blw
Posts: 4458
Joined: 3/15/2004
From: Auburn,
AL, USA
Status: offline
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Bill,
I'm glad that I curbed some remarks that I almost made. I see that you are one of those who have been at this longer than me. I started in the late 1970.s with an IBM...forget the model now. I was in the Army and we would break into the office where it resided to learn computing on the sly. We would carry in beer and pizza for the weekends, and camp at the console. My last jobs were in aviation simulations, working with the AH-64, OH-58D, CH-47, and UH-60 combat mission simulators, and contractors like Evans & Sutherland, Ball, etc.
My first home box was a 800XL and I later started programming machine language on the 6502. My first ventures into DOS and Macs were via the Atari ST thru emulations. I had to do work for the Army in DOS, but the offices didn't have the Zeniths yet so I had to program DBase III on Ataris. I ran early Macintosh programs on that ST for several years before moving up to Macs. I began serious illustration on the ST in the latter 1980s and began doing detailed graphics for Broken Wing Awards, detailing inflight failures and landings. I later became a MIS guy for a problematic LAN on the base. I learned to scream and shout a lot with that job.
I worked as a graphics designer/illustrator after that and one company had Macs, Intels, and SG Indys. The Macs were always faster on equal versions of software due to mouse click counts, scrolling counts, font management, and RIPing to architectual sized plotters. We had our camps of Intel and Mac followers, but we all agreed that productivity was higher with the Macs when we were churning out jobs. We could network the Macs and SGIs, but never the Intels.
Now, I would have to agree that OS X is rock solid as it was built from scratch. I didn't want to switch, but I still do some graphics design on the side and was forced to move up. I have never looked back. After some 9 months with various versions of OS X running on 4 boxes at home I still get surprises to how good it is. We also have a Windows box. My G5 chews up anything I give it. I know what you mean about going through OSs like I did and making your choices. You certainly aren't one of the "new experts", running your first version of an OS installed by the distributor. I felt the same about DOS as you did about the Lisa.
My evaluation on Macs and Intels since their birth is this: The Mac OS and Finder/System scheme should have killed the Mac in the beginning. Not everyone could afford a HD just to run the OS. DOS was better and rock solid. However, Windows came along and there lies the problem for Intel boxes. When I see Windows I can't help but think we are still living in the serial mouse/bus mouse world. What should have killed the Mac is now what makes it a better system. Windows should partially reside in ROM and have a similiar function as the Toolbox. Most people never paid attention to Toolbox, but it is what gives the Mac a better ROM foundation. (Also, the Toolbox is what allowed for Macs to be emulated in the first place.) The time has passed for Intel boxes to integrate everything into ROM, tie it all together, and get rid of the ancient interrupt problems, etc.
Anyway, it is good to talk and debate computers with someone who has been at it longer than me.
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