Joseph Gwinn wrote:

I have snipped areas where the debate has become cyclic.

In article ,
"Pete C." wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

In article ,
"Pete C." wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:


snipped

Apple's usual strategy is the make the technical controls invisible to
the ordinary user, but one can do damn pretty much anything from a
terminal window. Or, if one enables it, the root console.

I can't give you the exact details since it was a good year ago, but
much of the annoyances were related to network configuration and WiFi
configuration. The terminal window was about the only place I was able
to accomplish anything as the UI dialogs were either completely
mislabeled, refused to accept perfectly valid entries, or were missing
the setting options entirely.

I recall that WiFi was a problem for everybody, although the complaints
have died down.

Well, I've setup a bunch of WiFi stuff with Linksys, Netgear, Compaq and
Belkin branded stuff depending on what was on sale and I've not had a
single issue with configuration or interoperability. Only with the Mac
were there issues, not the least of which was the fact that unlike
everyone else, they did not use the proper terminology.


I don't know what she was doing, but clearly you are far more the IT
guru than she. An aggressive or merely clumsy user with admin
privilege can make themselves lots of trouble.

Indeed that is what I've concluded. The myth that Macs are more stable
than PCs is simply that, a myth. I've also noticed that many Mac users
seem to under report the number of system issues, somehow not counting
the need to reinstall an application to get it to work properly as a
system problem.

So we return to the mainstream problem, that Windows systems are far
more fragile in practice than Macs, once one removes the effects of
clumsy meddling. PCs isolated from the world actually work tolerably
well these days, once correctly set up, but how many people want to be
isolated, or to spend their time managing multiple anti-virus and
anti-spyware programs?

Again you are pushing a myth that Windoze users need to spend all their
time managing multiple security programs, this simply isn't true. The
only time Windoze users need to do that is if they want to rely on
multiple freeware security packages vs. spend $40 on a single commercial
product. The fact that Windoze users have more options to chose from is
an asset, not a liability.

The PC mags would disagree. They recommend multiple security packages,
because no one does a good enough job by itself.

Well, my experience differed I guess as I've found no issues with using
a single commercial package.


I submit that your answer above proves my point in spades. Listen
to the tone of voice, and parse the implicit assumptions.

Huh? Hardly. I find the Windoze UI vastly more tolerable than the Mac
UI, largely because I can customize the Windoze UI sufficiently to
eliminate the most annoying parts. This does not in any way indicate
that I am a Windoze fan or bigot, simply that I hate the Mac UI. My OS
preference is VMS, however there is a bit of a shortage of affordable
applications for the things I do.

You really don't hear it, do you? OK, I'll parse it a little:

We'll set the stage with such dispassionate, value neutral statements
like "MacOS was total crap until Apple finally realized they lacked the
expertise to write an OS" - It may be crap, but 25 million users rather
like it, and were known to say similarly unemotional things about DOS
and Windows.

How is an OS that had -no- memory management until the entire OS core
was scrapped and replaced with a Unix core not crap? Windows was
evolving memory management (which I consider to be a fundamental concept
for an OS) in the Win 3.1 days and had it working reasonably well long
before Apple gave up on their OS core.

Because neither original Windows (pre NT) nor original MacOS (pre 10)
had memory management.

Indeed, but Microsoft addressed the problem long (years) before Apple
did.

In a manner of speaking. The DOS core remained long after the supposed
conversion, causing endless memory problems. I think Win2K was the
first to have a clean memory architecture.

I don't recall having any memory issues when my machines were on NT
either.


Microsoft solved the problem by stealing VMS technology form DEC,
yielding the original NT core. Books were written about this deathmarch.

Indeed, it's amazing how much of the computing world originated from
DEC. I didn't follow this history in detail, but I though that Microsoft
hired former DEC folks vs. the more outright stealing of Intel / Alpha
that resulted in a lawsuit.

It's true that MS hired lots of key DEC folk. Don't know about Intel
and the Alpha. Do you have any cites?

I don't have any specific cites, but it was in the national news when it
occurred. Something along the lines of Intel's new CPU design infringing
on a number of HPaqDEC patents shortly after the Intel engineers had had
some sort of meeting with the HPaqDEC engineers. I guess it occurred
after HP was on the scene and Intel was able to con clueless Carley into
just selling them the whole Alpha thing instead of enforcing the patent
rights.



