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To: discostu
. . . and the default decisions of Jobs (no floppy, 1 button mouse) are idiotic. And the fact that it took them to the mid 90s to finally stick a print buffer in the OS shows how entirely non-revolutionary they always have been and always will be.

While there might be some argument in the "one button" argument, your "no floppy" does not fly. Apple stopped including built in floppy drives when CD writing became feasible and most small files were transfered over networks or the internet... Jobs was not even at Apple at that time. I had one of the last Macs that had a floppy and I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I used it. For those who needed a floppy, Apple and 3rd party manufacturers were already producing USB externals that worked fine. . . but few were sold.

As for your "print buffer" claim. Your ignorance of the Macintosh is showing.

The Macintosh OS has had a print buffer since OS 3 or 4, sometime around '87 or '88, it was just called something different: background printing. The buffer was in the System folder called Print Cache and later Print Monitor Documents.

72 posted on 02/04/2004 6:34:07 PM PST by Swordmaker (This tagline shut down for renovations and repairs. Re-open June of 2001.)
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To: Swordmaker
The first Mac to go floppyless was the iMac, Jobs baby after he returned. Floppies are no longer a frequent use item, but they can be necessary and given how dirt cheap they are there's no reason not to include. At home when I use a floppy there is no other option, for about $15 of hardware it's a nice safety net.

There was no print buffer in System 7, at least not one that would be remotely useful. I remember very well working in the library on their Macs going to print my first large document and WHAMMO a system modal dialog box pops and the computer can do NOTHING until there's less than a page and a half left to print, and given that pathetically slow Applewrite printer that was a loooooong time coming. Maybe there was some hidden option but that's just proof of poor design, Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS could be used while printing by default. Not having all printing running as a background process in a suposedly multi-tasking OS was simply stupid.
76 posted on 02/04/2004 6:46:09 PM PST by discostu (but this one has 11)
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