Re: FAO Rowland

Mandy <mandy2uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rowland McDonnell) wrote:

Mandy <mandy2uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

fergus <ferguscapewrath@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Mandy <mandy2uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]

That, by the way, is the stupid way of doing an OS upgrade. The
intelligent way is to say `No, we're not carrying all that obsolete
cruft over to the new generation OS, we're going to start with what
we've learnt since we designed that turkey and make this one a lot
better'. Which is what Apple did with MacOS X (other firms have done
similar; I just happen to know about Apple). You have the problem of
supporting legacy software, but the best way to do that is to just run
the old OS alongside the new one one way or another - it works very
well on Macs. Or it did up until they released the x86 powered
machines, which can run MacOS X applications written for the old CPUs,
but can't run the old `Classic' operating system like this beastie can.


So why, if Mac bods sound so much better than MS, don't more people use
Macs? :o/

Apple has been one of the world's biggest PC firms since the 1970s when
it was the biggest for a while (Apple was the first firm to sell a
`modern PC' in quantity). There are more Apple laptops being sold in
the USA than laptops from any other single firm. I've recently heard
they've got 17% of the US laptop market - 1 in 6 laptops sold in the USA
are made by Apple. That's a huge chunk of the market for a single firm,
given the thousands of sources for PCs in the world.

Lots of people use Macs. Apple has bigger sales than almost all other
PC firms. Don't forget that Apple is a hardware seller; MS makes its
money from flogging software, while Apple's software (and that includes
things like the iTunes music store) exists simply to sell Apple
hardware, which is where it makes its money.

Consider this: Apple is usually said to have about 5% of the PC market
(it goes up and down, and I think that's the US figure). But almost all
PCs are the `usual sort', bought for use in commercial applications.
When people buy PCs for themselves, quite a large fraction chooses to
buy a Mac - with most of the `usual sort' sitting on office desks and
suchlike. Macs also last longer than the `dark side' machines - no
longer because of significantly better hardware, but because they become
obsolete less quickly. So if you look inside people's homes, you'll see
an awful lot more than 5% of the PCs are Macs. And even a 5% share of
the market is pretty good - there are an awful lot of firms making PCs,
aren't there?

The question you want to be asking is how come the MS-powered IBM PC
wiped out *ALL* the rest of the PC competition completely. Apple
survived and the Mac has thrived - but everyone else went to the wall.
Amiga, Archimedes, and all the rest - all of which were much better
value for money than any Mac or `IBM PC'; they've all gone.

That is down in part to sociological factors; in other part due to
illegal business practices by MS (Bill Gates comes from a long line of
corporate lawyers; he's not really a technical person). Basically, in
the early 1980s, business folk started buying PCs. And a middle manager
or similar had to make a decision on what to buy. And they don't want
to get it wrong but they know *** about computers. So they have to
make a decision somehow. The early IBM PCs looked a lot more `serious'
and `corporate' than (for example) Macs or the Apple ][s that preceded
them, and of course `No-one ever lost their job buying IBM' - it's
always safe to buy IBM, from the point of view of the job security of
the buyer.

So they bought IBM. It didn't hurt that Lotus copied the spread***
program idea from Visicalc which ran on the Apple ][. Despite the high
price of IBM PCs compared to the old Apple ][s, business people
preferred Lotus 1-2-3 on the IBM PC to Visicalc on the Apple ][ because
IBM PCs looked more business-like. And Macs didn't get a spread***
for quite some time. Mind you, they've got a blinder of a spread***
now - just out, and it's from Apple and the first version released is
not a beta version, as you'd expect from (say) MS (or a new version of a
Mac operating system...)

Anyway, once the firm has one `type of computer', the people who look
after computers want to stick with that one type. They also don't want
computers that are easy to use and don't go wrong, because that way
they're out of a job. So lots of company computer technicians and
managers are very hostile towards Macs in particular, deriding them as
toys, and `no good at text', and things like that. `Oh, you can't get
software for them'. It's quite astonishing how violent their opinions
got at times - until you consider that they had to keep Macs out or
their careers would be threatened[1].