Apple solved the problem by buying NeXT (getting Jobs back as part of
the package deal). NeXT was built from scratch by Jobs after he was
tossed out of Apple some ten years earlier. The OS core of NeXT was BSD
UNIX, from which Jobs and company built a through object oriented
software platform. When NeXT came back, the solution was obvious -
replace the NeXT GUI with a Mac-like GUI, retaining the UNIX core from
NeXT.

That NeXT was an odd little thing that never seemed to go anywhere.

Yes, it only made a few hundred million dollars, so by Jobs' standards
it was a failure. Jobs founded three companies, Apple, NeXT, and Pixar
(Toy Story). Apple and Pixar are worth billions.

Pixar seems to be stumbling a bit these days as the novelty of CGI
movies has worn off.



snip


Downloading stuff (including napster) is very much a part of the net.
It shouldn't be possible for this to cause such problems, even if some
users are naive and some people out there are evil, because such people
have always existed, and always will.

That is perhaps one of the most absurd statements I have ever heard.
Nowhere else in life do people have such an absurd expectation that they
should be magically protected against their reckless actions.

Go walking through a dark alley in the bad part of town at night and you
will probably be mugged and nobody will say that shouldn't be possible.
Hop in your car and go careening down the road ignoring safety rules and
you're going to get in an accident and nobody will say that shouldn't be
possible.

Bad analogy. A better analogy would be to ask if you expect the Police
to keep bad people from coming to your town and mugging people, or
breaking into their homes.

That doesn't work in the real world either. The Police are only there
after the fact, not to prevent anything.

The analogy breaks down, but is still better than the dark-alley
analogy. And we do expect the Police to catch and badly hurt the perps,
so they won't do it again. We don't care if it's because they are
incapacitated, or merely deterred, so long as they stop.

That doesn't change the fact that *you* are individually responsible for
your own safety and security. The police may be there after the fact,
but if *you* expose yourself to a predictable threat i.e. walking down
that alley in the bad part of town, or running without adequate security
software, *you* will still suffer the consequences of *your*
carelessness.


Most users are experts at something other than the computers that they
must use as a tool. It's expecting far too much to think that this will
ever change, if for no other reason that by definition the clueless
vastly outnumber the priesthood. But the money from vast unwashed
clueless masses folds and spends pretty good, and keeps the priesthood
in beer.

True, but has little to do with the technical merits of the Mac OS vs.
Windoze vs. whatever else.

Not exactly. A system that doesn't need so much effort to make safe is
going to very much easier to live with for those users that are not IT
gurus.

In theory perhaps, but as we all know, the masses rarely make decisions
based on a careful analysis of technical details. The masses choose
Windoze largely because it does an adequate job and it's just what
everyone else uses.


The fact is that whether you are using a Mac or a PC, downloading (and
running) questionable junk such as Napster *will* cause problems and I
have seen plenty of examples of this on both platforms. The Mac provides
no more protection from these careless user actions than Windoze does.

Tell me, would using a VMS host to download stuff from even the worst
sites cause any danger? If not, why can't Windows do that too?

If you were to find a "worst site" that actually had malicious VMS code
and were to download and run it as a privileged user it certainly would.

Misses the point.

No, the point is there, the perceived security of the Mac is a myth that
would rapidly evaporate if Macs ever achieved any large market share. As
soon as there was a sufficient mass to make an attractive target for the
various virus writing scum, the Mac world would go down in flames until
they too security seriously. In the meantime the Macs enjoy simulated
security through obscurity.



For whatever reason, Macs are immune to this stuff. You can argue that
it's mere insignificance that protects the Macs, but the fact remains
that Macs are immune.

The Macs are in no way immune, there are simply fewer bugs for them to
catch currently. They are the "bubble boy" who does just fine while
isolated from the germs but will quickly die in the real world due to
their lack of defenses.

It may be true that if Macs were 90% of the market, they would fall
under the assault. But Macs aren't going to achieve 90%, so what's your
point?

My point is don't claim that Macs are secure or are immune to attack
when they are not. See "simulated security through obscurity" above.


Your belief that Macs don't need to be "protected" from
the 'net is also false.

Most Macs do not run with any virus protection whatsoever, and are none
the worse for it.

And that is simply a function of threat volume and statistics, not a
function of platform security. Because PCs running Windoze outnumber
Macs 20:1 the volume of viruses targeting Windoze outnumbers those
targeting Macs by an even larger ratio and the probability of a
particular Windoze user being hit by one of those viruses is
consequently higher.

