Apple Mac (was: !Re: Nuke Redmond!)

From: Charles P. Hobbs <transit_at_lerctr.org>
Date: Mon Apr 10 19:00:58 2000

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, David Vohs wrote:

>
> Anyway, Hans has a good point going here, Apple did with the Macintosh what
> TI tried to do when the TI-99/4A was out: try to block out third party
> developers.

Maybe not quite as bad as TI, although that $150 "developers club" affair
is pretty close (at least to me, who was a starving college student at the
time).

I was used to getting an Apple II, or a TRS-80, or whatever, taking it out
of the box, and writing useful programs with it. Certainly not having
Apple tell me (in so many words) that I was wrong for wanting to *program*
the Mac. Just play around with MacDraw and MacPaint, and everything will
be fine.

That really put me off Apple products for awhile. I was so glad when the
Amiga came out: 1, it was color, 2, it was inexpensive color (about $1000
or so, vs. $3000+ for the cheapest Color Mac back in 1985 or so), 3, you
could easily get programming information about it, even in the early days.

> What can we learn from this? Very simple, never try to tell
> people they can't develop hardware & software for a machine, because that
> will only give people the extra push they need to develop stuff for a
> computer.
>
Yup, applies to that "I-Opener" as well, ha ha!


> But this is something I have noticed: We all know how many PC manufacturers
> are abound (maybe too many), by there are how many Macintosh clone
> manufacturers? (I can't think of any off the top of my head)
>
There were at least three: UMAX, Motorola (StarMax) and Power Computing.
(I have a PowerBase 240). More or less nice machines, but they all went
away when Steve Jobs came back. Boo.

> And the Government is jumping in Microsoft's back for being
>monopolistic?

MS has pulled some sneaky stuff over the years, though.
Received on Mon Apr 10 2000 - 19:00:58 BST