I have a lot more respect for the ST now...

[kool kitty89]

The sound was certainly better than the ST's crappy Yamaha sound chip.

Huh? What did the Macintosh 128k have for sound hardware? (was it just a bare DAC or what?)

The ST had an actual sound chip at least, even though they took far too long to upgrade that. (arguably inferior to POKEY though -one neat feature on POKEY was interval timer functionality along with direct DAC mode on the 4-bit DACs, facilitating PCM playback -you could get higher resolution samples played ont he YM2149 if you knew what your were doing and properly catered to the logarithmic volume; it's a general tradeoff)

 

 

As graphics gained greater importance then perhaps you got Macs and Quark Express for the Advertising and Arts department. The only thing that could have changed that history would have been radically different marketing and promotion on the part of either Atari or Commodore; the hardware of either was already ridiculously cheaper and clearly superior.

Well, in Atari Corp's case, the budget was very tight, especially early on (steeped in debt), so it's more understandable. (with CBM, it seems to be more of a management/marketing issue, but I don't know some of the details very well)

 

As for Graphics, at least IBM had CGA since the debut of the platform, albeit MDA was dominant for business stuff early on, but at least it was better than what the Mac had (except for the maximum vertical resolution), and by '84 there was EGA, so universally superior to the contemporary Mac (on high-end PCs, at least) and even ahead of the early Amiga/ST in some respects (640x350 16-color non-interlaced display -ST could go higher monochrome, amiga could do more colors and interlace, and both had larger master palettes), and then there was the PCJr and Tandy-1000 graphics modes also established in 1984, though never carried over to VGA, unfortunately. (and with the same resolution limits and palette of GCA, but with full 16 color graphics in up to 320x200, or 4-color at 640x200, like the ST, but without the large palette to select colors) And the latter came on a relatively affordable branch of PC compatibles. (plus Tandy had Deskmate -I think before Windows 1.0, and Tandy also also offered GEM with their clones at some point iirc) In the case of the T-1000 you got the PSG sound chip like the PCJr (a variant of the SN76489, so somewhat inferior to the YM2149, though still fairly similar) and Tandy's later introduced audio DAC for digitized speech/sounds.

 

 

Well, even if they had all gone over to the 65816, where do you go from there? There was never a successor to the 65816, so it would have just been another dead end. I think maybe a better option would have been for each company to include a "halfway" computer, that used a 68000, but also had a 6502 for compatibility with the previous generation. Apple actually did this via an add-on card. (Also, you might want to check out the C-65... it was never released, but there are some protos out there, and MESS can emulate it. It's a very advanced C-64 with some features that bring it awfully close to the Amiga line!)

The 68k ended up a dead-end too though, so it was only a matter of time, and who knows if WDC (or others) would have pushed the architecture further than they did. (as it is there isn't even a version of the 816 with non-multiplexed address bus -a 16-bit data bus would have added to utility as well; WDC seems to have designed for cost saving reasons -keeping the 40 pin package and 8-bit data bus, higher pin counts or 16-bit buses would both be for higher price brackets)

There's also sticking with the 65C02/R65C02 and just going for higher speeds and adding bank switching logic.

 

With hindsight at least, all they'd really have to do is hold out to the early 90s when low-cost RISC designs appeared on the open market. (especially ARM, MIPS was getting into low-cost and embedded chips as well, and of course the 68k platforms ended up going with PpwerPC predominantly)

Had they already started shifting the OS predominantly to high-level compiled languages, that would only have simplified the transition further. (especially with C in conjunction with ARM) Though they'd probably have had to include a 650x on the board for compatibility with older software. (the 650x family was easily licensed, so it could have been embedded in the system chipset too, and eventually omitted once the RISC CPU was fast enough for reasonable software emulation)

 

The Atari ST seemed to hit a wall trying to grow beyond the 68000, and even when it did, the TT and Falcon seemed to only attract the hardcore fans of the platform. The fact that so much software was written directly for aging hardware made it much harder for the platforms to grow, while PC stuff was standardized enough that you could often just swap out a single part without affecting your older software, and without having to junk the whole machine and start over.

The TT was also in a totally different price bracket than earlier machines: more of a low-end workstation class computer. (somewhat in-line with the Amiga 3000) They didn't have an advanced consumer oriented equivalent out though alongside the TT. (as late as the TT was, the Falcon was far too late -not sure why there was no Falcon-ish version of the TT -ie cut-down CPU but Shifter II and STe sound, maybe include the Blitter too with the slower CPU)

Then there's the general lack of upgraded CPUs earlier on, even on the high-end units (no 16 MHz MEGA prior to the MEGA STE, let alone lower-end units, and that;s ignoring the possibility of 10 or 12 MHz units too), faster CPUs would mean smoother games too even without specific support for the Blitter. (and better running older games/applications other than timing sensitive ones -where an 8 MHz compatibility mode might be necessary)

Then there's the general lack of video and sound upgrade until rather late: they started out behind the advanced Amiga but ahead of Mac, PC (other than high-res EGA -and then the palette is still worse), and almost IIgs (larger master palette). They added a Blitter soonest, but initially on the MEGA only (and it was released later than intended), sound was initially ahead of PC too (only slightly better than Tandy), but fell behind by the end of the 80s with adlib/SB and even Covox/SoundSource/DIY PC to some extent, the STe sound came too late in as was a rather modest upgrade given that date too. (and graphics only got a larger master palette, still only 16 indexed colors) The Shifter II came later still and only on the TT, and the Falcon was too late altogether.

 

 

 

Well, even if they had all gone over to the 65816, where do you go from there? There was never a successor to the 65816, so it would have just been another dead end.

Considering there never was much of a demand for the 65816, it isn't surprising they never developed a successor. But had Apple/Commodore/Atari adopted the 65816 and with sales of a few million machines a year, WD would have had a big incentive.

I think there was a fairly good demand for the 650x/816 line, but more int he area of low-end or embedded applications, so such enhacement wasn't a priority. (at one point they did announce a 32/16-bit successor, but that never went anywhere AFIK -and no simpler modifications to the '816, such as separate address/data lines or a 16-bit data bus)

 

An advantage of video and audio devices with separated buses/memories. They are usually more expensive (you need extra RAM) and slower (access is usually thru I/O ports), but at least you are free to go wherever you want with your CPU and audio/video systems. Companies should have realized that earlier and isolated buses when they could. But probably most of those computer companies were too "appliance minded" to think about that.

That's somethign that's always been and still is a design trade-off. There were 8-bit micros with dedicated video buses, namely those using the TMS-9928 (granted that was initially created for an early 16-bit platform), with the MSX being the longest lived example.

It's a cost/efficiency/flexibility trade-off when using dedicated memory, even today there are PCs with unified memory (especially laptops) as well as game consoles (Xbox 360), but things like buffering and caching also come into play as well as memory management and bandwidth.

 

And it is funny, because as a video game company Atari should have realized the importance of killer apps. Considering how much money they (Atari Warner) had they could have produced some incredible software stuff (and by that I mean serious applications), or at least paid some competent company to do so. Instead they kept hiring teenagers with no formal computer science education to do the job…

To be fair, you have to remember Atari Corp was a totally different company, and they no longer had much of any of the original software resources of Atari Inc (the entire Arcade division breaking off and many of the remaining programmers leaving), with most software being handled by 3rd parties. (let alone games)

On top of that Atari Corp took on the massive debt Atari Inc/Warner had incurred, so they had to work around that with a very tight budget. Even if Atari Inc had stayed together they had the monetary/management issues to work though, and the fumbles with the A8-bit in '82 and '83 on top of the games market. (though Morgan's efforts seemed quite promising and there was a lot of hardware floating around at the time including several advanced 16-bit chipsets -most disappearing after the break-up in '84, no help fromt eh confused way Warner handled the sale without prior warning to any Atari Inc employees, or even Morgan himself)

 

 

 

Finally some people are getting it! The ST with or without exotic custom graphics/sound chips was superior in every way technically to the pathetic Mac. GEM in High Res is no worse than Mac OS, the only thing I wanted in GEM that it didn't have was multi-tasking. So apart from much better keyboard to type on and a nicer mouse you got pretty screwed for your extra $2000 above the price of an ST/STM+Mono LOL

 

And as for a $3000 286 PC with EGA running DOS.....

 

How about the lower-cost consumer oriented PC clones, especially the Tandy-1000 series? (not EGA, but still expanded graphics, especially significant for games -though you could use composite artifact colors on CGA to get past some limitations- and then there's the sound chip, and later DAC added as well, and Deskmate, etc)

How much did a baseline T-1000 cost around that time?