Whatever. See above.

Immunity and lack of exposure are not the same thing.

True enough, but so what? See above.

Then claim that Macs benefit from their obscurity, not that they are
more immune / secure which they are not.


Do you not wear a seat belt in a Volvo because they are perceived as
safer? Do you not follow traffic safety rules because your Volvo will
protect you? You might get away that false sense of security for a while
just due to statistics, but you *will* get nailed eventually.

I wear a seat belt because they demonstrably reduce injuries, regardless
of the make and model of car in question. It's still a car, and an
unbelted person will collide with something in a crash.

But how does this analogy apply to computers? In Macs, no such "seat
belt" is needed.

Completely false. Macs need security products just like Windoze PCs need
them and any other OS needs them. The relative threat level is lower,
but the threat still exists.

I'm not so sure that Macs need security products (despite the thunder
from the security product vendors), because most seem to do just fine
without such products.

They need security product if the user wants to help insure they do not
experience an attack of one sort or another. They may get along fine for
some length of time without security products, but they will eventually
suffer an attack. Cars did "just fine" for quite a while before seat
belts became the norm too. Of course now they try to force the asinine
airbags on the unsuspecting masses, kind of like security software that
formats your hard drive if it detects a virus it doesn't know how to
clean.


That has nothing to do with "isolationism", it has to do with product
quality. Do you purchase brake shoes for your car from some guy in a
dark alley? Would you expect them to be safe? Why would you expect
any
different if you get your software from equally questionable sources?

I don't see the analogy. Are you claiming that Macs are bought only
with small unmarked bills from junkies in dark and fetid alleys? This
is quite the scoop - I always wondered about them.

Load garbage software (Napster et al) from suspect sources onto a
computer (Mac or Windows or any other OS for that matter) and you *will*
have problems just as surely as putting cheap counterfeit parts on your
car *will* cause problems. Even a top grade ultra secure OSs such as VMS
will have problems if a privileged user were to execute malicious code
on them.

Rehash. See above.

Rehash and still true. A privileged user loading malicious code *will*
hose any OS. The only alternative to this is to keep the users
non-priveleged and/or prevent the loading of non-certified code.

We've drifted off the target. The original question was why it was that
the internet is so much more dangerous for PCs than Macs. If MS had
really copied VMS correctly, Windows would be essentially immune to all
the evil stuff floating around the web.

Not true at all. Even if Windoze incorporate just about all of VMS, with
it having the mass of Windoze to be a target of attack, and with all the
users operating as SYSTEM (administrator for Windoze) you'd have exactly
the same situation. Keep the users limited to minimal privileges and
you'd be ok for the most part, same with Windoze.

But it's Macs and Linux/UNIX
that are essentially immune, not Windows. What happened?

Linux/UNIX are not even remotely close to immune, they require even more
active effort than Windoze to attain any measure of security. Macs are
of course also not immune, they are simply obscure enough to not be much
of a target.


If you read the PC magazines (yes, PC magazines), you will see that
they
consistently rate the reliability and quality of Macs at the top, with
Dell close behind. Apple beats all PC makers on quality of user
support. Consumer Reports backs these findings up.

Consumer Reports has -zero- credibility with me in -any- subject area.
As for reliability and quality, the PC magazines use some questionable
criteria and also exclude many PC lines from their comparisons. The same
goes for support as the comparisons typically exclude the "business"
lines from the PC manufacturers.

So, who do you believe?

Not CR certainly.

Some source beats no source, any day.

Invalid data is *not* better than no data.


Consumer Reports sends out a survey to their subscribers every year. In
this survey, the subscribers report their experience with all manner of
products, and this experience is summarized and reported.

Specifically, on page 35 of the December 2005 issue of Consumer Reports
appears the "Brand Repair History" (based on 85,000 desktop systems and
49,000 laptops) and "Tech Support" (based on 6,500 responses for
desktops and 4,200 responses for laptops).

There is no better publically available source of by-brand reliability
data. And the scores don't vary that much from year to year, as
reliability and tech support don't just happen, they are achieved if and
only if the company management thinks them important.

I'll have to look in the store to see the report.

OK.

I looked and they only had the Jan issue.



