We're All Mac Users Now

Wired News ^ | January 6, 2004 | Leander Kahney

[antaresequity]

And I'm not a "yuppie with long hair and Birkenstocks".

Sure. All apple users are tofu eating rastafarians from Berkley...your pre-qualifier just confirms your in denial. Party on dude /sarcasm

[Unknown Freeper]

Hi, Meyer. Yes, that is why I switched from Turbo Tax last year.

[Swordmaker]

In almost 20 years--NEVER had a virus and can count the number of crashes on one hand and have fingers left over.

You got me beat... why I remember back in the Summer of '99 I found the Hong Kong worm infesting my Mac 6300... took my five minutes to remove it manually... and I have had to use BOTH hands to count the crashes.

Since moving to OSX... with a computer that is on 24/7/365 I have had... say, how do you count crashes ZERO on your fingers???

[Joe_October]

...I never met a Mac owner that didn't like his or her computer...

You don't buy one if you don't buy into the hype. Those people I know who use Macs don't do much with them. They just want to be different.

I chuckled when I read them describe it as a beautiful shade of beige. Remember, when they were selling us those potty seat Macs. Then, beige was no longer beautiful

[21st Century Man]

Just to set the story straight (for the 10,000th time):

Ready for an education?

Steve Jobs was so hot on the concepts of Xerox's GUI, that he negotiated a deal with Xerox. He gave Xerox a large sum of stock in Apple (worth Millions) if he could come back, and bring some programmers -- to inspire them more on the concepts of GUI.

Now what happened with Microsoft?

Well it starts out that Microsoft was one of the first Application Developers for the Mac. Apple (Jobs) knew that the Mac needed Software to be commercially viable, and Jobs learned that Microsoft was trying to break in to the Application market.

Jobs showed Microsoft the early Mac prototypes. Bill Gates liked the ideas and agreed to write Mac applications.

Gates later threatened to pull their applications at the last minute before release unless Jobs agreed:

A)Apple had to license some of the MacUI for MS-Applications on the PC. This Application suite later grew into Windows 1.0 and Office. Remember, Windows started off as an Application Suite, not an OS-Shell (2).
(2) Because Apple had licensed some concepts to Microsoft (under coercion), it weakened their case later against MS when MS started more blatantly ripping off the Mac. Contrary to popular myth that Apple lost their lawsuit against MS because it wasn't a rip-off, the real reason was that they had been to vague in their licensing of some technologies, and the benefit of the doubt was given MS.

B) Apple had to drop their MacBasic project which was completed and better than MS Basic. MacBasic had many concepts that MS ripped off to create VisualBasic. What few ideas for VB that MS didn't rip off from MacBasic they got from HyperCard -- which Bill Atkinson wrote because the Mac didn't have a good simple programming environment, because MS had dropped their basic for the Mac and had forced MacBasic to canceled as well.

Later MS decided that the GUI was just too cool not to use. So they started on an Application Suite that would use the Macs concepts of Windows, a Mouse, and direct manipulation to achieve its ends. This became Windows 1.0, and evolved into the Windows we know and hate today.

The lead programmer for the Windows project was the same guy who had been a lead programmer for writing the Mac Application projects.

This sequence of events (Microsoft "borrowing" the Mac interface) is not the same as taking rough concepts and adding to them to create your own system -- this is much more intimate than that. Microsoft took their best Mac Programmer, and had him making almost every design decision for early windows. He was told, by Bill Gates, to make a PC look and work, "JUST like a Mac" -- this is a direct quote from Gates! Contrast that sequence of events, to Apple and Xerox sequence of events, and you get an idea for the difference in philosophy and implementation. Microsoft stole, Apple expanded.

This similarity was (of Windows to MacOS) is not just in design, there are whole toolboxes/API that are almost identical (in interface). Microsoft stole data structures and many routines, and the names and concepts for many things are the same as well. If it wasn't for the fact that they had to hack their stuff on top of DOS, they likely would have just stolen all the same code (and they did get sued for that later as well). If you look at many of the older Windows routines you see names and structures that are identical to the Mac.

But MS is smart enough to avoid (or win) lawsuits -- they changed one name out of 10, or re-ordered a few things, all so they could say it wasn't identical. MS also had to make some design changes to get it to run on a PC. But as far as real design work for Windows, there was none -- the Mac was a living design document.

At first, MS only ripped off the design and implementation, but stayed away from Apple's look and feel. They knew that Apple would only tollerate so much theft. Later MS crossed this line as well, and Apple sued. It was when they started to steal the desktop metaphor (folders, trashcan, etc.) that Apple had enough. No matter what the legal decisions are, ethically Microsoft ripped off the Mac.

Later (post 1995) Microsoft started to put some money into R&D, and they started to try to innovate. Up to this point, they did not innovate -- they just reworked other's ideas, or add-features, but that's not "true" innovation.