Edited June 15, 2010 by kool kitty89

[kool kitty89]

1 C65 has 6 sound channels (OK ADSR analogue synth style oscillators not sampler based 8bit DACS) and could match 640x512x16 colours from 4096 and EXCEED AMIGA via 320x200x256 colours from 4096. It also had an identical blitter to the Amiga. This was working in 1990, prototype was scrapped to save engineering/manufacturing resource by concentrating on Amiga production NOT because the final prototypes had a fault.

Is the 512 line mode interlaced and in 50 Hz? (otherwise it would obviously be expanding past the television resolution range of 15 kHz Vsync which the Amiga catered to -but Mac, ST in mono, and PC for MDA or high-res EGA did not)

 

4. Arguably the more enlightened of the three was R J Mical and Dave Needle, both of whom designed the Lynx chipset and finished it in 1987 with hardware scaling/rotation of 1024 sprites AND still 4 channel 8bit sound identical to Amiga and a blitter and copper type setup. The also designed the 3DO chipset. However as Mical got fed up with Commodore and left and took Dave with him that's that. Commodore also sacked half of the Los Gatos team (Hi Toro) and screwed themselves.

I'm almost positive the Lynx doesn't have hardware rotation, just scaling/zooming. (rotation usually involves actual texture rendering -namely affine mapping)

And the Lynx sound chip shouldn't be anywhere near Paula's audio capabilities, it's a much simpler sound chip (more in line with POKEY but more flexibility with waveforms and higher resolution). Like POKEY it does have a direct DAC mode and uses 8-bit DACs (to POKEY's 4-bit), but that would be the only similarity to Paula with 4 8-bit DACs, they're just bare DACs, rather like the Covox type audio devices for the PC too. Paula is much more than an array of bare DACs, it supports signed linear PCM samples directly and uses DMA as well as having actual pitch/frequency and volume control in hardware and some additional effects allowing sample based music with minimal CPU resource, opposed to bare DACs which require a LOT of CPU resource, especially in the absence of hardware interval timers (POKEY can provide that itself), hence the common PCM quality issues on the Genesis in spite of a bare 8-bit linear DAC. (in that case it's rather odd since the YM2612 has interval timers built-in and and IRQ line, it's just not connected to either CPU, necessitating very tight playback code for good sounding PCM on top of the CPU resource; similar with the ST or other systems using the YM2149 or similar for sample output, though that is a bit more of a hack, but can have good results -with a beeper/PC speaker or such, you're limited to the extremely resource intensive software controlled PWM) Other DMA based sound systems were rather similar too. (STe, Falcon, Archimedes, etc)

 

5. Linking nicely to 4. above, because Commodore engineers had no idea how to update/improve the A1000 chipset the Commodore engineers assigned separately to designing the A500(USA Westchester branch) and A2000 (Commodore GMBH) had the same rubbish specs with zero improvements to Amiga. 32 colours was not enough in late 87, 64 colour mode impossibly slow for arcade games, and 4 channels was too little for sound AND music to play in games. In December 1984 these things were OK...in 1987 3 years later they were not.

Why couldn't they use the enhancements Miner produced earlier? And with the full documentation and schematics of the chipset, why couldn't the remaining engineers reasonably expand upon the chipset? (I'd have to imagine they could manage with the combined resources of CBM, MOS, and Amiga engineers -at least any remaining-)

 

6. Because the A500 and A2000 Amigas were supposed to be finished in 1986, but projects on both sides of the world were late by 12 months, they didn't even do any marketing of the A1000 in 1986. Between 1985 and 1987 Commodore only did 6 months of rubbish promotion. Idiots!

That really does seem weird... Even with the monetary problems Atari Corp. did what they could marketing-wise, on a very strict budget, of course...

It really seems like Commodore lost their way after Jack left. (granted, he did some pretty extreme things with the C64 -wasn't it actually being sold at a loss at one point in their price war?)

 

They were a bit late with a consolidated consumer model too... though the same could be said for the ST in the context of a high-end model. (both the 500 and MEGA coming in '87)

 

Same is true of Jack, he sacked too many of the Atari engineers not associated with what became the ST, this meant there was no way to upgrade the 8 bit Atari. Lynx was designed and finished by Epyx alone, and Jaguar was designed by another separate company again called Flare (who made the amazing Konix console that was never released. The 7800 was not designed by Atari at all. So Atari were pretty screwed, they had all this technology but most if it was inherited off the shelf/designed by third parties except the ST. This is why the Falcon is not a home computer version of Jaguar which is just crazy, waste of money designing two completely different sets of custom chips. IF Atari engineers had built Tom and Jerry then they would have stuck them in Jaguar AND Falcon type home computer. And this would have saved them millions in manufacturing AND software development. And more games would have been made for both *sigh*

In all fairness that was never the context of his purchasing Atari, but there were indeed far more interesting designs being developed (or already fully prototyped) at Atari Inc that might have very well been preferably to take up over the simple RBP/ST design still in development. I'd say it's more the unfortunate way Warner handled the sale than any brash actions on Tramiel's part that really screwed things up. (Warner not notifying Atari Inc staff of a potential sale, or even the president James Morgan until literally the last minute -when he signed the sale documents)

That all on top of the sale occurring over a long weekend/holiday totally screwed up the transition with Staff who were left utterly confused over the mess.

Technically speaking the entirety of Atari Inc's consumer staff was laid off with the sale, Atari Inc continued to exist for legal purposes for a while, the coin-op division was spun off as Atari Games, and Tramiel's TTL was re-named Atari Corp. and gained Atari Inc's consumer properties and debt, so any former Atari Inc personnel would literally be hired to a different company -the renamed TTL- so a real mes with the poor way Warner handled the transition)

 

It made sense given the situation (debt) and Tramiel's main goals to do what he did in the circumstances, but I'd imagien things could have been quite different had the transition been more orderly. (namely had Morgan at leadt been notified of a possible sale and made preparations facilitating such in an organized manner) That, or had Morgan been allowed to complete his rather promising re-organization of Atari Inc.

 

Apple laid low, sold a handful of machines a year in the 90s for a massive 500% profit, and found themselves still alive in 1996 after Atari and Commodore incompetence caused them to end trading. Apple didn't do anything right at all, they didn't do anything....and if you play it safe you can stay alive long enough to outlive your competitors even if you make crap. It's all style over function. The Apple desktop keyboard for iMac etc is WORSE than my laptop keyboard from 2006! But Apple fanboys think they look nice so they must be great.

Yeah, but the Mac keyboards from desktops 3-5 years ago were pretty nice full through boards... (glad my high school ended up getting eMacs in that period) That was generally true prior to that as well (other than the undersized limited keyboard of the early macs).

Never really cared for the mice, be it the classic ones or iMac variety. (or the weird newer iMac one with multi-button without separate tactile response and a tactless oddly placed squeeze button -which can, of course be disabled -as I quickly did)

 

And one mouse button still in 2010? Are you having a laugh!?!?!? Even with 2 buttons and a mouse wheel it's just about enough to control my custom AV machine feeding my 1080p projector via Zplayer for my home theatre setup haha

They have 4 buttons now and a mini track ball as the scroll wheel. (you lean slightly to the right for right click, push the ball for middle click, and squeexe the bottom for the 4th input) All odd, but I particularly hate the squeeze button and always disable it as I grip the mouse in that exact location, so I'm constantly pushing that button. (there's also no tactile response for it so I was confused at what was happening at first)

 

At least Intel Apple hardware is quite sophisticated compared to PCs, I remember when I was looking to buy my Dell XPS1720 in 2006ish that I couldn't even make up the same specification as the 17" Powerbook, which had a next generation Nvidia graphics chip, so in a strange way I started looking for ways to natively run XP on the Intel Powerbook 17" Mac because no laptop had those high-end specification for GPU!

True, the laptops are probably the best of their products, relatively speaking, though if you really look hard you could probably find a high-end PC notebook/desktop replacement, but it does indeed seem to be tough to find, especially in terms of powerful video. (even if you want to run windows or linux -which you could indeed do on a Mac now, though the standard keyboard is limiting for PC functionality)

The other really good case would be high-end workstations with the Mac Pro (albeit they still use the crappy keyboard and funky mouse stock)

 

Some of the high-end iMacs are a decent value too, though not upgradeable (apparently the macbooks are even more upgradable in terms of hard drive at least -not sure about RAM), but it's the mid-range and lower-end imacs and lower-end macbooks that are really the cases of overpiced hardware and paying for the "mac lifestyle." (unless you really like the OS -and getting OSX to run on a custom/3rd party PC is a huge pain, though not impossible)

[+wood_jl]

.... and by '84 there was EGA, so universally superior to the contemporary Mac (on high-end PCs, at least) and even ahead of the early Amiga/ST in some respects (640x350 16-color non-interlaced display -ST could go higher monochrome, amiga could do more colors and interlace, and both had larger master palettes)

 

When comparing EGA PC to ST/Amiga in the early days, PRICE must me mentioned. Sure, EGA was available during ST/Amiga launch, but how much was it for a 8Mhz 286 with EGA? The montior alone would have cost almost as much as a complete ST system. I would guess $5000 **at least** for an equipped EGA system IBM.