Actually, the old DoD 5200.28 family of standards have been withdrawn by
the DoD, replaced by Common Criteria and DoD 5200.1 and 5200.2. The
formal equivalent to 5200.25 C2-Level is CAPP (Controlled Access
protection level) EAL (Evaluated Assurance Level) 3 or better.

Recent versions of Windows have CAPP EAL3 certs, as do two Linux
distributions. All the major UNIX platforms have EAL3 or EAL4. I
haven't checked MacOS, but I imagine that Apple will get or has gotten
the certs, just so they can sell to DoD. With a BSD base, it won't be
hard.

The fact that Apple had to scrap their entire OS core speaks volumes to
their software expertise. I can't see the DoD buying Macs for what
essentially is nothing more than a UI.

Microsoft scrapped their entire Windows 3.x OS core as well, in favor of
NT.

Yes, but Microsoft rebuilt their core with newly hired expertise.

From DEC. So, we may conclude that MS also discovered that they lacked
the expertise to write an OS.

Indeed, but acquiring that expertise and just acquiring a ready-to-go OS
core are not exactly the same thing. Kind of like hiring a few mechanics
to help you build a race car vs. buying a race car and putting your
paint job on it.


Apple would seek certification to be able to sell to DoD. If this will
work or not is quite another matter. But don't dismiss it out of hand:

There was a big flurry a few years ago when the US Army (at Ft. Monmouth
if I recall) dumped all their Windows webservers in favor of Mac
servers, mainly because the Army was tired of being hacked despite their
heroic efforts to keep the WinNT servers patched and running.

Oddly enough I run a Windoze web server, mostly 'cause I need that
machine up anyway to run an IVR server and general storage services.
It's been up 24x7 for a couple years now and despite frequent attack
attempts it's still doing fine. Nothing particularly special or heroic
on it either, I do the MS patch thing roughly monthly, have an ordinary
commercial software firewall on it and this server along with the rest
of my network is behind an ordinary Linksys NAT/Firewall router with
only port 80 mapped through to the web server.

Hardware firewalls help a great deal. As do expert IT efforts. How
many average users can manage this level of expertise?

Um, just about any of them. I've got a Linksys router plugged into the
cable modem, and plain old Norton Personal Firewall on the server. The
only this remotely "configured" is one port map on the router to map
port 80 to the address of the server. This is not brain surgery by any
means and it's worked just fine. The two lightning strikes that took out
two cable modems, two routers and a couple Ethernet ports are another
story.


This is nothing recent to Windoze, it has been common for a long time to
"lock down" Windows in business environments so that the users are less
able to compromise the systems.

The problem has been that a fully locked down Windows system is close to
useless, as many Windows apps won't run as anything other than admin.
This has just now started to change, but will take years to achieve what
MacOS now has.

I can't say as I've encountered any Windoze apps that have to run as
administrator. Sure they need to be installed as administrator, but the
ones I've used run fine as a regular user.

The PC and IT magazines discuss this from time to time, especially in
thir security columns.

Dunno, haven't read them or run across any issues personally.


I can't recall the last time I heard of a VMS or Tandem or Stratus
system being compromised.

By your own logic, this must be only because with their miniscule market
share compared to Windows (and the Mac for that matter), they just were
not worth the trouble to break.

Hardly, since those three OSs control a sizable portion of the financial
world.

Ah. A new issue emerges.

So, we should use only these machines for web surfing. And if they can
achieve safety despite naive users, why can't Windows do the same?

For the same reason the Macs give the false appearance of being immune
to these issues - the simple fact that there are few threats targeting
them. Like I said, a privileged user downloading and running malicious
code will hose any OS.

I'll start to worry when Mac achieves 25% market share. Until then,
Macs are effectively immune.

Obscure, not immune.



snipped

Software is most often the cause of problems and it's only getting worse
as the software gets both more complex and more poorly engineered.

Yes, but reliability is still a problem even if well engineered. It
usually takes a few years of intense post-delivery bug fixing to
achieve reliability.

Indeed, and this is something that MacOS is just as subject to as
Windoze.

Yes, they are still computers. But Apple seems to push it much farther
than Microsoft, and Apple has better control of the Mac ecosystem than
MS has of the Windows ecosystem.

Macs are socialists and PCs are capitalists, and that debate has gone on
for years with no resolution. Each can work, it's just a function of how
much liberty the user is willing to sacrifice in the name of security.

