Re: New perspectives on Macintosh [from INFO-MCIRO]

[Info-Mac]

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From: info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac)
Newsgroups: fa.info-mac
Subject: Re: New perspectives on Macintosh [from INFO-MCIRO]
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Date: Sat, 7-Jul-84 23:57:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-beaver>.1143
Posted: Sat Jul 7 23:57:34 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Jul-84 00:45:56 EDT
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Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
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From: Werner Uhrig
Jerry,
I just read the first issue of MACWORLD and, I think, I understand
a little better, what causes you to flaming outbursts: The hype
is simply suffocating; one would think they are published by
Apple themselves. Well, I would not be surprised if the cooperation
needed to get out the magazine as early (too early ??) as the MAC
created a lot of "nest-warmth" resulting in pink eye-shades.

As a result, I believe they are, actually, hurting the image of the MAC
by antagonizing every and any knowledgable reader - us academics are
really more at home at applying criticism rather than nodding our head
in agreement - and these articles have the effect of a red flag !

In a way, your style of tearing at the MAC has the same fault, in that
it loses effectiveness by making the reader WANT to disagree with you
because you seem so one-sided and unneccessarily harsh in your
criticism. Of course, you may not be concerned about
or desire any particular reader-response, and my reaction may be
completely atypical, but in the interest of improving the chances
for a viable competition for IBM, I wished I'd see you write for
"effect", critical of the obvious shortcomings of the MAC (and
believe me, I sit here fuming at it the same way you do), but
playing the role of a "benevolent godfather", who'd rather not
see any harm come to the MAC.

Some friends believe that you are only "baiting" Apple, but I don't
read that attitude between your lines - of course, I KNOW that you
want to see ever better machines and are not completely unsympathetic
with the MAC, but ....

As an aside, maybe us "knowledgable" users are simply going to be
a small enough percentage of all buyers that our wishes and needs
do not carry much weight anymore when designing / marketing the next
generation of computers - makes me feel like somewhat like a .....
(substitute your favorite endangered species)

In answer to specific topics in your note:

RE: "Programmer Switch" - I imagine you have the same little plastic gizmo
which came in the white box, and can be stuck into the cooling
slits on the left rear? Lovely to get no instructions on how to
make use of it, right again !!! And a manual that does not
contain the error codes, which the MAC uses to tell me what's
wrong when it stops !!!

RE: "Second Drive" - there are several annoying aspects:

1) it seems that it is impossible to copy without formatting first

2) unless you "introduce" the "new" disk and the disk to be copied
to the system on different drives, the system will attempt
to perform the copy on the same drive, making you swap the
disks around.

3) should you, accidentally or on purpose, insert another new disk,
when prompted for the system disk again, all of a sudden
the system will request that "other" disk again later. Why?
MacHeaven may (or may not) know ...

4) the DiskCopy utility which comes with on the more recent versions
of the System or Write/Paint disk, does NOT know about 2 disk
drives - so much for friendly system programs. I bet, if the
MAC-OS was an open-system, I'd have hacked up something better
already.

Like my one year-old Charisma, the MAC is a lovely baby; making it sure
must have been as much fun; the parents are certainly intelligent and
educated people. But do the MacParents have all their marbles together
when they expect me to wait the same "couple of years" of continuous
investment in hardware and software before HE becomes an adult? At least,
Charisma never made such claims, nor did anyone else on her behalf !!!

My solution is to call the MAC an "infant" and warn everyone to be on the
lookout for childish behavior, and to disbelief the "stary-eyed" claims of
all his parents and eucators.

-- But .... I still think I' m in love with him (-:
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