 

It's easy to forget - here in the modern age - how expensive technology was back then. I remember paying $190 for 48k Atari 400 RAM a little earlier than that. Even in 1990 it was about $500 (cheap mail order price) for a fishbowl 13"-14" VGA monitor that couldn't go 1024x768 without interlacing, and likely stepped down to 56hz to display even 800x600 and had not autosizing/positioning.

Edited June 15, 2010 by wood_jl

[kool kitty89]

.... and by '84 there was EGA, so universally superior to the contemporary Mac (on high-end PCs, at least) and even ahead of the early Amiga/ST in some respects (640x350 16-color non-interlaced display -ST could go higher monochrome, amiga could do more colors and interlace, and both had larger master palettes)

 

When comparing EGA PC to ST/Amiga in the early days, PRICE must me mentioned. Sure, EGA was available during ST/Amiga launch, but how much was it for a 8Mhz 286 with EGA? The montior alone would have cost almost as much as a complete ST system. I would guess $5000 **at least** for an equipped EGA system IBM.

 

It's easy to forget - here in the modern age - how expensive technology was back then. I remember paying $190 for 48k Atari 400 RAM a little earlier than that. Even in 1990 it was about $500 (cheap mail order price) for a fishbowl 13"-14" VGA monitor that couldn't go 1024x768 without interlacing, and likely stepped down to 56hz to display even 800x600 and had not autosizing/positioning.

 

Yes, and hence why I added the "high-end" comment. (iirc EGA didn't become really affordable until after MCGA/VGA was introduced) Though I'd think there would have been lower-end machines than 8 MHz 286s at the time. (unless you were simply saying that due to the 8 MHz 68k of competitors -it's separate topic, but I think common benchmarks put the 286 a good bit ahead of the 68000 clock per clock -the 8088/8086 was much, much, slower, of course -some variants like NEC's V20/30 series were a bit better though and went up to 16 MHz and were used in some clones and used as upgrades as well -though normally at the original clock speed in the latter case)

And that's also not taking upgrades into account for existing PC owners. (though the EGA cards themselves were rather expensive -especially before 3rd party versions became widely available)

 

Again, the other case would be PCJr/TGA graphics, particularly given the Tandy 1000 was one of the first really affordable PC compatibles and aimed at the home/educational market. (like the PCJr, but managed far better than IBM's efforts)

The only issue there is that graphics standard never became part of the mainstream integrated standards as time moved on, and I don't think was ever available as a separate upgrade card.

TGA graphics cards would really have been interesting though, especially during the period where EGA was expensive, as would have been offering sound cards using the PSG and tandy DAC -actually it's a bit odd there were no popular 3rd party sound cards before 1987/88, not even with simple sound chips, and the Covox wasn't even released until '86. (especially in cases like the YM2149/AY-3-8910 with the built-in I/O ports facilitating integrated joystick ports -though not so useful for IBM standard gameports, more-so as a 3rd party standard complying with the common Atari-like ports using DE-9 connectors common to many other home computers -I think the Tandy 1000 actually used those ports too, or perhaps those were different as well)

Edited June 16, 2010 by kool kitty89

[sack-c0s]

And Apple did something right, what was it? Aggressive improvements of the Mac line perhaps (new models every year), but coming out earlier helped a lot too.

 

Giving Apple IIs away to schools years prior was a really wise move for Apple; it established their dominance as an "education" computer, familiarized the brand name with school administrators across America, etc. That, and the aggressive improvements! When the Mac II came out, I remember it was kind of eye-opening. Atari was considered a game machine brand, even if they'd have put a Cray in a little box. As for Commodore, I don't know.....Some schools used them (when they couldn't afford Apples) but not many.

 

If that tactic was what it takes to win then in the UK we'd be using a beefed-up Acorn Archimedes instead of a mac - there has to be something else to it.

 

I thought Apples flair for marketing was a recent thing, but in hindsight looking back at the mac vs the ST/amiga it goes back a looong way. That thing is effectively a zx81 on steroids with a GUI. Whatever they did I have a lot of respect for whoever figured out how to shift them.

[Cliff Friedel]

And Apple did something right, what was it? Aggressive improvements of the Mac line perhaps (new models every year), but coming out earlier helped a lot too.

 

Giving Apple IIs away to schools years prior was a really wise move for Apple; it established their dominance as an "education" computer, familiarized the brand name with school administrators across America, etc. That, and the aggressive improvements! When the Mac II came out, I remember it was kind of eye-opening. Atari was considered a game machine brand, even if they'd have put a Cray in a little box. As for Commodore, I don't know.....Some schools used them (when they couldn't afford Apples) but not many.

 

If that tactic was what it takes to win then in the UK we'd be using a beefed-up Acorn Archimedes instead of a mac - there has to be something else to it.

 

I thought Apples flair for marketing was a recent thing, but in hindsight looking back at the mac vs the ST/amiga it goes back a looong way. That thing is effectively a zx81 on steroids with a GUI. Whatever they did I have a lot of respect for whoever figured out how to shift them.

 

Nah, Apple has been a marketing force for a long time. One of the most famous commercials ever was Apple's 1984 commercial that was run during the LA Olympics. From that day on, Apple has always had a good marketing team and flashy ads. Only time I would say they slipped is when Jobs was forced out of the company. Once he came back though, the company went right back into the marketing machine. This is why there is going to be a serious problem when Jobs dies off (he will never retire I think).

[+Spaced Cowboy]

It's a common meme that all Apple do well is market things. It's rubbish of course - you don't get to be the most profitable computer company in the world by only being good at marketing. So here's the full disclosure: I work at Apple, and have done ever since they bought my small company 6 years ago. That being said, it means I think I have some insight into how the company works:

 

- User interface: Apple work harder than any company I have ever worked for at making the user interface work for both technically-orientated people as well as those not so familiar with computers. At Apple, user interface design doesn't mean slap-a-GUI-together... *everything* in the UI goes through multiple reviews, and everything has to be justified in a highly-critical interview-style meeting. Flashy effects are allowed, but *only* if they convey semantic information that helps users understand what's going on, not just flashy effects for effects sake. This just hasn't happened to that same extent anywhere else I've worked.

 

- Software engineering: Again, it comes down to hard work. Apple open sources it's own OS. They contribute to lots of OPen Source projects, and they're on the cutting edge of a lot of software engineering. Look up OpenCL, Grand Central Dispatch, LLVM, Clang, Core animation, Webkit, etc. And that's just the public stuff. I'm an engineer in one of the pro-apps, and there's a *huge* amount of effort goes into powerful apps that sell for $200 or so. When I used to work in the movie business, a "flame" suite from Discreet Logic would set you back a cool million dollars. Final Cut Pro does the same now for circa 200.

 

- Marketing: Yep, Apple does it well, but Apple's marketing budget is much less than most of its rivals. Apple gets lots of free marketing by virtue of the expectations people have for anything new from Apple, in turn making them keen to hear any news from Apple, in turn making the press go nuts over any Apple event. Look at that statement though, it doesn't stem from Apple hoodwinking people into buying stuff, it stems from Apple making things that people want to buy. That's the "secret". Of course, they want to buy it because of excellent user-interface design and software engineering ...

 

Staffing: Bottom line - Apple wants to make excellent products. In most places I've worked, that's just a management mantra, at Apple it's genuinely part of the company ethos. As a cynical Brit, this took some time to get used to - I couldn't quite believe it but it's true. Apple is one of the top 3 places on the planet (IMHO) to be a software engineer, they respect their staff, they pay well, they're generous with bonuses, but you work damned hard - which is fair enough, because the work is interesting and challenging.

 

Anyway, I didn't really want this to turn into an 'Apple is wonderful' screed, but it gets frustrating when people keep repeating that all Apple do is market stuff. The engineers here are the best I've ever worked alongside (which is saying something), most (like me) have a Ph.D or multiple degrees, and (again, IMHO), we as a company do good things.

 

What Apple doesn't do is compete where they don't think they'll win, so no mini-Mac-pro, no el-cheapo Mac at all, etc. I understand this frustrates people, but that's the way the company operates. Anyone is free to not buy the Mac if it upsets them that much, or if a competitor's product becomes more appealing because of that policy. As far as I can tell, Apple's just fine with not making that sale...

 

One last thing. I've written this post on the above-denigrated iPad, sitting in the back garden. Personally, I love the little thing, but each to his/her own.