I'm not sure I buy the analogy, but it is lots of fun.

Less control i.e. freedom or access to technical settings in exchange
for more protection from threats i.e. social security blanket or
protection from screwing up your computer. I think the analogy fits.


This is a bit self contradictory. Those flighty non-technical creative
types love the Mac but are clueless about IT, have no internet
discipline whatsoever, and yet they prosper.

I think the ones that "prosper" are the ones that keep work and personal
machines separate.

Should not be necessary, as mentioned above in multiple places.

Well, it *is* necessary to either keep the two separate, or have the
knowledge / self control to avoid what should be obvious threats.

Not everybody can be an IT guru.

No, but it doesn't require an IT guru to keep work and personal machines
separate.


So, the summary is that Windows is only for IT gurus, and Macs are for
everybody else?

Nope, but it does appear that Windoze users may be better at keeping
work and personal machines separate.


Just think what stolid
uncreative technical types could do with such a tool.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, because the whole Mac concept is to prevent
anyone from doing anything technical.

Not quite. The objective is to hide technical details from those
uninterested in such details.

Up until OSX they were more than just hidden.


If the metric is access to *all* the technical details, you should
choose Linux.

Certainly the metric is access to the technical details needed to
perform what I would consider "normal" configuration tasks.


Not so. The technical controls are at the terminal window (and root
console) level, and many controls are only at that level. One can argue
that this or that control should or should not be GUI accessible, and
I'm sure that there will be some migration in the coming years, but the
controls are there, but mostly kept away from naive users.

And that only came about in the past couple years. Pre OSX there was no
ability to do anything technical. Post OSX there is some, but post OSX
MacOS is just another Unix variant with a particular flavor of GUI
shell.

Yes and no. I had developer-level knowledge of pre-10 MacOS, and it was
all there, but mostly hidden from average users. It wasn't locked, it's
just that the average user wouldn't know which rock to look under.

How much of it was potentially accessible to the user with the knowledge
of where to find it vs. accessible to a user that purchased additional
development utility packages?


MacOS 10 and later keeps all the good stuff under the UNIX rock.

Right, it is at least accessible without the need for any additional
software.


Be careful about who you call a "rehash" (nice neutral word that):
Intel processors are by the same token an absolute hash, retaining
compatibility with every past version, with bits encrusted upon bits.

They had been until the infusion of stolen Alpha technology.

Not exactly. IBM invented the RISK processor architecture, and the
first RISC CPU was the IBM P801.

Ok, but Intel's boost came / is coming from what they stole from Alpha.

Can you cite a court case on this? I'd like to read the ruling.

It was settled out of court after Intel managed to con HP's clueless CEO
into just selling them the whole Alpha lot. It was in the national news
when it occurred.


Nor is the Alpha really a RISC machine, as it had to execute the VMS
instruction set. I no longer recall the details of what was done in
silicon and what was done by the compilers, but the VMS instruction set
is pretty big and complex, even if it is nicely designed. My
recollection is that DEC implemented all the one and two address
instructions in Alpha silicon, and everything else was emulated.

Microcode I believe. I never dug all that deep into it though since I'm
not a programmer.

Not microcode; this is anethema in the RISK world. In RISC, one has a
few very simple but exceedingly fast instructions, from which all else
is cobbled together. This is a large net win, largely because simple
instructions are so much more common than complex ones in actual
application code.

Right, and to emulate the CISC processor you need microcode calls to
produce the equivalent of the CISC instructions.




Of course, people switch one way or another for a variety of reasons and
I know at least three or four people that switched from Mac to PC. Since
the installed base of PCs is very high and since there are a number of
alternatives to Windoze that will run nicely on that existing hardware,
the bulk of people looking to switch off of Windoze are likely to follow
the low cost path to keep their existing hardware. When Apple introduces
MacOS for PC hardware then those users might consider it or by then they
may well be happy with one of the other Unix offerings and not be
enticed by the Mac UI.

People switch for multiple reasons, and low hardware cost isn't the only
reason.

Indeed, and for the general masses, being like everyone else is a big
factor. Sure there are those that try to be different to make a
statement, but they are a minority and somehow they all end up looking
the same as well.


And there are people that run multiple platforms.

Indeed there are, however I have not seen many people that run both PCs
and Macs for any length of time, generally one is abandoned because they
do not provide significantly different functionality for most people. Of
course for most specialized applications the PC wins since the apps
aren't available for a Mac.


