Kev's Mac Page 
I'd also like to invite you over to my personal page.
Here is why I don't think much of Java.
Yes, you can have a real 200 mhz PC for only $399. The new Orange Micro 620 card plopped into a Mac does exactly that when you upgrade from Virtual PC. It's real, and it works. If your main interested is running PC software completely unrelated to your Mac world, it's a fabulous buy. Unfortunately, Orange Micro's emphasis was solely on the PC, integration with the Mac environment is dicey at best. Despite advertised claims, shared volumes doesn't work in a very useful way, and printing is extremely limited. Other smaller problems also exist. Here is my review, with all the details.
A healthy dose of reality checking is needed when it comes to reviewing "innovations" in Microsoft Windows 95 and Office 97. As one person said, "If I had a dime for every original idea Bill Gates had ... why I'd have nothing!"Microsoft's use of Mac innovations is not just a historic occurrence, limited to Mac's use of the GUI interface and its elements. The "sincerest form of flattery" (imitation) continues to this day! Here's a recap of some more recent technologies that many people think were a gift from Bill, but are actually re-treads of Mac innovations:
I'd welcome hearing your corrections and additions for this list!
Mac Feature... ...Windows Imitation Apple menu Start button Trash Recycle Flat memory model (1984!) "32 bit" Long filenames Long filenames Application menu Taskbar Chooser (1984!) Network Neighborhood Finder list views (1984!) Windows Explorer Get Info
(and Xerox "properties" in the 1970s!)Properties Control Panels Control Panels Script Manager,
International UtilitiesNLS API Apple Guide Coach Office Assistant AppleEvents OLE Automation AppleScript VB Script CODE resources DLL PPC Toolbox DDE Edition Manager OLE embedding Drag Manager Drag and Drop Resource Manager OLE Structured Storage Multiple monitors
(1987)Multiple Display Support TrueType TrueType QuickTime Active Movie DAL, DAM ODBC Aliases Shortcuts Easy to add peripherals
(and it works)Plug 'n' Play
(which doesn't work)
Is a Mac really a better buy? This article from the Seattle Times has the most succinct and useful summary of Macs and PCs that I've seen in a while.Apple also maintains its own web pages specifically devoted to detailing the Mac advantage.
For a software company, the advatage is clear in marketing as well. The point was summarized by John Gantz, Senior VP of IDC, who said (in August 1995) that the Mac market offers developers higher profits and less competition than the Windows market. "The major costs in R&D are head count and capital equipment, and while these costs tend to be the same for each platform, the results show that the larger number and diversity of peripherals and machines in the Wintel environment make secondary costs, such as testing and technical support, higher than for the Macintosh."
Here is a collection of Windows-related humor.When released, there were so many Pentium jokes flying that I've collected my favorites into a separate Pentium page.
There is no better place or time to keep up-to-date with what is going on in the world of Macintosh than the annual mid-summer MacHack conference in Ann Arbor. (This is a write-up I put together after the 1994 extravaganza.)The 1996 MacHack was on June 20-22, and this year's event was both informative and revealing. I'll try to post some notes about it. In the meantime, there is a MacHack website.
Perhaps the sudden eruption of "toolbars" can be traced to more than just cosmetic indulgence. I suspect that toolbars gained popularity in Windows (and then slithered over to the Mac) for these three reasons:
- It is easier for the user to acquire a Macintosh menu item than a Windows menu item, since the Mac menu is pinned to the top of the screen. On Windows, the greater difficulty of hitting the menu makes a solution like toolbars more valuable.
- For a very long time, Windows did not support cascading (a.k.a. hierarchical) menus. Toolbars thus provided direct access to functions that otherwise might be found only buried within dialogs.
- For most of Macintosh history, PC "gurus" explained the Mac to each other by saying that "on the Mac, rather than choosing what you want to do from a list of words or sentences, instead you chose from little pictures called 'icons'." This widespread but appallingly incorrect description of the Mac led PC people to think that icons are to be used to represent verbs (copy, print, increase font size, do year-end account balances, perform an analysis) rather than nouns (documents, a customer in a database, a variable in a regression). Toolbars are the living embodiment of this ignorance of the interface, by turning dozens and dozens of verbs into little icons. Toolbars are evidence that Windows really is a cargo cult, by building gadgets into an interface so that it somewhat resembles (but does not function like) the real thing.
In 1993, I wrote an article for the newsletter of the Media Research Club of Chicago with a history of PCs, with an attitude of "If graphic interfaces were hot way back in the 1970s, why did we get stuck with DOS in the '80s?". Part of this article is a bit dated, but I still fervently believe that the historical truth is that DOS was a quirk, at best.The article was entitled, "A Window with a Better View of Media".
Go to Kev's personal page.
Go to SHS home page for information about media software for the Mac.