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Ibm vs mac

I remember in 1984 when one of our EE's brought his new Mac into the engineering office to show everyone, complete with red carry bag. At the end of the day I must have been the hundredth person to summarize the short demo with the single comment "nice toy," which resulted in the sharp and rather defensive reply "it's not a toy!" Of course my comment was taken mostly out of context, despite being shown something worth two months wages which apparently was of little more use than making party invitations.

None of us used computers in our daily chores and therefore the advantages or otherwise of the GUI interface was totally lost on us in any case.

In later years, as an engineer using AutoCAD and being somewhat of a tinkerer, I much prefered the freedom to mix/match/and upgrade the IBM-compatible. And the fact that much of Apple's marketing at trade shows was aiming at discrediting the competition left a sour taste in my mouth. Politics anyone?

And although I once bought a 8500/120 just to see what the fuss was all about, I am still confounded by the apparent superiority complex that Apple seems to include in every box. One of our employees (publications department) used to do a little dance in middle of the room whenever there was news that some slight misfortune had fallen on Microsoft.

One last comment - unix workstations of the 90's period were in a way very similar to the early G4/G5 OSX-variety Macs. Advanced, proprietary hardware with a "pretty" windows manager on a unix base. The difference being that these were marketed and supported (long term) as professional business machines, while the Mac has mostly been aimed at consumers with "surprise" announcements, and lacking the information path corporate IT requires to plan hardware rollouts.
 
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Here is a cool side by side compare of the IBM PC and the MAC.. I have to give one to the MAC it was the 1st mass made computer with a windows like interface, and did some pretty cool stuff for 1984....
And the GUI is better than CLI because...?
What do you like better and why?
Oh no! He's started the NeverEndingArguement(tm)!!!

Thread moved to a more appropriate (less-cluttered) forum. Since we don't have one for 'Religious Issues', this'll have to do.

--T
 
Yes, I find this whole Mac vrs PC argument has tons of irony.

For example, what endeared many people to the original Apples (Apple II line that is) was its open architecture, something I can fully appreciate now having tinkered with them. I remember in the early days Apple II owners LOVING their (expensive) machines with mean fanatic fervor and bragging about how upgradable they were and how they could get close to the hardware. The perfect hardware hackers machine.

The irony is, that the IBM PC and AT line (and deritivies) were also open architecture. Very ungradable and lots of third party supply. Yet with the Mac, Apple went in the completely opposite direction. Closed architecture, and very hard to get close to the hardware. Everything the Apple II (and the PC) wasn't. Yet, Apple enthusiasts seemed to be just as religious about the Mac as they were about the Apple II?? Yet the PC/AT was a lot closer to the concept of the Apple 2 than the Mac?

This mystifies me? Either, people were just sold on Apple, come what may (i.e. the machines didn't really matter..it was the fact it was an APPLE that was important) OR it was a totally new breed of fanatic, but opposite to the one before. The breed was not interested at all in what was going on...they just wanted an appliance and had no interest in getting close to the metal so to speak. Usually people don't get so smug and superior about appliances though so I suspect it is the former.

I dunno. I've never been one-eyed about a particular computer brand so it's hard for me to figure out why people are like this?

Tez
 
I prefer the X86 from the PC from 1984 untill the Mac II line came out (Nubus slots, color video, multiple monitors). The Mac had the edge to about the time Windows 95 and PCI came out. Mostly its about hardware integration with the software, expansion, and setup headaches.
 
While the modern world fights over modern game consoles, we fight over weather the IBM PC or the Macintosh is better. :rolleyes:
 
Pfft.. religious debate? not even close. I pick Commodore/Amiga. ;o)

Nah actually I was too young to make a decision like that and honestly didn't have much (and still don't) business use for a computer. It's pretty much just a toy that I waste hours and hours of time on either playing music, watching tv/movies, playing a game, or searching the internet for randomly fired synapses.

However since we had a PC compatible system (which is also kind of a misnomer since all these are personal computers) I was very accustom to DOS and liked it after reading the manual a few times. I did enjoy the Apple II once I got more into it in my later years but didn't appreciate it for what it was in it's day. I mean, built in basic AND microassembler, little hidden things here and there, yes a pretty neat hackable machine that I missed out on. But Mac I had zero interest in, too much GUI and hiding what I want to see behind it. Same with Windows when it came out, I didn't like it because it was quicker to do it myself than to drag a mouse around and figure out where it is now.

I enjoyed StrongBad's (internet cartoon character answering emails from viewers) quote here regarding the Mac (his Tandy was broken when checking email so he used his pet "the cheat"'s computer which was a Mac).
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail34.html

"Your computer has too much computer in it, and not enough typewriter"
 
I like an IBM based with GEM running on it!

Apples just don't cut it for me in this world!

Seems such a waste that Microsoft got their way because of Apple when it should have been Digital Research and their CP/M based platform which should have paved the way! That too was also cut short because of Apple.

At the end of the day it just seems that Apple and Microsoft wanted to corner the market, and now it just seems Microsoft will take over the whole Monopoly and just be as dominant on an Mac based platform as they are with PC. It maybe a good thing or it may not - hard to say since 3rd party software can lead to problems within Windows whatever!
 
What's interesting though, I'd argue that even if DR/CPM kept the market, Apple and Microsoft would have still tried taking them out with a graphical OS and we'd likely be in the same scenario.

Apple (the company) has always amazed me at not dying. I don't really know why folks desire them personally but it seems for more years than not they're saved by non-computer sales now adays.

I remember hearing about the Apple IIe being so awesome and hackable and it was encouraged to see what you could do with it. Then the next gen Apple IIc came out, and if you opened that case you voided any warranty. It was no longer open for modification, kind of a 360 on what I thought made Apple cooler (again was oblivious to it until after the fact) but that's why the IIe outlived most of it's successors.

I still love Amiga though it was later down the line but I enjoy the pseudo-gui with CLI in the background still. Almost a slightly *nix OS and although it hasn't always been helpful, having a CLI program fail and getting to type "why" afterwards was always kinda cool.
 
One of the main ones that sticks in my mind is ---

Quote Devices are SO much easier with a MAC. Unquote.

Well, one day I installed updated driver software to a Mac that I was working on. Suprise, the driver had some bugs and crashed the Mac. I had hours of research to finally figure out how to uninstall the bad driver. Conclusion: the Mac was just as much trouble and pain in the butt as a Windows machine.

And yes, this eternal discussion needs a religion category.
 
Actually that's exactly what I was thinking about putting but wasn't sure if it was worth another thread. Does anyone know how accurate the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley" was? Great movie, and always leaves me wanting to run into the garage and build something lol. But I was curious about that ending and slight partnership between Jobs and Gates that I've never really heard of outside of the movie. Plus it makes Jobs look like quite an ass, which I don't know him personally but I *had* heard rumors of some similar antics.
 
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