I started with computers in 1982, when the hot PC's were Commodore 64's and Amiga's, with the TRS-80 the hobbyist machine. The first business PC's I used were the HP86A and then the HP desktop, complete with 128k of RAM (64k built-in plus 64k plug-in module), and a 5.25in floppy for storage. Teamed with a daisy-wheel printer and Lotus 1-2-3 v1a, I did project costs and revenue forecasts which took 45 minutes to print out one page on A3 paper! Next came an IBM PC, which was better specified and by then HDD's were standard, but usually only 5-10MB in size. 1984, the Lisa came out and I loved it - but: it cost, IIRC, $9000 when a PC from IBM with MS-DOS cost only $5-6000, and by then I had supervised the installation of over 100 PC's in the company I worked for. Given the then lack of commercial software compared with MS-DOS machines, it was a no-brainer to stay with MS, and by then too MS users had access to very capable programs for WP, spreadsheet and database creation. Had Apple, when they moved on from the Lisa to the Macintosh, not lost to the MS model in the commercial world, they might now be dominating that market, but they would have had to be as open to third-party developers as MS is (although that openness can be problematic, as we all know).
I stayed away from the early versions of Windows, not using it until 3.11, which was relatively stable and usable: I'd concede it took a while to get used to, not in using the mouse, but in working out how to do things I had been used to doing from the command line. I will still use the command line for some tasks, such as a multi-file selective move or copy, and for a fast and efficient search using parameters with output to a file or printer, which are near impossible to do in Windows (unless perhaps you write a script, which probably takes more time than using the command line). It's, I think, a matter of fact that commercial users went the PC way because of IBM: for a long time it was said in IT that "you can't get fired for buying IBM": the MS-DOS-based software suites such as Lotus and Symphony were comprehensive and relatively easy to use, worked well, and could be sourced from multiple retailers at competitive prices if they didn't come pre-installed. Mac's made it in the print and graphics world mainly I think because they undoubtedly had a good interface for that type of work, and they were much faster in rendering graphics for a very long time. Nowadays, all of my clients use Windows in various versions, and Office in versions from 97 onwards: backwards compatibility is much better than it used to be, MS has learnt the lesson from Excel 3 to 4, when every macro had to be re-written, an absolute nightmare which kept me away from Excel for years (macros I wrote in 1982 for Lotus 1-2-3 still run in the latest version I use, which is quite remarkable). I think it just has to be accepted that unless Microsoft and Windows will dominate the commercial and home use markets for many years to come because it's now much too hard for companies and people to make the change: the costs in re-training and replacing hardware and legacy software would be unacceptable. John in Brisbane -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Brian Walters Sent: Saturday, 1 May 2010 8:29 AM To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List Subject: Re: K-7 replacement? On Fri, 30 Apr 2010 10:49 -0500, "CheekyGeek" <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 10:32 AM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Apple is very good at making it easy to do the things that they think you > > should do. It can be very challenging however if you think differently. > > While this is a fairly obvious troll line, I must respectfully disagree. > Anyone who lived through (and with) the popularization of computers > among the masses must remember what it was like to learn DOS and to be > fumbling through a manual to learn the cryptic command that one must > type (without syntax errors) to accomplish ANYTHING before the > Macintosh. In contrast, upon seeing the first Macintosh running in an > Office supply store without knowing anything at all about it, one > could walk up... grab the single button mouse (which I had never seen > before) and it was immediately OBVIOUS what one would do with it. > Click, select, drag. One could easily learn to use both applications > MacWrite and MacPaint without ever cracking a book. It was a paradigm > changer: a computer which worked virtually as you thought it should. > > Apple's Macintosh Interface Guidelines brought a certain sanity to the > user. You didn't need to learn a different location for the menu > command to open a file, or quit a program, or print. Or to close a > window, etc. This made learning a new program so much easier as there > were commonalities to the basic functions, for those programs that > stuck to the Guidelines. By any objective standard Apple has made it's > reputation on the opposite of what Larry says they have done: Making > things that just work pretty much the way you think they should work. > The fact that others have followed along and attempted to do some of > the same things (i.e. Windows) and that such things are taken more for > granted today, can still be seen in their more recent products such as > the iPod. > All of that may well be true. In fact I'm happy to concede that it is even though I've never used an Apple computer. What I do know is that way back when I was looking into getting a computer (I'm talking pre Windows 3 here), the only thing I could afford was one of the IBM 'clones'. Anything made by Apple was at least twice the price. If Apple's pricing had been reasonable, maybe I'd be using the latest and greatest Mac now. But it wasn't and I'm not. And, as far as I can tell, nothing much has changed. Cheers Brian ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Brian Walters Western Sydney Australia http://members.westnet.com.au/brianwal/SL/ -- -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Or how I learned to stop worrying and love email again -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