Um. Circuit Cellar is for hobbiests, not the military industrial
complex.

Hardly. Circuit Cellar is for the embedded engineering world, but uses a
format with the hobby projects of those embedded engineers to highlight
a lot of the new stuff and keep the magazine interesting. As a useless
side note, I've provided some of the props and ideas for the covers in
recent years.

A lot of embedded projects are for microwave ovens and the like. These
are very small systems, and typically use very slow CPUs (because they
don't need anything faster). The Military Industrial Complex is solving
a very different set of problems.

Unfortunately those MI solutions keep getting blown up on the end of a
cruise missile.

Nah. VMEbus cards are too large, and won't fit.

And most anything with connectors is a bit of a problem with those G
forces and vibration.


There is a lot more to MI than missiles. Tends to be low volume, high
cost per item.

Some nifty stuff in the surveillance end of things like on the EP3s. I
think I made them nervous shooting detailed pics and video of everything
in that plane, but nobody told me to stop...


There is a lot of embedded process control stuff as well.

This is the Industrial end of things. Lots of VMEbus et al. Not
everything can be done on an 8051 microcontroller.

You don't see too much 8051 stuff in CCI these days.


If you look through magazines like Embedded Systems
Programming, you'll get a far different picture. For instance, the bulk
of the VMEbus SBCs (single-board computers) sold are made by Motorola
and use the PowerPC processor. The runner-up is Intel processors, and DOS
isn't dead.

Been quite a while since I've looked at those magazines.

OK. Some libraries have them.

Hmmm, I'm not even sure where the local library is since I moved a year
and a half ago. I should probably find it.

Actually, this may be one that is advertiser supported, and thus is free
to anyone that claims to be in the field and thus a potential customer
of their advertisers.

Most of them are advertiser supported outside CCI. I just really don't
need them and don't have a need to kill all those trees even if they are
renewable. Now perhaps if I started heating my house with a free
magazine fueled furnace...


Um. Hardware abstraction layers are another form of barnacle, and kill
performance. We live with the performance cost for practical reasons,
but there is nonetheless a cost. Look into the history of microkernels
in operating-system design.

It's certainly a barnacle, but it's a bit less problematic than the
hardware version. At least you can get the better hardware and then apps
that need the performance can native code.

That's the reason people pay the price, but it is a price.

I'm not in the development world, but I think the languages and cross
compilers are making the code conversion fairly painless these days.


It won't happen anytime soon. This has been suggested for years, and
Steve Jobs (a founder and the current CEO of Apple) always says that
allowing MacOS to run on generic PC hardware would put Apple out of
business. I see no reason not to take him at his word.

Given Apple's various product duds and reversals of concepts like open
architecture to closed architecture and back to semi-open architecture,
I see no reason they won't eventually decide to exit the hardware arena.

You mean like the iPod?

I was thinking more of the IIc and Newton for duds. I also don't
consider the iPod or any other "consumer toy" in my overall analysis.

Long time ago. Apple actually has had lots of duds, because they are
always trying new things, and by definition new things aren't always a
success. Said another way, if there are no failures, there is no
innovation.

Except their duds mostly get swept under the rug, where Microsoft's duds
are always hyped and paraded.


Macs are about as configurable as Dell PCs, right down to configuring
and ordering from the Apple website. If you like, go to
http://www.apple.com/ and click on the Store tab. You can walk
through the entire chose and configure and price process without having
to register or provide a credit card. (What's in the stores is a
fraction of the configurations available from Apple.)

And exactly how much of that is *user* configurable?

I don't get your point. The Apple store cannot tell if you are a
unwashed user or an administrator, so long as your money spends good.

How much of that can you as the end user at home configure and
reconfigure as your needs change? My PCs go through many incarnations as
I get newer machines and migrate good hardware from older machines. I
also combine leftover bits of old machines into usable machines for
specific tasks. I don't need a GHz machine with dual monitors to run a
PIC programmer for example.

Skilled users can disassemble and remake Macs just the same as one can
with PCs. At this level, hardware is much the same. That said, I've
never found it really useful to do, although I have done it. The core
problem is that the hardware becomes obsolete so fast (in PCs and Macs)
that I don't really have any real hardware investment to protect after
three years. The money is in the application software, and my time.

