Mac vs. PC religious war claims

[Tim May]

At 8:17 PM -0500 2/1/01, Phillip H. Zakas wrote:
>I completely concur there's a feedback loop problem, but its Apple's fault I
>think.  I remember when the first MACs came out you had to pay $5K just for
>the privilege of programming for it.  What numbskulls!  The intel platforms
>were the first to encourage development because bios ref. guides were cheap

I don't buy this. I was at Intel when the first Macs came out, I had 
many friends who programmed Macs, and I myself used some of the early 
(c. 1986) tools like Lightspeed C. The 3-volume (then 4-volume, then 
5, etc.) set of books on programming the Mac was widely available, 
and was inexpensive.

If by "first came out" you only mean "early 1984," you are possibly 
right. But this is highly misleading, as by late 1985 and into '86 
the tools were widely available.

This all compares favorably with what was happening the DOS world 
(where, by the way, the only tools in the first year or two of the PC 
were the built-in BASIC, akin to what Apple was offering in the Apple 
II in 1979, the p-system from UCSD (good luck!), and the CPM-86 
system. Of the three, PC-DOS, the p-system, and CPM-86, only DOS 
succeeded. Ergo, all "programming tools" were the scraps and pieces 
of crud related to DOS. Which, for the first few years of DOS, were 
execrable.

What was happening in the DOS world at this time, at the time of the 
introduction of the Mac? Well, I also used to subscribe to the 
various PC mags of the day, including "PC Technical Journal." This 
was the "premier" PC programming journal of its day. (Other tidbit 
sources being "Dtack Grounded" and other semi-underground pubs.)

Was the Mac harder to program? Probably. Was a Mac app more usable 
(more capable, more consistent) than the equivalent PC app of the 
day? One guess, and the only correct answer is "That's why MS came 
out with Windows."

(BTW, I had Windows 1.0 before I bought my first Mac, a Mac Plus. Gag 
me with a spoon. I also had Windows 2.0, only _slightly_ better. It 
was not until Windows 3, particularly 3.1, arrived that Windows 
became usable. Do the math on what had passed for PC programming 
prior to this.)

>and most could afford the $100 of a pascal, c or asm compiler.  Plus the
>intel-platform hw (ibm, compaq, etc.) was really designed to handle
>multitasking and simultaneous networking/communications.  Apple only
>recently started to get the hint and improve the hardware.

This is nonsense. Where do I begin?

Multitasking is an OS feature, present in Windows only in recent 
years. A PC with an Intel processor running DOS is no more capable of 
"multitasking" than a Mac running an early Mac OS. The Intel line is 
not magically more multitasking-capable than the Motorola line. Look 
at the early Sun machines based on the 68000 and 68010 for but one 
illustration.

As for networking and communications, you are out to lunch. Ethernet 
has been available, at a price, for many years on the Mac. In the 
last _several_ years, it has been the default on nearly all Macs.

And for routine usage, all Macs since the earliest days have had 
usable local area networking. LocalTalk, MacTalk, whatever the jargon 
of the day.

My Windows friends are thrilled when they get Ethernet cards working. 
I've had it built-in for many years. All of my Macs have been 
networked, first with LocalTalk, later with Ethernet, for many years. 
Wireless AirPort is now built in to most new Macs.

My G4 Mac, my iBook, and my G3 Wall Street Powerbook all have built 
in Ethernet (mostly 10/100). They also have built in IEEE 
1394/FireWire, USB, all the usual stuff.

I don't like Mac vs. PC religious wars, but I cannot allow 
misrepresentations like the above to stand unchallenged. You, 
Phillip, should be ashamed of yourself.


--Tim May
-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at got.net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
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