Any complex software is going to be very difficult to port from a PC to
a MAC. Changes in PC software architecture make it difficult enough to
move from one platform to the next if Microsoft didn't maintain support
for older methods. Apple drops support and things stop working. often
requiring a total re-write, sometimes a re-design of core
functionality. This is not trivial, and you know for 10% of the market
it's just not often worth it.
On 8/27/2012 5:26 AM, Joseph McAllister wrote:
On Aug 25, 2012, at 15:27 , Brian Walters wrote:
Quoting Bob Sullivan <rf.sulli...@gmail.com>:
Darren,
Some of us still hold a grudge on Apple.
We remember our first Apple PC's
and how everything Apple cost 2X what the IBM machines cost,
how nothing - printer, disc drives, monitors, memory had to be Apple
or it wouldn't work!
Thanks, Bob. I've also got a long memory. I was trying to frame a reply along
those lines and you've saved me the trouble :-)>
Those of us who have used Pentax all our lives, for whatever reason, lens compatibility, rugged and
innovative products, should know better. Apple would not be where they are today if they didn't
provide compatibility with the hardware tools their customers wanted or needed to do their work.
Even today though, with a pant-load of software capable of easily porting "PC" programs
to "Macs", a large percentage of companies don't bother. They are running the same
hardware, idiots. Port! I think it's because so many liked to fiddle as kids, so they went to the
dark side and got PCs. So they could. Now that they are older, these kids are scared they can't
learn anything new, so they shy away from Apple. While they were sneering at us, Apple stock sold
for $13 a share. Whose sneering now?
The first use I got out of my first Apple Product, a ][+, was writing CP/M code
to make my Epson Printer listen to the Apple. Pretty simple really. About two
lines of hex to tell the computer that is was attached to something other than
a line printer. I learned Wozniac's method of writing data to floppy disks, and
would repair friends disk with errors by printing out all the code on the disk,
finding where the error was by following the sectors sequentially as they
jumped around all over the directory, mapping it (tedious!) until I discovered
what was missing, or garbled, and repairing it. When Apple computers (Mac) went
to 48, then 64 bit processes, I gave up on that endeavor.
When the Mac came out in 1984, it was shortly followed, thanks to Adobe selling Jobs the
font technology used by Apple Laser Printers, which put tens of thousands of printers and
font designers working at home. "Desktop Printing" became a buzzword in those
years. That was the only time I can think of that for a year or two you had to buy an
Apple printer to do the job. Soon HP and Brother came out with similar printers, which
ALL cost too much because of the very high per unit prices Adobe charged Apple and the
others to use ROMs running their patented font drawing software whose name I cannot think
of now.
That lasted for a while, then Apple addressed the costs by coming out with
their own (or purchased) fonts design called TrueType that gave damn near the
quality of Adobe's system. Apple gave those away, followed by most all fonts
being converted into TrueType. This took the wind out of Adobe's profit column.
They had saved enough money to buy Aldus and it's PageMaker layout program,
which put me out of a job in the Aldus division that was troubleshooting
PageMaker 4.0 against Microsoft Windows version 3.0, (which was really vers.
1.1 which indicated how far behind in the GUI movement they were, so they
renamed it 3.0) that was taking forever to get out of Alpha. Alpha, Beta, back
to Alpha kept a paycheck in my pocket. My team was kept busy by designing a
little text editor for PageMaker while we waited on Gate's boys and girls to
get their shit together. We called it Ted. We gave it rudimentary graphical
capabilities which gave me a few more weeks as we built a series of graphics
showing what it could do to be used in promotion.
But I digress. Apple's concept practically from the start, especially when Jobs was at the helm, was to sell products
that, even though complex and innovative in their design, made few demands on their users. "They just worked"
"Plug and Play" etc. One paid a price for this, of course. In return, Apple Mac users never had to open their
equipment or learn how it went together. Some did of course. I made many friends and grew a decent client list as an
Apple Consultant after starting one of the first Apple clubs in Fredericksburg, VA in 1980, called the
"Rappahanock Apple Group". Our newsletter, a dot matrix gem, was mastheaded "the RAG". I still have
the plaque they gave me when I moved away to come to Seattle in 1988.
When I was let go at Aldus/Adobe, I went into business as a consultant. Never got rich.
Made a few bucks selling and installing telecommunications systems, hawking "First
Class BBS" s/w out of Toronto for a few years in Seattle, turning the Downtown
Business Users Groups (dBUG)'s single line BBS in 1989 into a 22 line BBS by 1994. Big
thick cable of 2-pair dropped into my house, with room inside of it for 48 lines. Sadly
the local switch could not handle any more connections. I was voted off the board of
directors in 1995 because they did not believe the club needed to transition to a
something called the Internet websight to serve the members. The politics and treachery
of one of the board members did me in, as being a threat to the group by trying to run
them into the ground financially. Funny butt. They went ahead and did exactly what I had
proposed within six months. Pulled all those expensive 56k baud modems out of my house
too.
--
Don't lose heart, they might want to cut it out, and they'll want to avoid a
lengthly search.
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