Depends on the applications I guess. In the past I've moved things like
DVD-R drives and specialized video and I/O cards. Those whose
applications are software only would not have this need.


I instead sold my old machines to a friend up the street for about 10%
of the original new price, and he gave these Macs to his daughters.

I've both given away old machines, and reconfigured them for dedicated
tasks where they were still quite adequate.



snipped


Yes and no, Macs could do the same tasks as PCs, but in some cases they
lack the available options (both hardware and software) to do so. It
also too Apple quite a while to join that "public road" and abandon
their proprietary networks and busses (SCSI being the only notable
exception).

And Firewire. And ethernet.

Firewire is far more recent. As for Ethernet, it took Apple an
excruciatingly long time to realize that Ethernet had to be a standard
feature. They clung to their Appletalk stuff for a long time, kind of
like IBM clinging to Token Ring. I also recall the $400 Ethernet cards
for the few Macs that could take them when the PC world had them for
$50.

I don't know. Appletalk on ethernet was used widely, and didn't cost
$400.

Dunno, getting the one Mac in the office at the old job onto Ethernet
did cost a bloody fortune compared to all the PCs. Think it was one of
the Macs that was a non-standard bus, perhaps nubus?


Also note that Macs had Appletalk and true networking from 1984, long
before PCs discovered any networking.

Mainstream PCs perhaps. Same with graphics since PCs were doing high end
graphics well before Macs even found color.

And Appletalk just worked. That
friend up the street had something like six machines networked in his
home in the late 1980s to early 1990s.

I had several PCs networked at home in that general timeframe as well.
Towards the tail end of that timeframe, but that corresponded to me
having more than one machine at home at all.


That's not interoperability, that's openness to third party software.
Interoperability is working with established standards, something that
Macs have been loathe to do.

Um. Have you been following Microsoft's tangles with the EU antitrust
regulators? They are proposing fines of a million dollars a day.

The EU antitrust folks are about as far out in left field as they can
get. If I were Bill I would pull all MS products from the EU and void
the license agreements, but that's just me and I can be a bit harsh.

Well the EU antitrust folk may be in left field, but they are the law.

Which is why I would simply pull out of that market if I was Bill. I
certainly would not do business of license my products for use in a
country or countries that tried to force me to bundle competitors
products with my own.


Even the best of laptops have about a 10% failure rate, according to
Consumer Reports, so one can always find someone with a dead laptop.

I think Apple is the only one who had melting laptops though.

True, but lots of PC laptops get too hot to have on one's lap. In any
event, Consumer Reports shows that Apple desktops are by far more
reliable than any PC, but that Apple laptops are in the middle of the PC
range (which isn't that wide).

Dunno, I have or have had a Armada 1590-something, an Armada M700, a
Thinkpad 600X and a Dell 600-something and none of them seem to have any
thermal issues.

Every Mac user I know which is about five has had hardware problems at
one point or another. A small sample granted, but still a 100% problem
rate.

Lots of my friends have had hardware problems, especially with laptops.
But the stats are clear - Mac desktops are far more reliable than PC
desktops. Laptops are all about equally bad.

Still 100% problem rate for the small sample of Mac desktops I know of.


Macs have been loosing some ground in parts of the graphic world, due to
a number of factors. Since most of the same software is available for
Windoze and works just as well there, and the fact that Windoze is still
a business essential and less expensive per-seat than Macs has led some
companies to ditch Macs in favor of PCs / Windoze (CCI did this).

Macs are something like 60-70% of the Graphics Arts world.

And at one point they were like 95% As noted CCI dumped Macs to their
publishing work since they could get the same apps for Windoze and
eliminate the more expensive machines and additional support issues.

There was some switching a few years ago, but the market saher has been
holding steady recently.

That may be more related to the general freeze in the business computer
world due to the economic issues. Since change has upfront costs even if
it may save long term businesses have been holding to the current
systems. As the economy readjusts and new initiatives begin I think
there will be additional shifting taking place.

The fact that nearly all applications for the Mac are also available for
the PC makes it fairly easy to generate a long term savings by
eliminating "non-standard" platforms and the support personnel
associated with them.


I was the sole holdout at work for many years, long enough to have
managed to miss all the Windows 3.x and NT dramas my coworkers told me
about over lunch. It was a lot of fun, at least for me. After a while,
someone would notice that I had been uncommonly quiet, and would ask me
a question. I would reply with some variant of "I have a Mac, and it
just works, so I have nothing to report". Getting Windows to support
CD/ROM drives was a leading cause of wasted weekends.