Oh yeah, and the old-tyme computer types didn't even trust computers
with monitors - they were used to the old mainframe/minicomputer type
that wanted punched cards and ran batch jobs overnight[2]. IBM PCs
fitted their idea of what a PC ought to be and worked the way they
thought - while Macs were just too much for 'em because anyone could use
a Mac and that mouse is just a toy, as are the graphics. Back then, if
a Mac had a feature or ability that an IBM PC did not, it was used as
proof that the Mac was a useless toy.

Really. Seems incredible, doesn't it?

Of course, IBM PCs got pretty much all Mac features eventually - just
implemented in a more shoddy way, and by then, all these features were
considered essential by IBM-type PC buyers.

Once the companies started to get IBM PCs (and clones) everywhere, the
next thing is that people who learnt to use them at work thought `I
could do with some of that at home' and bought what they were used to -
the fact that the software at work would run on the PC at home was of
course a trivial consideration because no-one would ever pinch anything
from work, would they? Especially not when you can get the installer
discs back in their box in the office before anyone's noticed they've
gone.

Microsoft has recently admitted that even now it doesn't want to make
software piracy impossible, because allowing people to pirate software
has always been part of their strategy: Windoze 3 was *very* easy to
pirate when it was new. That meant that `everyone' with a PC got
Windoze - pretty much wiping out the market for IBM's far superior OS/2
(a much, much better Windows-type operating system for IBM PCs). And it
goes on like that.

MS pulled other dirty tricks - for example, IBM-type PCs could run all
sorts of operating systems, and MS-DOS was meant to run on all sorts of
computers. Now, if you wanted to sell a computer with MS-DOS on it, you
could either stop selling computers with any other operating system on
it and get MS-DOS from MS at a low price; or you'd have to pay a higher
price if you wanted your firm to sell computers with any other OS. This
dodgy contract stuff by MS was stopped eventually as being criminal, but
by that time it was too late and the competition had died out (MS did
other equally criminal things to wipe out other areas of competition).

And if you want to know how much respect MS has for its paying
customers, consider this:

The recent problem with Microsoft (or is it Windoze?) Genuine Advantage
that pulled the plug on legitimate Vista users had no effect on the
pirated copies - it's possible (with the right software, don't ask me
where to get it, I have no idea) to crowbar a pirate copy of Vista into
running, and of course it's not reporting to MS so can't be disabled by
`Microsoft Genuine Advantage' - so all the legal users got screwed,
while the illegal users were laughing. `Microsoft Genuine Advantage'
might be an advantage for Microsoft, but it's Bad News for legit users.
You'd have to be a right mug to buy Vista, I reckon.

Rowland.

[1] When Hammersmith Hospital was taken over by Imperial College, the
computer people at Imperial told the RPMS (IIRC) art department that
they had to get rid of their Macs because they only supported MS Windoze
and wouldn't touch Macs. So the art department said `Brill! We'll keep
the Macs and you can leave us alone!' and carried on using Macs without
any computer support at all. Umm. My dad used to work there; he's
retired now. `RPMS' = Royal Postgrad Medical School, based at
Hammersmith Hospital. My dad worked for the RPMS, probably. He was
always rather vague about exactly who his employer was officially on
paper. It had changed rather a lot over the years, y'see.

[2] There's a tale I've heard. Late 1970s, some bods in the London
office of a big UK firm (I forget which one, although I have been told)
wanted to buy an Apple ][ so they could use the Visicalc spread*** -
the only one available in the world at the time. They were told that
they couldn't just buy what they wanted, but had to go via the computer
people, tell them what job you wanted to do, and they would give you the
best kit for the job.

So the bods who wanted Visicalc copied out the `feature list' from the
Visicalc documentation (to make sure they got what they wanted),
submitted it to the official computer experts, and got the message back
`This cannot be done with existing technology'.

That is what they were like.

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