 

Peace,

Simon

[Tickled_Pink]

I'd just like to point out one thing from the original post. The Atari ST base OS was sweeet!! From a software development viewpoint, anyway. The first time I saw the Amiga's Kernel documentation I nearly fainted. No idea how the Mac compared with either.

 

I had a copy of Atari ST Internals (I really want another copy) back in the day and it contained a full OS listing. With this and the book as a whole I learned a hell of a lot about software development on 16-bit systems. You could, for instance, add your own extensions to the OS by adding your own routines into the 68000 Trap vectors. The OS was also part of the reason why the ST initially sped past the Amiga in terms of available software - although the shoddy initial release of the Amiga probably played into Atari's hands as well.

 

Thanks to its fantastic design (to this day, I regard it as one of the best design achievements in IT history) it was an easy system for programmers to learn and master.

[desiv]

It's a common meme that all Apple do well is market things. It's rubbish of course - you don't get to be the most profitable computer company in the world by only being good at marketing.

Well, I don't know about that.. You have more faith in people than I do.. :-)

But I agree that Apple isn't all about marketing..

 

In fact, I was re-watching the Robert Cringely documentary recently... That super genius 1984 super bowl ad didn't help that much... In fact, Mac sales weren't that good for quite a while after that commercial...

 

You could say it was because it was taking people a while to get to grips with the new paradigm or that the original Macs were just too expensive...

 

Personally, I think it's just that they weren't ready and Apple rushed them out anyway..

 

If you remember using a Mac 128k with 1 floppy and the EARLY Systems with no other real software available...

It was PAINFUL.. It wasn't until you got a Mac with 512k and 2 floppies that you began to see what was so nice about MacOS. (and the OS itself was a bit nicer by then as well)

Luckily, the Apple //e (and //c I think) sales were still really good and Apple was able to lose money on the original Macs for a bit...

 

I don't dislike the Mac or Apple.

 

But I do look at what the ST had with "color and cost" benefit or the Amiga with the multitasking and I see 3 very interesting companies/technologies who each had good hardware and good software. Some better than others at times...

 

And this is where I think marketing comes into play. That and business sense..

Apple might not have had the best hardware or software (or they might have, not arguing that)...

But they had better marketing and business sense...

 

and they are still going strong..

 

desiv

[+Spaced Cowboy]

Don't get me wrong, I'm an atari fan - I had an XL/1050 when I was a teenager, and I graduated to an ST then a Falcon, at *way* more cost than I could afford as a starving student [grin]. I couldn't afford a Mac back in the day, but I did use them (with hard drives, not floppies) at college. I did all my lab-reports using easy-draw (and got better marks, I suspect, due to the presentation).

 

At heart, I'm an 8-bit aficionado (it was the first computer I bought that had a disk drive - Dixons had a sale, and I got the whole package (machine and disk-drive) for £100. Disks were *way* better than tapes , but I loved my ST too.

 

Simon

[AstFan]

....

I had a copy of Atari ST Internals (I really want another copy) back in the day and it contained a full OS listing. With this and the book as a whole I learned a hell of a lot about software development on 16-bit systems. You could, for instance, add your own extensions to the OS by adding your own routines into the 68000 Trap vectors. ....

 

I doubt that it was full OS listing (source). Almost everything is available here: http://dev-docs.atariforge.org/

 

Only BIOS source listing of early TOS is published, by my knowledge...

Considering adding own routines ... - well known system used and described in many literature.

Edited September 6, 2010 by AstFan

[almightytodd]

In my opinion, the higher relative cost of Apple products has always been considered a feature. In 1977, a new TRS-80 computer was $600 - equal to a couple thousand in today's dollars. An Apple II was double that - with no monitor. When IBM started marketing their $4,000 "Personal Computers", the response from Apple was to introduce the $10,000 Lisa. Atari and Commodore got into a price war with their 8-bit systems and Apple continued to extend their Apple II line with newer models that were always sure to be the most expensive 8-bit computers you could buy. The first "person" (...not school or institution) I knew who owned an Apple II was a lawyer who also drove a Mercedes and wore an expensive watch. Owning an Apple computer was presigious, compared to owning a "Trash-80" or "Atari game machine". To argue that Apple's strategy was "right" or that they "won", because Apple is still in the business of making computers while Atari and Commodore are not, misses the point that Apple's primary source of revenue has been something other than computers for almost a decade now.

 

I would argue that the dominance of the Microsoft/Intel PC format in the business world, and the availability of used hardware from that source was more of a competitor against Atari and Commodore than was Apple. In the past five years, I've purchased three used PC's for less than $50 each that serve my needs quite well, while running an operating system and software that I am totally familiar with, because I use it everyday at work. I'm sure I'm not the only one with that kind of experience.

 

I don't own any Apple products because they don't sell anything that I need, and I have no desire to use personal possessions as a way of defining my status as a human being. I don't wear jewelry, I drive a worn economy car, I wear simple clothes, and my Casio wrist watch, while not nearly as prestigious as a $10,000 Rolex, keeps better time, because it synchronizes with the Atomic Clock in Colorado each night. But you know, to each his own.

[oky2000]

And Apple did something right, what was it? Aggressive improvements of the Mac line perhaps (new models every year), but coming out earlier helped a lot too.

 

Giving Apple IIs away to schools years prior was a really wise move for Apple; it established their dominance as an "education" computer, familiarized the brand name with school administrators across America, etc. That, and the aggressive improvements! When the Mac II came out, I remember it was kind of eye-opening. Atari was considered a game machine brand, even if they'd have put a Cray in a little box. As for Commodore, I don't know.....Some schools used them (when they couldn't afford Apples) but not many.

 

If that tactic was what it takes to win then in the UK we'd be using a beefed-up Acorn Archimedes instead of a mac - there has to be something else to it.

 

I thought Apples flair for marketing was a recent thing, but in hindsight looking back at the mac vs the ST/amiga it goes back a looong way. That thing is effectively a zx81 on steroids with a GUI. Whatever they did I have a lot of respect for whoever figured out how to shift them.

 

But in the UK schools were still using 1982 BBC Micro technology in 1988 so it did work for Acorn. The BBC was always too expensive for homes as it cost more than an STM/STFM, or C64 before that, but in the USA Apple 2 was not much more than an 8088 PC Electron wasn't bad but they launched it during the crash!

[oky2000]

In my opinion, the higher relative cost of Apple products has always been considered a feature. In 1977, a new TRS-80 computer was $600 - equal to a couple thousand in today's dollars. An Apple II was double that - with no monitor. When IBM started marketing their $4,000 "Personal Computers", the response from Apple was to introduce the $10,000 Lisa. Atari and Commodore got into a price war with their 8-bit systems and Apple continued to extend their Apple II line with newer models that were always sure to be the most expensive 8-bit computers you could buy. The first "person" (...not school or institution) I knew who owned an Apple II was a lawyer who also drove a Mercedes and wore an expensive watch. Owning an Apple computer was presigious, compared to owning a "Trash-80" or "Atari game machine". To argue that Apple's strategy was "right" or that they "won", because Apple is still in the business of making computers while Atari and Commodore are not, misses the point that Apple's primary source of revenue has been something other than computers for almost a decade now.

 

I would argue that the dominance of the Microsoft/Intel PC format in the business world, and the availability of used hardware from that source was more of a competitor against Atari and Commodore than was Apple. In the past five years, I've purchased three used PC's for less than $50 each that serve my needs quite well, while running an operating system and software that I am totally familiar with, because I use it everyday at work. I'm sure I'm not the only one with that kind of experience.

 

I don't own any Apple products because they don't sell anything that I need, and I have no desire to use personal possessions as a way of defining my status as a human being. I don't wear jewelry, I drive a worn economy car, I wear simple clothes, and my Casio wrist watch, while not nearly as prestigious as a $10,000 Rolex, keeps better time, because it synchronizes with the Atomic Clock in Colorado each night. But you know, to each his own.

 

Windows 95 killed any hopes of Apple becoming mass market, it was good enough for Joe Public really and that's all Microsoft had to do. Didn't have to be better than GEM/Workbench/Xwindows/Mac OS. Just good enough so businesses didn't have to invest millions in a change of architecture for all their IT from Windows trained support staff and hardware infrastructure to something Alien like Falcon/Mac/Amiga.

 

Having said that, in the early days the PET was very well received and the brand name Commodore was very well respected in the late 70s/very early 80s by big business. Commodore couldn't manage massive production of the C64 AND massive production of PET machines. They chose to concentrate on home machines.