That rather mirrors me watching the numerous problems on the zillion
Unix systems while my VMS systems "just work".

VMS (like many mainframes of the day) was quite solid. Too bad it's no
longer mainstream.

It is still quite solid, and oddly enough I keep hearing of new
installations here and there and upgrades to existing ones. It doesn't
seem to be growing, but it also doesn't seem to be disappearing either.
Where it's phased out in one company it seems to pop up somewhere else.


Of course I also noted
how my Win95 desktop at a previous job would happily run for 45+ days at
a time while my coworkers identical desktops would crash every few days.

Bet you were popular. Again, there seems to be a difference in IT skill
at work here, but a machine intended for such wide use should require no
IT skill.

I'm always pop-pop-popular as the "certified jack of all trades".



Comparisons will be interesting as I see the Mac in its current OSX
form as nothing more than another UI shell available for a standard Unix
base.

The standard retort is that by the same token there is no difference
between a Porche and a Chevy; they are both cars.

Nope, the comparison would be a Chevy and a Ford (or Dodge or Toyota,
etc.). Comparing a Chevy to a Porche is like comparing an ordinary PC to
a multiprocessor, hot swappable, fault tolerant PC server, and a Mac is
not in that class either.

OK, a Chevy and a Cadillac.

At which point you have the same function and reliability, with the only
difference being in the cosmetics. I for one don't want my computer to
look stylish, I want it to do it's task reliably and inexpensively. I'm
not the type who wants to put a "stylish" Mac on my neatly prop-arranged
desk to impress my friends, I put my server PCs, network gear and big
UPS in a standard 19" equipment rack in the back corner of my garage.


How can you possibly justify forcing Microsquish to include competitors
products with their distributions? Is GM required to include Ford
products with the cars they sell just because some users may prefer to
put a Ford dashboard in their GM car? That's about on par with some of
the stuff pushed on Microsquish.

Any company that achieves ~90% market share in an important industry
will find its freedom of action curtailed. The classic example is AT&T,
which achieved a similar market share by methods that are now illegal,
but were common back then. The solution was to turn telephones into a
regulated utility. This is probably one of Microsoft's biggest fears,
but their current conduct makes such an outcome more and more likely.

Except that there is no comparison between a telephone utility and a
commodity OS. There was no choice for the telephone service since it was
delivered by a fixed network, anyone can run whatever OS they chose on
their PC hardware and they have quite a few choices. The fact that they
choose one particular brand of OS overwhelmingly does not make a
monopoly in my book.

Now that there are alternatives to traditional Telcos for voice
services, there is no longer a Telco monopoly either and interestingly
enough we see the old "Bell bits" recombining.

Missing the point. There was no equivalent to the telephone before it
was invented. The issue is that if something becomes that important,
and yet is a "natural monopoly" (where either economics or technical
issues more or less demand that there be a single supplier) , it isn't
long before the monopoly is either broken up (as in the oil industry) or
converted to a regulated utility (as in city gas, electricity, water,
telephones, and to some degree cable TV).

There have been alternatives to Windows for as long as there has been
Windows, hence no monopoly. Windows simply won the popularity contest
and is now attacked because of it.


Datapoint: At its peak, IBM had only a 70% market share.

In which market? They cover many markets with vastly different needs.

Computers, which meant mainframes back then. Remember "IBM and the
Seven Dwarves"?

I wasn't real involved in the computer world pre-midrange, not really
old enough at 36.


Anyway, when barriers are removed, migration happens. Some will go to
Linux (if they like that unpolished an environment), and some will go
to
MacOS (polished exterior, real UNIX available below).

Yep, Apple might reach 8% market share while Windows drops to 67% and
Linux/Unix rises to 25%.

Truth is, Apple (and Mac users) would be perfectly happy with ~10%
market share.

And that's likely what they will have. I just don't see any compelling
reasons why they would achieve more than this regardless of what
Microsoft does. In fact given totally free hardware and software, I
don't think the MacOS could ever capture more than 50% of the market
since it primarily appeals to the creative types and they are perhaps
50% of the population.

But they are far more fun.

Dunno, us technical creative types can be fun too. Certainly my friends
are often amused at the over-the-top solutions I pull out of my
posterior for some insurmountable problems.

Pete C.