I call it piracy. ;)

[21st Century Man]

"Why did I select Macintosh instead of Windows 98? I went Mac because I had years of fixing the problems my clients were experiencing with various incarnations of Windows."

If I had to rely on a Macintosh since I started my business in 1995, I wouldn't be in business today due to lack of proper business applications! ;-)

BTW, I'm sending you this message on my desktop P3 1GhZ, that has been running flawlessly for over three years...

[Joe_October]

The GUI and Mouse are not improvements. If we hadn't wasted 20 years upgrading to get the flying jelly jars, we would have speech recognition and DWIM.

The MAC had great marketing and as the outsider, it attracts the zealots, nothing more.

I want the flying cars and they won't come from Apple.

[Swordmaker]

my first computer was still my favorite....

Well my first computer is the most convenient:

[meyer]

You don't buy one if you don't buy into the hype. Those people I know who use Macs don't do much with them. They just want to be different.

I suspect that's part of the reasoning for many purchases. But I know a couple of people with them that do use them and are happy. I don't doubt that a Mac is a good-running machine. But I have no reason to switch, as I'm satisfied with my Wintels and WinDells. If I wasn't, I'd be looking at Macs and Linux and Unix and whatever else is out there.

[Joe_October]

...BTW, I'm sending you this message on my desktop P3 1GhZ, that has been running flawlessly for over three years......

Hello fellow god! You can't make a PC run unless you are a god. I am so endowed. All my computers run without virusii (don't launch stupid programs), my computers don't crash (don't load junk software), my digital cameras work out of the box (read the one page instruction sheet), I never lose data (back it up).

I am a beyond mortal men!

Damn, everyone I know with Windows computers who follow these simple instructions are crowding me out at the immortal food court.

[gitmo]

I think you left out marketing. They've never marketed as well as their competition. Tandy out-marketed them with a box that was nothing by comparison. Even CPM boxes were outpacing them. Then Windows came out of nowhere and walked away with the world.

[meyer]

Hi, Meyer. Yes, that is why I switched from Turbo Tax last year.

I threw TurboTax out in disgust last year and did my taxes manually. This year, I have Tax Cut.

[Joe_October]

My cross section of users isn't large enough to know for sure (maybe 10 users). Their machines crash routinely but they call it something else. When programs don't work, it's the programs fault. When they can't use the printers or other equipment, it's unimportant. The Windows users around them just smile and let them be happy. It's fashionable to like your Mac. It's part of the appeal. User's are more affected by the size of the monitor than what the machine can or cannot do.

[Swordmaker]

The Mac was originally designed for 400k 5-1/2" floppies. When they switched over to 3-1/2" floppies, they had to use variable speed drives to fit the same 400k on them.

The Lisa came out with 5.25" floppies... the first Macintosh used the 3.5" 400 KByte plastic cased floppies. At the time the IBM/PC crowd were using 360KB. The reason they did not think a HD could be mounted was that smallest HDs were about 6" x 8" x 6" ; too big to fit in the Macintosh case. When they did finally have a 10Meg HD for the Mac, it used the extra floppy port and was in a box with the same footprint of the Mac and sort of acted as a Mac platform base. Apple added SCSI to speed up HD access and allow other SCSI devices.

[Swordmaker]

The Mac was originally designed for 400k 5-1/2" floppies.

I saw one of the unreleased proto-type Macs with 5.25" floppies for sale on eBay about a year ago...

[meyer]

That's a vintage handheld. Is it a Palm Pilot?

[Joe_October]

...I think you left out marketing. ...

Macs were always heavily marketed. Just to the wrong audience. The elites don't want to use the computer of joe six pack. Apple thought if you get the elites, you get the market. MS marketed at the geeks and nerds. MS left things hard that would have been easy to simplify because that's what the geeks and nerds wanted.

The geeks and nerds won.

[Joe_October]

The Lisa keyboard was terrible.

But, the Mac II keyboard was sweet. Nicely shaped, big keys, good feel. I wish MS had stolen that one. I remember the IBM keyboards though. The metal ones were even better than the Mac keyboards.

[Swordmaker]

Why did the Amiga not become a standard? Marketing my friends! As conservative we have an awesome product-- sometimes our markeeting is lacking...

From an old Amiga fan, the real answer to what happened to Commodore and the Amiga is Irving Gould, Chairman of the Board of Commodore. Irving was more interested in churning the value of his stock as he did insider trading than selling the best computer in the world. Irving had never even LOOKED at a computer... much less understood one.

[CurlyDave]

The only major software category where Macs are really lacking is games.

I love my Mac and go to great lengths to use it on the very Windows-centric network at my employment.

However, there is one program which is not available for the Mac. A version of MS Project which would run on the Mac and exchange files with Windows versions is all I would need to be free of Windows. Management people use this all the time & the Mac will never come back in the corporate world until there is a way to use this.

It would also be very nice if there were some way to access the full functionality of IBD and Value Line from a Mac. IBD has limited access but you can forget about Value Line. But this is a personal, not a corporate issue.