 

I don't think the A1000 was cheap, a 512kb A1000 with monitor was probably only 30$ less than a shitty black and white 9inch monitored Mac in 85. But Commodore never really tried to sell the A1000s light years ahead technology and architecture (like compressed animation format being part of the OS definitions etc) but Jack made sure you knew the ST was a colour Mac for less than half the price, hence the name The Jackintosh Atari had a real struggle to sell to business, their brand was always associated with video games consoles and arcade machines. The ST however is the spiritual successor to the Commodore PET if you look hard at the specs of what a 16bit PET type machine would be like. They just put it in a traditional all in one type keyboard and CPU casing like C64s and Atari A8s

[oky2000]

It's a common meme that all Apple do well is market things. It's rubbish of course - you don't get to be the most profitable computer company in the world by only being good at marketing. So here's the full disclosure: I work at Apple, and have done ever since they bought my small company 6 years ago. That being said, it means I think I have some insight into how the company works:

 

- User interface: Apple work harder than any company I have ever worked for at making the user interface work for both technically-orientated people as well as those not so familiar with computers. At Apple, user interface design doesn't mean slap-a-GUI-together... *everything* in the UI goes through multiple reviews, and everything has to be justified in a highly-critical interview-style meeting. Flashy effects are allowed, but *only* if they convey semantic information that helps users understand what's going on, not just flashy effects for effects sake. This just hasn't happened to that same extent anywhere else I've worked.

 

- Software engineering: Again, it comes down to hard work. Apple open sources it's own OS. They contribute to lots of OPen Source projects, and they're on the cutting edge of a lot of software engineering. Look up OpenCL, Grand Central Dispatch, LLVM, Clang, Core animation, Webkit, etc. And that's just the public stuff. I'm an engineer in one of the pro-apps, and there's a *huge* amount of effort goes into powerful apps that sell for $200 or so. When I used to work in the movie business, a "flame" suite from Discreet Logic would set you back a cool million dollars. Final Cut Pro does the same now for circa 200.

 

- Marketing: Yep, Apple does it well, but Apple's marketing budget is much less than most of its rivals. Apple gets lots of free marketing by virtue of the expectations people have for anything new from Apple, in turn making them keen to hear any news from Apple, in turn making the press go nuts over any Apple event. Look at that statement though, it doesn't stem from Apple hoodwinking people into buying stuff, it stems from Apple making things that people want to buy. That's the "secret". Of course, they want to buy it because of excellent user-interface design and software engineering ...

 

Staffing: Bottom line - Apple wants to make excellent products. In most places I've worked, that's just a management mantra, at Apple it's genuinely part of the company ethos. As a cynical Brit, this took some time to get used to - I couldn't quite believe it but it's true. Apple is one of the top 3 places on the planet (IMHO) to be a software engineer, they respect their staff, they pay well, they're generous with bonuses, but you work damned hard - which is fair enough, because the work is interesting and challenging.

 

Anyway, I didn't really want this to turn into an 'Apple is wonderful' screed, but it gets frustrating when people keep repeating that all Apple do is market stuff. The engineers here are the best I've ever worked alongside (which is saying something), most (like me) have a Ph.D or multiple degrees, and (again, IMHO), we as a company do good things.

 

What Apple doesn't do is compete where they don't think they'll win, so no mini-Mac-pro, no el-cheapo Mac at all, etc. I understand this frustrates people, but that's the way the company operates. Anyone is free to not buy the Mac if it upsets them that much, or if a competitor's product becomes more appealing because of that policy. As far as I can tell, Apple's just fine with not making that sale...

 

One last thing. I've written this post on the above-denigrated iPad, sitting in the back garden. Personally, I love the little thing, but each to his/her own.

 

Peace,

Simon

The only reason Apple didn't go bankrupt last decade is iPhone and iPad. And actually iPod generation 1 and 2 were so-so audio output quality, inferior to some rivals and the video and camera on the first three generations of iPhone are pure shit from 3 years behind Sony.

 

So I'm sorry to burst your bubble but in the 80s they made crap computers (inferior to Amiga and ST in 85, so crap) and in the 90s they priced themselves out of the market with their non multitasking one mouse button rubbish OS and in 2000s they made hardly a dent into the Wintel PC market share of 97% despite the best advertising and billions of dollars in profits from iPhone and iPod and their new glitzy OS X.

 

And the iPad is yet another piece of crap, and doesn't do anything that a Pentium 3 600mhz Fujitsu Siemens ST3400 tablet PC couldn't do better 5 years ago and at least it doesn't run some stupid toy operating system too....but it will sell very nicely I'm sure. Some dumb bitch at work just bought one for a lot of cash for a start...might have to bring in my 50 bucks second hand ST3400 I got off ebay with 80gb HD and every TVshow I like stored on it

 

Like Nintendo who were almost bankrupt by Sony, they leaned hard on shitty pokemon and puke-o-vision original gameboy sales lol ditto with Apple and iPhone/iPod. The LC4 and then PowerPC Quadra years were very draining on Apple's finances. NEITHER Apple or Nintendo deserve to be here, it's all a style thing and inferior hardware.

[+wood_jl]

In my opinion, the higher relative cost of Apple products has always been considered a feature. In 1977, a new TRS-80 computer was $600 - equal to a couple thousand in today's dollars. An Apple II was double that - with no monitor. When IBM started marketing their $4,000 "Personal Computers", the response from Apple was to introduce the $10,000 Lisa.

 

No doubt! I distinctly remember standing over a "Lisa" for $10,000 (in 1982-1983 dollars, probably double today's dollars) a little bit intrigued with the mouse and the GUI (which I'd never seen before), a little bit perplexed with the monochrome graphics, and absolutely astounded at the $10,000 price. At the time, I was paying off a $700 Atari 800 with newspaper route money - so it didn't come easy - but I knew you could get a new Pontiac Trans Am for about the same dollars.

 

Atari and Commodore got into a price war with their 8-bit systems and Apple continued to extend their Apple II line with newer models that were always sure to be the most expensive 8-bit computers you could buy.

 

And when it came to the IIgs (while it wasn't specifically 8-bit it could be considered as such) I was impressed with the graphics and sound but it was difficult to understand why 68000 systems (ST, Amiga) cost so much less, with considerably more power.

 

The first "person" (...not school or institution) I knew who owned an Apple II was a lawyer who also drove a Mercedes and wore an expensive watch. Owning an Apple computer was presigious, compared to owning a "Trash-80" or "Atari game machine".

 

This is typical. I wouldn't call the families I knew "rich" that owned Apple II, but they were well off. My family may have been considered as such, but my folks were misers who live beneath their means (and still do) and there's NO WAY IN HELL they were going to spend $3500 (probably 2-3x that in today's dollars) for a computer. My Atari8 system was laughed off as a toy by the elites, and just about everyone else.

 

To argue that Apple's strategy was "right" or that they "won", because Apple is still in the business of making computers while Atari and Commodore are not, misses the point that Apple's primary source of revenue has been something other than computers for almost a decade now.

 

Where, exactly, would Apple be right now if they hadn't diversified into MP3 players and cell phones? I suppose nobody knows, but I reckon they'd be on the rocks.

 

I would argue that the dominance of the Microsoft/Intel PC format in the business world, and the availability of used hardware from that source was more of a competitor against Atari and Commodore than was Apple. In the past five years, I've purchased three used PC's for less than $50 each that serve my needs quite well, while running an operating system and software that I am totally familiar with, because I use it everyday at work. I'm sure I'm not the only one with that kind of experience.

 

Well, I'd guess the availability of cheap (but new) Chinese knock-off systems has more to do with it than used hardware. The critical mass was established back when the IBM PC itself was still relevant to even be referenced at all - when the term "PC Clone" was coined. During the time of the ST/Amiga, lots of people were buying "Clones." That was the writing on the wall. I have to say that Apple's computers became pretty sophisticated and impressive at the time, however; stuff like the Mac II had it all over the clones with graphics. Trouble was it was too damn expensive. The masses would wait for "clones" to surpass the macs in sophistication and capability but at a fraction of the price, when VGA/SVGA became the standard. Apple stuff is still impressive, but just expensive. Apple OS is pretty cool though.

 

I don't own any Apple products because they don't sell anything that I need, and I have no desire to use personal possessions as a way of defining my status as a human being. I don't wear jewelry, I drive a worn economy car, I wear simple clothes, and my Casio wrist watch, while not nearly as prestigious as a $10,000 Rolex, keeps better time, because it synchronizes with the Atomic Clock in Colorado each night. But you know, to each his own.

 

My philosophy as well. Apple products are pretty much repackaged (albeit nicely) PCs now, and they're slapped together in low-wage Chinese factories like any other PCs. I don't see why they cost so much more. I think they're fine computers, but I'm just not willing to pay more than any other cheap Chinese stuff; I'd rather have TWO el-cheapo PCs than one Apple. For the same dollars, I venture to guess I might choose the Apple.

