Re: Airport cards for G3 iMac - is someone joking on price?

On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:26:12 +0100, me18@xxxxxxxxxxx (zoara) wrote:

T i m <news@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:17:52 +0100, steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (SteveH)
wrote:

T i m <news@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

ISA

Not any more.

Ahhh, but why not? - you want legacy parallel support, why not legacy
ISA support?

*sigh* because I don't want legacy support for it's own sake Steve
(and where have I ever said that). What I have said is if you can
retain say a parallel or serial port without sacrificing anything else
(apart from all that extra weight of course) then why not? It's better
that's it's there and never used than not there the one time you may
want it?

The sacrifice being made is one of holding back progress. I know you
won't believe this, but when Apple ditched the legacy ports and went
with USB and nothing else, it pushed the industry into supporting USB
far faster than it would otherwise have done [1]. This gave the
advantage of turning USB into enough of a common standard that - for
example - you can now assume that your USB keyfob will plug into every
computer you encounter

Maybe, but, we now have USB 'and' (in the case of many PC's and
certainly all here <except the Apples of course>) PS2 ports. So I'm
happy to 'thank' apple for that (although for some reason I attribute
USB's progress to something else, can't remember what ..) I'm also not
confused or frustrated by the fact that my PC's *still* have (and I
use fully) PS2 ports.

If legacy ports continue to be built into boxes when there are better
alternatives [2], it discourages the peripheral manufacturers from
adopting those alternatives; instead they stick to the legacy ports,
which means that the box-shifters continue to build in the legacy ports
to support the peripherals, and you end up entrenched.

And that's a problem to who and why (don't expect me to reply to your
reply as I'm obliged by a special clause not to)?

I, for one, am glad that we've escaped the mess of half a dozen
different connectors and the faff of deciding which port I can free up
for a new toy by sacrificing a peripheral or using an adapter.

Half a dozen. Ok (and remembering I'm not an McFanboy) you have lost
the ADB, Localtalk, iSerial and SCSI (all were heralded as plusses at
the time, along with the single button mouse <g>) and they have been
replaced with USB and Firewire so that makes you better off by two
port types by my counting? Well, that's assuming you don't still have
a perfectly good serial Modem and a stack of SCSI kit that you want to
use then you have to buy extra converters to be able to continue using
them? Of course in the Mac model all that stuff it chucked out when
you take this leap forward as all this new kit is just part of the
required forward progress.

I am glad
that these days I can buy a computer and it will have USB, and I can buy
a disk / camera / MP3 player / mouse and it will have USB. It's nice and
simple.

Me too, and?

-zoara-


[1] Just look at the colours that a lot of the early USB kit came in.

The first bit of usb kit I bought was a keyboard and the second a
Serial / Parallel / Hub 'Bay' (the latter is still in use). Both were
beige of course.

[2] 'Better' encompasses both technical superiority

So USB is 'better' than and for what. It's not better for connecting a
stack of hard drives to a server like SCSI was nor faster when talking
to a V.24 / RS232 modem (with the genuine DB25M or even IBM's DB9M
version not Apples non std variant). It doesn't allow 'better'
printing than the bi-directional Centronics one and just as easy to
plug in (except on a Mac of course).

and the idea that
fewer interface standards are preferable to many for the sake of
simplicity in manufacturing and/or choosing peripherals.

Where the simplicity and suitability are appropriate yes, like pen
drives / mp3 players / card readers etc.

My USB printer is plugged in the back of my PC and has been for 2
years .. why would I care how it was connected?

Oh and I take it you haven't had anyone break a USB connector yet ..
especially on a laptop?

All the best ..

T i m



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