
>
>Conversely, only in the computer industry (if your name is Microsoft) can
>your share price drop 25% in 2 months (since July) without you being
>considered in trouble.
>
>
>**************
>This message was sent to the MacWay email list evangelizing the Apple
>Macintosh.  For information about this list and how to join, send an 
>email to macway-request@abs.apple.com for an automatic reply (any message
>will work).
>
>Guy Kawasaki <kawasaki@eworld.com> -- list pope and Apple Fellow
>
>
 _____________________________________     /\_/\  __________________________
\ Fox Productions' & pers. Home Page: |   ( ^ ^ ) |Fox Productions, Inc.   /
 \ http://www.bekkoame.or.jp/~fox_pro/| ooo\   /  |Fox Productions, Japan /
  \  http://www.st.rim.or.jp/~tony    | \o/ \O/   |fox_pro@bekkoame.or.jp/
   \__________________________________| | |/   \  |_____________________/


Date: Tue, 21 Nov 1995 07:51:28 -0800
Reply-To: MacWay@aol.com
Originator: macway@abs.apple.com
Sender: macway@abs.apple.com
Precedence: junk
From: MacWay@aol.com
To: Subscribers to <macway@abs.apple.com>
Subject: Fwd: Why people prefer Mac #3


Apple is running a "Why do you prefer Mac instead of a PC with Windows 
95?" contest at Apple's "Macintosh vs. Windows 95" web site 
(http://www.apple.com/whymac/). These are few of the latest entries for 
your enjoyment.

Guy


 
I've been working with computers either as a hobby, or to earn a living 
since I was a teenager.  While I don't currently own a Mac, it is now 
time for me to upgrade, and the next machine will be a Mac despite the 
fact (or maybe because) I have been using Windows since 1990.  

Maintenance and upgrades in the PC world can be a nightmare. On the 
hardware side you have IRQs, DMA channels, I/O addresses, and more.  On 
the software side there are .INI files, device drivers, and DLL files 
that *all* have to work together.  Windows apps are notoriously ill 
behaved when they install themselves as well.  A typical installation 
dumps more mysterious DLLs into your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory (possibly 
overwriting newer versions that other apps need in the process).  It 
probably also makes changes to your WIN.INI and/or SYSTEM.INI files as 
well.  Some also make changes to the little known REGISTER.DAT file as 
well.  That's why uninstalling applications, even with helper utilities, 
is not a task for the inexperienced or faint of heart.  Due to the size 
of Win95 and Win95 apps the problem is only going to get worse, 
especially since Win95 hides some directories and file information unless 
you go through steps to change that.  With a Mac I can use the find 
command to locate all files associated with an app and then delete them.
 
What about expandability?  Well on the Mac side if I need more hard drive 
space I simply buy an external hard disk and plug it into the SCSI port, 
turn it and the Mac on, and viola, instant storage.  I've done this on 
Macs; total elapsed time: 5 minutes.  Here is what I have to worry about 
on the PC side. Is the drive compatible with my disk controller.  If not, 
can I add one?  What are the technical specs I *must* type into the CMOS? 
 For that matter how do I get to the CMOS on the particular machine I'm 
working on?  If the drive is bigger than 540MB, do I have the right 
drivers?  Will the drive fight with the other drive already there?
 
Something similar goes on if I need to add a sound card, CD-ROM, a SCSI 
controller for a scanner, or even a modem.  Plug and Play under Windows 
95 does *not* solve this due to the large amount of non Plug and Play 
compatible hardware.
 
Microsoft touts long filenames as a productivity enhancer.  Well that is 
partly true...if you're working in a native Win95 app that can handle 
long file names. To maintain backward compatibility, long file names are 
truncated internally to the old format.  This can lead to confusion if 
you are exchanging files across a network (Microsoft recommends that the 
long name begin with the 8 character short name you want) or placing the 
files on floppy to exchange with someone else.  Older Windows and DOS 
apps don't handle long filenames at all.
 