Edited September 6, 2010 by wood_jl

[oky2000]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7412722243521131946#

[Forrest]

The only reason Apple didn't go bankrupt last decade is iPhone and iPad. And actually iPod generation 1 and 2 were so-so audio output quality, inferior to some rivals and the video and camera on the first three generations of iPhone are pure shit from 3 years behind Sony.

 

So I'm sorry to burst your bubble but in the 80s they made crap computers (inferior to Amiga and ST in 85, so crap) and in the 90s they priced themselves out of the market with their non multitasking one mouse button rubbish OS and in 2000s they made hardly a dent into the Wintel PC market share of 97% despite the best advertising and billions of dollars in profits from iPhone and iPod and their new glitzy OS X.

 

And the iPad is yet another piece of crap, and doesn't do anything that a Pentium 3 600mhz Fujitsu Siemens ST3400 tablet PC couldn't do better 5 years ago and at least it doesn't run some stupid toy operating system too....but it will sell very nicely I'm sure. Some dumb bitch at work just bought one for a lot of cash for a start...might have to bring in my 50 bucks second hand ST3400 I got off ebay with 80gb HD and every TVshow I like stored on it

 

Like Nintendo who were almost bankrupt by Sony, they leaned hard on shitty pokemon and puke-o-vision original gameboy sales lol ditto with Apple and iPhone/iPod. The LC4 and then PowerPC Quadra years were very draining on Apple's finances. NEITHER Apple or Nintendo deserve to be here, it's all a style thing and inferior hardware.

And like the iPad, that Fujitsu Siemens ST3400 has 10 hours of battery life, wakes from sleep in 1 second, can play back HD movies and has 250,000 applications available for it - half of which are FREE right? There a very good reason Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads in the past 5 months - they're better than anything else on the market. Only a fool wouldn't agree.

[+Spaced Cowboy]

The only reason Apple didn't go bankrupt last decade is iPhone and iPad. And actually iPod generation 1 and 2 were so-so audio output quality, inferior to some rivals and the video and camera on the first three generations of iPhone are pure shit from 3 years behind Sony.

 

Sounds a bit like the Henry Ford model of business: make it good enough (and only good enough) to make money. I can't see much wrong with that, when (as you say) Apple were struggling to recover. The iPod/iPad combined make up less revenue than the Mac, by the way, at least that's what Apple report in their financials. The iPhone is the largest section, followed by the Mac, then iPad, then iPod, the smaller things like software sales.

 

So I'm sorry to burst your bubble but in the 80s they made crap computers (inferior to Amiga and ST in 85, so crap) and in the 90s they priced themselves out of the market with their non multitasking one mouse button rubbish OS and in 2000s they made hardly a dent into the Wintel PC market share of 97% despite the best advertising and billions of dollars in profits from iPhone and iPod and their new glitzy OS X.

 

No bubbles are bursting over here. You didn't read me defending the Apple of the 80's, or indeed the 90's. I never owned a Mac before it became a wrapper around an Unix workstation, and it's one of the best Unix workstations I've ever used (and I've used a lot). As I wrote above, I owned an ST, then an STe, then a Falcon instead when I was choosing between the two, and I was happy with my choice. I remember writing and distributing the MDK (the "MiNT Distribution Kit") to give them more of an Unix feel. I also created the first ever Atari CD (the "Atari Mega Archive", distributing through System Solutions in East Dulwich, where I lived at the time).

 

My comments were aimed at the sort of vitriol you end your paragraph with. I don't understand the drive that seems to consume people who say that sort of thing - I love my 130XE, I love my TT, and I love my Mac. The Mac is by far the more powerful of them, but the 8-bit still holds my heart.

 

I do remember typing in listings from PCW (when they were still an enthusiasts magazine, rather than an advertising medium) and comparing listings for MacBasic with just about anything else (even the Beeb) was like comparing chalk and cheese. No line numbers, powerful structured code, pass-by-reference. The Mac was the gold-standard for programmers of the time. Simple as.

 

And the iPad is yet another piece of crap, and doesn't do anything that a Pentium 3 600mhz Fujitsu Siemens ST3400 tablet PC couldn't do better 5 years ago and at least it doesn't run some stupid toy operating system too....but it will sell very nicely I'm sure. Some dumb bitch at work just bought one for a lot of cash for a start...might have to bring in my 50 bucks second hand ST3400 I got off ebay with 80gb HD and every TVshow I like stored on it

 

Another meme: I don't want to use X, therefore anyone who does is "some dumb bitch". Perhaps she has different priorities than you do. Just saying. Oh, and that "toy" operating system is a fully fledged Unix, which is just about as "un" toy as you can get.

 

I'm curious how well this paragon of ancient tablets handles multi-touch though - as far as I knew the capacitive touch technology (which is by far the best) has only been around for 3 years or so - if you have to use a stylus, it's a waste of silicon IMHO. I'm also assuming it's lighter than 1.5lbs as well (with the battery, which lasts for a week of normal use between charges, because my iPad does), and I'm *really* curious how well anything with the Unreal-3 engine runs on it, because my iPad runs the Epic Citadel demo fantastically - you can see a live video review at http://tinyurl.com/2ela9g6 and compare with your 600MHz P3...

 

Like Nintendo who were almost bankrupt by Sony, they leaned hard on shitty pokemon and puke-o-vision original gameboy sales lol ditto with Apple and iPhone/iPod. The LC4 and then PowerPC Quadra years were very draining on Apple's finances. NEITHER Apple or Nintendo deserve to be here, it's all a style thing and inferior hardware.

 

... and yet, they are. And Atari are not, well, not in any computer sense anyway; personally I feel that's a shame, but perhaps some of the people, some of the software, some of the hardware, or some combination were simply better at both Apple and Nintendo. There must be *some* reason why these companies survived the weening out of virtually everything non-PC-based. And marketing doesn't get you anywhere in the long run, unless there's solid products and good user-experience behind it.

 

Simon.

[madmax2069]

they ended up going back to the all-in-one setup for the iMac and eMac and started having the same issues again.

 

 

Apple actually went back to the AIO setup before the iMac http://www.wap.org/journal/molarmac/default.html The first of the All-in-one G3 (only sold to the education market in the USA). The PowerMac G3 AIO (all-in-one), DT (desktop), MT (mini tower). first of the G3 Macs but last of the old world rom.

 

I own one

Edited September 8, 2010 by madmax2069

[+poobah]

I never owned a Mac before it became a wrapper around an Unix workstation, and it's one of the best Unix workstations I've ever used (and I've used a lot).

 

AMEN!

 

And the iPad is yet another piece of crap, and doesn't do anything that a Pentium 3 600mhz Fujitsu Siemens ST3400 tablet PC couldn't do better 5 years ago and at least it doesn't run some stupid toy operating system too....but it will sell very nicely I'm sure. Some dumb bitch at work just bought one for a lot of cash for a start...might have to bring in my 50 bucks second hand ST3400 I got off ebay with 80gb HD and every TVshow I like stored on it

 

Another meme: I don't want to use X, therefore anyone who does is "some dumb bitch". Perhaps she has different priorities than you do. Just saying. Oh, and that "toy" operating system is a fully fledged Unix, which is just about as "un" toy as you can get.

 

I'm curious how well this paragon of ancient tablets handles multi-touch though - as far as I knew the capacitive touch technology (which is by far the best) has only been around for 3 years or so - if you have to use a stylus, it's a waste of silicon IMHO. I'm also assuming it's lighter than 1.5lbs as well (with the battery, which lasts for a week of normal use between charges, because my iPad does), and I'm *really* curious how well anything with the Unreal-3 engine runs on it, because my iPad runs the Epic Citadel demo fantastically - you can see a live video review at http://tinyurl.com/2ela9g6 and compare with your 600MHz P3...

 

Actual specs: 400 MHz celeron, 800x600 passive lcd, 64 MB ram,6 GB HD, resistive touchscreen, 56K modem, 3.21 pounds, shipped with Win98 plus pen extensions.

 

I suspect my iPad is just a tick more useful

[potatohead]

Part of the cost of Apple stuff, starting with the ][, was their presentation of the system.

 

Apples have good software chains. The ][ line came with slots, and great system software. That was expanded over and over, because the well thought out system software more or less made it possible for it all to work.

 

In the end, a ][ was quite the 8 bit workstation! Few machines really featured the expansion capability the Apple did. One look at the PC shows the same overall approach, and it's winner. (PC BIOS, slots, and a sane upgrade path throughout)

 

Today, part of the cost of the Apple is the systems engineering they do. When software / hardware is in one house, the design elements possible add a lot of value for those sensitive to them.

 

The post earlier talking about a 8 or so year old machine running software still is something about that value. Probably that user just hasn't futzed with their machine, and if you add up the hours, that initial cost bump was totally worth it.

 

(I use the $100 rule. If you mess with it for an hour or maybe two, that's $100. Doesn't take long to add up.)

 

SGI took a similar approach on the higher end. Cost per clock was often not as good as, say HP or Sun, but the IRIX system was developed in tandem with the hardware, and the machines flat out rocked! I carried my original file system from a lowly Indigo, through to Indy, onto O2, then Octane, and would have done a Fuel or Tezro, but I stepped away.

 

These days, I see people buying Macs because they want the consistent presentation, and thought out system work flow.

 

All of those things are possible on PCs, but people have to work for it, if they even know what it is, and that work takes time to select products, pay attention to the industry, etc...

 

A Apple user will often just jump on the ride, knowing they are paying enough to have Apple largely take care of them.

 

If computing is just a device to you, not something that has value in and of itself, this value proposition is very appealing, which is how Apple makes it's money, despite it's small share.

 

There is a damn good lesson there on volume vs margins, and what makes a business sustainable and profitable. Say what you want about the products --somebody will agree with you, but the business thought is top notch, and very competitive. (don't like the overseas manufacture, but that's politics at this point, different day)

 

Anyway, circling back around.

 

The ][ wasn't cheap, but if you wanted to pay, a ][ could go a very long ways, in lots of directions. Development station, test and measurement, industrial control, publishing, programming, business, writing, games...

 

Absolutely killer machine, and I'm probably gonna put a Propeller on a card someday, and use a ][ as a dev system, not too different from how it was back then. One could get a Z80, 6809, EEPROM programmers, serial devices, I/O, DAC, you name it, and plug it into a ][ and get real stuff done --even if it was through that 1Mhz system CPU, or replacing it, essentially just using the machine as a keyboard and monitor...

 

Love those machines. Anyway, that's the value difference.

 

When we look at the A8 / C64, they were very potent, but kind of complex, hard to add on to, hard to get control of, hard to connect to. In the end, I think this is what hobbled many early computers. The designs were awesome, but limited.

 

A quick comparison:

 

Today, we see enhancement / emulation products for these machines. The Atari seems kind of cake for the brilliance of SIO, but look at how much of a bitch it is to add graphics, for example? On the C64 side, the smart disk drive has made the add on difficult, and the graphics were difficult, but it did get nice things to plug into the serial port, and cart slot, like the DMA add on. Similar things could be said of the CoCo, and others.

 

That's not to trash on either one, or to be perfectly accurate. I've a greater point.

 

Today, right now, on the ][, I can go and get one, pop my goodies on a card, plug it in, and have that card present the code needed to have the Apple just work. It's cool, and it can operate with older software doing all sorts of things, and do new things, without really losing anything, and without having to create very complex logic and interfaces.

 

I think that was smart of Woz, because he was thinking about how things get built, and what people really might do with them, not trying to nail a niche, or hit a price mark. He just made the thing solid, useful, and well presented.

 

So that's worth something. A look at specs isn't going to tell the tale. The ][ kind of sucks in the spec department --until one does some adding on, then it can rock, depending.

 

My greater point here, beyond just sticking up for the ][, is there is often value in how a system is realized, and what thought goes into upgrading, adapting and using it, and Apple has shown a culture that tends to make something of that and be able to sell it to those people who it matters for.

 

(which is not most of us, most of the time, and that's why people always don't get how Apple works, IMHO)

Edited September 8, 2010 by potatohead

[oky2000]

I never owned a Mac before it became a wrapper around an Unix workstation, and it's one of the best Unix workstations I've ever used (and I've used a lot).

 

AMEN!

 

And the iPad is yet another piece of crap, and doesn't do anything that a Pentium 3 600mhz Fujitsu Siemens ST3400 tablet PC couldn't do better 5 years ago and at least it doesn't run some stupid toy operating system too....but it will sell very nicely I'm sure. Some dumb bitch at work just bought one for a lot of cash for a start...might have to bring in my 50 bucks second hand ST3400 I got off ebay with 80gb HD and every TVshow I like stored on it

 

Another meme: I don't want to use X, therefore anyone who does is "some dumb bitch". Perhaps she has different priorities than you do. Just saying. Oh, and that "toy" operating system is a fully fledged Unix, which is just about as "un" toy as you can get.

 

I'm curious how well this paragon of ancient tablets handles multi-touch though - as far as I knew the capacitive touch technology (which is by far the best) has only been around for 3 years or so - if you have to use a stylus, it's a waste of silicon IMHO. I'm also assuming it's lighter than 1.5lbs as well (with the battery, which lasts for a week of normal use between charges, because my iPad does), and I'm *really* curious how well anything with the Unreal-3 engine runs on it, because my iPad runs the Epic Citadel demo fantastically - you can see a live video review at http://tinyurl.com/2ela9g6 and compare with your 600MHz P3...

 

Actual specs: 400 MHz celeron, 800x600 passive lcd, 64 MB ram,6 GB HD, resistive touchscreen, 56K modem, 3.21 pounds, shipped with Win98 plus pen extensions.

 

I suspect my iPad is just a tick more useful

 

Replying to both at once...

 

Firstly the ST3400(if I got the exact number right maybe it's 3500 or something) is not s celeron 400mhz only, maybe there was an economy 400mhz celeron version but mine was a P3 650mhz and the screen was about 10 inches. The screen was also 1024x768 and the screen did not need a stylus you could use your fingers with it (Dpaint with a DOS mouse driver was fun for finger painting). It had max RAM fitted by me and then XP Tablet edition installed not Win98 of the time.

 

So what do people do on iPads that they cant do with tablet PCs? Answer = nothing or less than my Fujitsu.

 

Watching TV shows/movies in SD? Check.

Music? Check.

720p or 1080p also impossible on iPad Check.

Run standard windows emulators within seconds of downloading them from any website anywhere? Yes and for iPad Nope.

MSN? Check (with bespoke client not actual Windows Live EXE).

Write documents? Check.

Read emails? Check.

Surf the internet unfettered via Wifi or 3G networks (via cards or USB adaptors for Fuji)? Check.

Blutooth? Ditto.

Do I need to find 'special versions' of software to do what I do on Windows already? Nope.

Do I need to pay for the software or register with the an Apps store? Nope.

Can I do whatever the hell I want with it and it is 100% open and unlocked? Yes unlike iPad/iPhone/iPod

Read book sized pages? Check

Read my Atari User scans? Nope screen too small on iPad

 

So that is basically why she is a dumb bitch, paying retail for a new iPad just because Apple allowed it to be sold to her

 

Multitouch = yeah great if being able to touch type on the screen is the only improvement in a decade then big deal and that's exactly what the iPad is...overpriced marketeering wet dream. A product that solves a problem that was solved many times over by Fujitsu Siemens. I've never had a single moment where I thought the GUI of XP used by finger touch on the screen needed a specific improvement. Sure it looks more glitzy but give me a Tablet PC without an alien phone OS inside and fancy multitouch any day of the century thanks.

 

My point was the iPad OS is a version of a mobile phone OS it is NOT a full desktop OS like OSX/Linux/Windows. Had they put OSX in there then I would have had a modicum of respect for the product and its price, as it is yes it is just a toy and you are still tied to the Apps/iTunes store for your locked machine...fantastic

 

Finally the 'dumb bitch' in question is indeed a dumb bitch because she got an iPhone 4 to replace her iPhone 3 (no problems with it) but couldn't tell me what the difference is or why apart from "it's the new version" ditto she rushed out and got an iPad and does what I've been doing on Tablet PCs for decades. She would buy an Apple baseball cap if she could, she is your typical blinker fangirl who knows jack shit about what she buys or why she needs it.

 

Hell I even have a 100mhz AMD 586 powered Tablet PC from the 90s with battery still lasting 2-3 hours and the screen not requiring a stylus to work.....it was my machine for doing relaxing sketches like an etcha-sketch on steroids. Yeah ok that may be a piece of shit but it cost me 10 bucks 5 years ago and did it's job. Even sprayed it red like an etcha-sketch and gave it to my niece.

 

Apple stuff is generally repeatedly bought by people with more money than brain cells (ie like the 'dumb bitch'), fact of life. Accept it and be quiet. Windows stuff fanatically bought repeatedly is for people with no style.

 

Some people use what there is, upgrade only if a useful feature is introduced and they know exactly what it is, or they swap architectures as required with no allegiance to either the Gates/Jobs moron clubs for fanboys

 

iPad = giant iPhone...without the ability to make calls...genius NOT! (certainly not more than a £250-300 product unless you are a fanboy sorry...in which case this thread is screwed now as the fanboys will derail it )

 

95% or more of all computer type purchases come down to a case of "monkey see, monkey do" people are basically sheep and will buy crap like Windows7, netbooks or iPads without a clue how much of a rip-off or how crippled these things are. It's a disease that infects the entire computer industry now, which is why I fix classic cars for a living and not repair/sell laptops these days

Edited September 8, 2010 by oky2000

[Kripto]

Features on a spec sheet do not equate to being the same user experience of using that feature.