There are other 'gotchas' in the new file system as well.  Your older 
undelete and disk repair utilities won't work.  Neither will any disk 
compression program you're now using.  In fact if you're using anything 
but Microsoft's Double Space, or Drive Space, you can't even install 
Win95 until either you uncompress the drive or the company comes out with 
a Win95 compatible version.
 
On a Mac, all apps handle filenames the same way and OS upgrades do not 
render drive compression useless.
 
Networking?  With Macs you can set up simple peer to peer networks right 
out of the box.  With PCs you have to add network cards and device 
drivers.  Yet again opening Pandora's Box of potential conflicts.
 
Even with the advent of  Windows 95 there are still holes in the 
interface because of its DOS roots.  Take for example starting an 
application by double clicking on a document icon; in Windows and Win95 
you can do this *if* the application is 'registered' with the OS (meaning 
the OS knows a certain file extension goes with that program).  If the 
app isn't registered you must do it manually.   That's why many people on 
PCs open up files from inside applications, adding extra steps.  On a 
Mac, just double click the file and start working.  What happens if 
somebody gives you a document from a program you don't have?  Well on a 
PC you must open up a program you have that reads the format and manually 
tell the program to import the file. Macs have Easy Open.  With Easy Open 
you can skip steps; just double click and the Mac will open up the 
correct app for reading the file and then import it for you.
 
I want my next system to be powerful, easy to upgrade and maintain, and 
have a consistent and easy to use interface.  In short, I want a Mac.
 
**********
 
One morning around 5 am, I heard the Mac boot up.  Not unusual in this 
household, since my five and three year old usually play games before 
school. However, on this day, I rolled over and the house was still dark 
and there was no chatter about...my wife just beginning to awaken.  We 
looked at each other and simultaneously got up to look and to our 
amazement, our 20 month old, Wyatt, was on top of the desk, mouse in 
hand!  She was playing inside one of the interactive books!
 
We knew she had been watching her sisters, not getting half a chance to 
play, but today, she woke up before they could bully her out of the way 
and put her curiosity to the test.  I could not believe my eyes, so later 
that day, with video in hand I asked Wyatt to "show me how to play on the 
computer."  With a casual, "okay", off she went to the computer.  She 
hopped on the chair, climbed on top of the desk and pushed the upper 
right hand button without hesitation. Once in the Finder, she located the 
cd and "double clicked" her story!   She then proceed to click "let me 
play" and off she went!
 
Now, she is becoming as adept as the other two, except for her obvious 
disadvantage with language, and has earned equal time on the computer.  
She has her own At Ease folder and can navigate through it, locate the 
Finder to play her cd books.  Its a wonderful thing to see, really.
 
Macintosh has achieved the ultimate goal in computer friendliness by 
making the operation of personal computers, "childsplay".  Windows 95 
could only hope to be as faciliting as the Macs were even years ago.
 
As an aside, I tried to call Apple's corporate offices later that week, 
but I could not get through.  I am grateful, however, to be able to relay 
my story now and say "thank you" for creating this avenue of learning for 
my children. It has been worth every penny of our investment.
 
**********
 
A Macintosh is better than Windows 95 because it connects to a Microsoft 
network easier!  I recently had the joy of attaching a Win95 machine to a 
Windows NT server.  First I had to install a network card. This involved 
"Adding New Hardware" in the Control Panel. After letting it crank away 
for 10 to 15 minutes while it tried to auto-detect, I finally had to do a 
manual install.  Luckily Win95 had the drivers for the card I was 
installing listed (why couldn't it auto-detect it?), so I chose them and 
told it to install. This involved 30 files on 4 of the Win95 install 
disks.  Then followed the half-day of troubleshooting various components 
(such as login scripts) to get it working properly. During this entire 
procedure Windows 95 locked up 3 times requiring a hard reset each time.
 