[+Spaced Cowboy]

 

Firstly the ST3400(if I got the exact number right maybe it's 3500 or something) is not s celeron 400mhz only, maybe there was an economy 400mhz celeron version but mine was a P3 650mhz and the screen was about 10 inches. The screen was also 1024x768 and the screen did not need a stylus you could use your fingers with it (Dpaint with a DOS mouse driver was fun for finger painting). It had max RAM fitted by me and then XP Tablet edition installed not Win98 of the time.

Even assuming what you say about the specs is true (I can't be bothered to look it up if you can't be bothered to get the *name* right!), being "able" to use your fingers doesn't mean anything, if it's a resistive touch-screen. It's a world away from the accuracy and capabilities of capacitive touch-screens; that's *why* they supply a stylus. Again, useless waste of silicon, IMHO, and the market seems to agree - those resistive touch-screen tablet PC's have been around for ages, and were a complete market-failure until the iPad came along.

 

It's also not just about the specs, as the poster above alluded to. It's about what you can do with it, and how you interact with it. Using the basis of a desktop OS for a tablet device is a waste of time. It's a different interaction paradigm, and it needs a different approach. Microsoft tried for almost a decade to shoehorn Windows into a touch environment, and screwed up a potential head-start by not thinking enough about the interface to get it right. The "Tablet edition" of Windows is a thin veneer over a desktop paradigm, where what it needed was a total rethink. Enter Apple, stage left, with the soliloquy that steals the show.

 

So what do people do on iPads that they cant do with tablet PCs? Answer = nothing or less than my Fujitsu.

 

Watching TV shows/movies in SD? Check.

Music? Check.

720p or 1080p also impossible on iPad Check.

Run standard windows emulators within seconds of downloading them from any website anywhere? Yes and for iPad Nope.

MSN? Check (with bespoke client not actual Windows Live EXE).

Write documents? Check.

Read emails? Check.

Surf the internet unfettered via Wifi or 3G networks (via cards or USB adaptors for Fuji)? Check.

Blutooth? Ditto.

Do I need to find 'special versions' of software to do what I do on Windows already? Nope.

Do I need to pay for the software or register with the an Apps store? Nope.

Can I do whatever the hell I want with it and it is 100% open and unlocked? Yes unlike iPad/iPhone/iPod

Read book sized pages? Check

Read my Atari User scans? Nope screen too small on iPad

 

And this is where the majority of Apple-haters get it wrong. Let me counter with two things - first the facts...

 

- The iPad will happily play 720p movies, Apple supply both HD and SD streams via iTunes, although it downscales slightly (resolution is 1024x768, 720p=1280x720). It will also happily output true 720p to a TV set.

 

- I'm not sure why you'd need to emulate windows on a windows machine. If you're talking about emulating other machines, well it's not a windows machine, so why would it run windows programs ?

 

- There's a lot of free software on the app-store. There's no need to "register" with the app-store either, it uses your iTunes account. Since you're using Music (see point 1) on an iPad, you'll already have an iTunes account...

 

- I fail to see why the screen is too small on an iPad, when both machines have the same resolution (according to your specs). Perhaps your vision is lacking. Pun intended.

 

... and secondly an analogy...

 

If I take a VW Beetle convertible, and I replace the wheels with tracks, and I add a BFG (Big Freaking Gun) on the bonnet, and I wrap the outside with armour-plate, I haven't made anything that's going to compare with a Challenger-2 tank. You can reel off specs all you like, and in some areas you'll be able to say "Check!", but the fact remains that one is still a VW Beetle, and the other is a tank.

 

... and I notice that you ignored my gaming question. Gaming is a large part of the attraction of the iOS devices. You really can run Unreal-3 games. I *really* doubt you can run them on your ancient tablet. So by my reckoning, you (a) can't play HD movies, and (b) can't play any decent games. You also (probably) don't have a built-in accelerometer or GPS, so you can't do turn-by-turn mapping/directions as you drive around (for example) or play games that use motion as an input. I guess you can't have any of that 'augmented reality stuff' where the camera and screen combine to superimpose information on what you can see. I was walking around London a few months back with it. Amazing stuff.

 

Hmm. This list you claim is "nothing" is starting to add up, isn't it ?

 

So that is basically why she is a dumb bitch, paying retail for a new iPad just because Apple allowed it to be sold to her

I refer the honourable (?) gentleman to the reply I gave some moments ago. It seems he can't differentiate between how *he* makes a decision, and how someone *else* makes a decision. It seems he is unable to consider that different people have different motivations, and that labelling someone a 'dumb bitch' for not doing what *he* would do says more about him than anyone else.

 

Multitouch = yeah great if being able to touch type on the screen is the only improvement in a decade then big deal and that's exactly what the iPad is...overpriced marketeering wet dream. A product that solves a problem that was solved many times over by Fujitsu Siemens. I've never had a single moment where I thought the GUI of XP used by finger touch on the screen needed a specific improvement. Sure it looks more glitzy but give me a Tablet PC without an alien phone OS inside and fancy multitouch any day of the century thanks.

Ok, so I guess:

 

- You've never wanted to zoom in on a map by just stretching it out.

- You've never wanted to just rotate the screen by twisting your fingers. Useful with PDFs that are formatted differently to how you expect.

- You've never wanted to play a game which has more than one input at the same time (two on-screen joypads)

- You've never wanted to add your own gestures (which are normally multi-finger because the basic ones are taken) to control apps how you want them to behave

- You've never wanted to ... I could go on. I think the point is made.

 

My point was the iPad OS is a version of a mobile phone OS it is NOT a full desktop OS like OSX/Linux/Windows. Had they put OSX in there then I would have had a modicum of respect for the product and its price, as it is yes it is just a toy and you are still tied to the Apps/iTunes store for your locked machine...fantastic

Yes. It. Is. I don't know how I can say this any clearer.

 

Speaking as someone who's worked with iOS, I can tell you categorically that it is derived from Darwin, shares the same Frameworks that make sense (no point in putting Video drivers that aren't part of the hardware in, for example), and has all the goodies that OSX has, including OpenGL, OpenCL, Grand-Central, CoreData, CoreAnimation, etc., etc., etc.

 

As for your last sentence. I have just downloaded the source for a simple accelerometer graph (from Apple, but the point here is that I downloaded source-code over the 'net). I compiled the source code. I installed the resulting binary onto my iPad, and it's now there for me to use whenever I want. How can you describe this as not 'open' ? The only restriction is that when you *sell* apps, you sell them through the app-store. I guess you also have to pay $99/year for the development license, but I spend more than that going out to the pub, for [insert deity]'s sake.

 

Finally the 'dumb bitch' in question is indeed a dumb bitch because she got an iPhone 4 to replace her iPhone 3 (no problems with it) but couldn't tell me what the difference is or why apart from "it's the new version" ditto she rushed out and got an iPad and does what I've been doing on Tablet PCs for decades. She would buy an Apple baseball cap if she could, she is your typical blinker fangirl who knows jack shit about what she buys or why she needs it.

 

Hell I even have a 100mhz AMD 586 powered Tablet PC from the 90s with battery still lasting 2-3 hours and the screen not requiring a stylus to work.....it was my machine for doing relaxing sketches like an etcha-sketch on steroids. Yeah ok that may be a piece of shit but it cost me 10 bucks 5 years ago and did it's job. Even sprayed it red like an etcha-sketch and gave it to my niece.

 

Apple stuff is generally repeatedly bought by people with more money than brain cells (ie like the 'dumb bitch'), fact of life. Accept it and be quiet. Windows stuff fanatically bought repeatedly is for people with no style.

It may be a fact of life on *your* planet. It's not a fact of life in the real world, where people evaluate things based on what they *want*, rather than according to how much they hate Apple. From your various posts, it seems that cost is your primary motivation for whether to buy something, you keep telling us how little you paid to get what suited you, and I can see that this approach wouldn't fit well with buying anything from Apple - you pay more because of the effort that's gone into making it. Apple don't just slap together a standard Microsoft OS onto a standard piece of hardware and try to sell volume at low cost to make their profits; that's the Microsoft/PC way.

 

[aside]

It seems to me that someone so vociferous in their decrial of what is, after all, just another company making computer-based products must have some internal drive why. Perhaps you have an internal conflict ("I really like those Apple products" : "That's way too much for me to spend") that you resolve by choosing the latter over the former. Having to resolve this conflict would make you angry (consciously or not), and that would seem to cover the behaviour you've exhibited thus far. Subsequently, you justify your decision to yourself by labelling those who are happy to pay the cost involved as "some dumb bitch" (to pluck an example from the aether)...

[/aside]

 

Simon.