Prior to this, I attached a PowerMac 7200 to our Windows NT server where 
I work.  This involved taking the new machine out of the box, plugging a 
network cable into the built in Ethernet port, starting it up, and 6 
mouse clicks. This required all of about 10 minutes.
 
One final note:  I have noticed that Windows 95 frequently brings up a 
dialog box during many installations saying (approximately) "Windows 95 
is now installing __________.  If during this install there does not 
appear to be any activity for a long period of time you may need to 
restart your computer and try again."  I have NEVER seen a dialog box of 
this nature on a Mac, ONLY in Windows 95, where it turned out to be 
prophetic.
 
**********
 
My Mac is better than a PC running Windows 95 because when I installed 
System 7.5, I was still able to use my CD-ROM drive, my hard drive wasn't 
trashed, I didn't have to reformat my hard drive, my Mac still smiled at 
start up, I still could print, I still had sound, my existing software 
still worked, I didn't have to call Apple for help in the installation, I 
didn't have to have Apple tell me how to take it back off, all my games 
still worked (if not faster), my built-in Ethernet still functioned, I 
had no IRQ conflicts, finding files became easier (as if it wasn't 
before), I didn't have to buy something like "Apple Plus" for an extra 
$70 to get better performance and custom sounds and backgrounds, and 
finally... I didn't have to have someone show me how to use my computer.  
I sat down and admired the enhancements and then, less then 30 minutes 
later I was back to writing papers, letters, producing Web pages, and 
just plain surfing the Internet.
 
The complete realization came when a co-worker asked me to come and help 
fix a PC which Windows 95 had completely reeked havoc on....ME a Mac user!
 
**********
 
Want to see something downright hilarious, just change the color depth on 
Win95.  Laugh as you see the little message pop up that you must *RESTART 
WINDOWS* to change the colors!
 
I've never needed tech support on my Mac, but it gives me some confidence 
that I do have toll free support to back up on anytime I need it.  
Windows95 users have to call long distance for charge-free support.  What 
about after your 90 days of tech support?  I guess you'll just have to 
pay for it.
 
Windows 95 will automatically recognize your CD-ROMs!  Isn't that 
amazing? Just imagine if it could recognize floppies!  You know, I wonder 
if the automatic recognition was an option for them, since most PCs are 
simply constructed to be inexpensive for the initial investment
 
Just got the latest game huh?  What's that?  You're running Windows 95?  
Uh oh, I hope that you still like config.sys and autoexec.bat files.  DOS 
is everyone's friend, right?  I mean, I love to have to reboot my 
computer just to go into an operating system that is compatible with my 
games, especially an archaic one like DOS.  It lets me get in touch with 
the past.  I mean, they did away with DOS for Windows 95.  Well, except 
for the file system.  But it's so much simpler now to name files since 
you don't have to put it in 8.3 file names... unless you are taking it to 
someone else's computer not running Windows 95.  Funny, but I've been 
able to do that for ten years....
 
But we were told that Windows95 was a revolution...SORRY WRONG GUESS!  If 
Windows95 is really cutting edge technology, then they are using the 
*wrong* side of the knife...
 
I know where I want to go today.  I want to go into the future.  The 
future is not that of limitless complexities and growing demand for 
resources.  The future is not in Windows 95.  The future is here.  The 
future is Macintosh.
 
The number one reason I love my Macintosh is a piece of wisdom we could 
all live by:
 
Don't follow the standards...set them.
 
**********
 
It's hard to say what is most important, but reliability has got to be 
first for me. There are a zillion IBM clones out there and frequently 
it's a crap shoot as to their true compatibility.  When I buy ANY Apple 
product I know I am getting the very best, the most consistent product.  
With my first 128K Mac (still going by the way) ease of operation was 
very important. The darn things are pretty nearly idiot proof. I have 
owned conservatively speaking at least ten Apples, six of them Macs.  The 
800 support line?  I've never NEVER had to use it, and I almost never 
read the documentation.
 
**********
 
I use a PC clone at the office. My wife also uses a PC at her office.  We 
decided that it was time to purchase a computer for home.  Our 
requirements are as follows:
 
- Compatibility with the Windows environment (since we will want to use 
the machine for work at times);
 
- Great ease of maintenance and operation (at the office, we both have 
access to technical help, but at home we don't and, frankly, arcane 
troubleshooting is not our idea of a good time);
 
- Expandability (we want to add capabilities as our needs grow and our 
budget allows);
 
- Upgradability (we do not want to throw a whole machine away every two 
years);
 
- Performance (we do not want to have to upgrade in six months)
 
- Good choice of professional applications, educational software and 
games (that work without reconfiguring the system every time).
 
- Price.
 
With that list of requirements in mind, I started to gather information. 
At first glance, the answer appeared simple: get a Pentium-based 
computer, and Windows 95. After all, Windows 95 promised compatibility, 
ease of use and plug and play capabilities, along with great performance 
when used on a Pentium-based computer. Moreover, there is plenty of 
hardware and software to choose from. It could have stopped there.
 
However, by reading reviews in magazines, asking questions to friends, 
collegues and vendors, I started to get a picture that was not so nice.
 
First, RISC technology seems more promising than CISC technology, and the 
Intel processors are based on the latter. Even ignoring future trends and 
looking at today's performance, everybody agrees that existing RISC 
processors (like the 601 or the 604) outperform Pentiums. IBM itself is 
supposed to moving to PowerPCs. What does that say about the eventual 
upgradability of a machine using a CISC processor? I am not sure, but it 
does not look too promising.
 
Second, backward compatibility with older DOS and Windows software is not 
as perfect as it first appeared, and it comes at a price (in terms of 
performance). Moreover, compatibility in the DOS and Windows world was 
never that great to start with (how many times did I hear people swear 
when trying to make a new software run properly on their machine). That 
reduces the supposedly tremendous choice of software to more moderate 
proportions. Moreover, it raises serious questions about real ease of use 
and maintenance.   

Third, plug and play capabilities are still a promise. We will have to 
wait and see what hardware and software developers are doing. So, easy 
expandability is uncertain.
 
Fourth, there is the price issue. As a lot of people pointed out, you 
could get very low prices on 486 machines or Pentium machines, and that 
counts. That counts all right, but when I started to add up what it would 
cost to get a machine with all the memory and peripherals I wanted, I 
realized that it was not that cheap after all.

My enthusiasm for a platform running Windows 95 was getting much lower.
 
Then, I got information on Power Macintosh. Those machines are using RISC 
technology. The Mac OS has been used and improved for ten years, and 
every user I talked to said that it is really easy to use and maintain. 
Plug and play capabilities are, according to users, a "fait accompli", 
not a promise. I also learned about SoftWindows 2.0, a software that 
emulates 486's hardware and thus offers as much compatibility with DOS 
and Windows as you would find on any platform.  That meant that I could 
choose among all that software and also have access to all the Macintosh 
software. Moreover, the new Power Macintosh accept PCI cards. Some have 
the processor on a daughterboard, which is great for upgrading at a 
reasonable cost.  So far, I reasoned, a Power Macintosh seems to be the 
right choice. But what about price?  An argument that I heard a lot was 
that, although a lot of people would agree that Macintosh computers are 
better, they are so overpriced that their quality-price ratio falls well 
under that of a PC. I started to shop around. I discovered that the PC 
price advantage is disappearing fast. A Power Macintosh equipped as I 
wanted would not be significantly more expensive than a comparable PC. 
When I factored in the other considerations, the PC was left in the dust.
 
The computer we are going to buy will be a Power Macintosh.
 


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Stop the hegemony. Join EvangeList. For information, send an email to 
<macway-request@abs.apple.com> for an automatic reply. (Any message 
will work.) Archives are at: <http://wais.sensei.com.au/searchform.html>.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

´
   
enjoy!

mc