Revolution In The Valley 290
| Revolution in the Valley | |
| author | Andy Hertzfeld |
| pages | 240 |
| publisher | O'Reilly |
| rating | 9 |
| reviewer | Jack Herrington |
| ISBN | 0596007191 |
| summary | The birth of the Mac, as told by one of its creators |
At the heart of this revolution was a set of brilliant engineers and coders who through their work inspired individuals and companies alike. Andy Hertzfeld captured this revolutionary time at Apple through the eyes of the engineers involved at his site, folklore.org. Now he's published these stories in the book Revolution in the Valley.
Apple Confidential 2.0 will give you history. Cult of Mac describes the phenomenon from the outside. But only Revolution in the Valley tells the story of a computer revolution from the perspective of the team in the center of the storm.
The book consists of concise stories, separated by pages of notes, drawings and photographs from the three years it took to develop the original Mac. The stories run in length between one and eight pages, with most ending in the two- or three-page range. Each is told from a personal perspective, mainly by Hertzfeld himself. Sidebars with comments from Woz and others are included to round out the perspective.
The stories are organized chronologically, starting with Hertzfeld's first days at Apple and ending around the time when Jobs was ousted in Sculley's palace coup. Most of the stories are technical in nature, often going down into the level of hardware detail. Others are more personal in nature, detailing Jobs' odd hiring or management style, talking about the stresses of a 90-hour work week, or recounting Adam Osbourne's threats about the destruction of Apple and Jobs' famous response.
With its roughly one hundred stories weighing in at a little under 300 pages this is a relatively quick read. This is especially true since the stories work on many levels and are told with remarkable skill. There are some standouts: The development of the GUI, replete with Polaroids taken at key points along the way, is excellent. The story on the first meeting with Microsoft is told from a whole new perspective from what we have heard in the past. The genesis of the 1984 commercial is fascinating, and the meeting with Mick Jagger is hysterical.
There isn't a whole lot here that you won't find on folklore.org, though some of the later chapters do some summation work that I couldn't find on the site. These bring the book together as a coherent, readable whole. The note pages, which separate the chapters and are not on the site, are interesting on their own, particularly the notes from the session with Alan Kay.
Apple's development of the Macintosh has been seen as the prototype of the dot-com death marches that would follow. What we see here is the potent mix of technical brilliance, insane work hours and pressure, and management arrogance that paints a much more chaotic and realistic picture.
On a personal level, this is the book I have been waiting for my whole career. Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson are legends to me and many others. The passion and brilliance they demonstrated set the bar for all of us who look at computer science not as a job, but as a calling. To see the Mac development from Andy's perspective is simultaneously deflating and uplifting. Their project suffered from all of the usual trials. But somehow the team got through it, their creativity and hard work paid off, and they changed the world.
How many revolutions can there be? How many times can lighting strike? How can one small group of people change the world? That's what we all got into this business to find out. And this book shows us an example of how it was done and inspires us to do the same. Thank you, Andy, for what you did then and what you are doing now.
Jack Herrington is an engineer with a twenty-year career inspired by people like Andy Hertzfeld, and the editor-in-chief of the Code Generation Network, as well as the author of Code Generation in Action. You can purchase Revolution in the Valley from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Revolution (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the answer to this question this book asks about lightning striking twice lies in the care and craftsmanship that Apple puts into their products. Like Steve Jobs other companies Pixar and NeXT, there is a substance to Apple's products that tells a story. It goes beyond simple packaging to encompass the whole user experience. With Apple's products, there is considerable effort put into 1) Will this product meet a need and accomplish that goal better than anything else available? 2) Crafting the user experience to optimize their interface with whatever task the product is designed to serve 3) Make sure it does not suck (high praise). If a product does not meet these criteria, it is shelved like so many other projects that never rise to the top at Apple. (like the Palm device and an early effort at co-branding a phone)
The other interesting thing about Apple is the diversity of folks that actually work for them. They prefer to employ folks with advanced degrees, have a significant number of artists and creative folks working there and I seem to remember that one of their product managers was an MD, PhD. So, many of the folks there are creative and are trained to think critically about issues which is reflected in the products Apple creates. The reality with producing great things is that they evolve during development. There is great pain and effort that go into producing significant things and it requires a dedicated team of folks that are brought together by a common vision. Apple (more precisely the people that comprise Apple) are driven by a common passion to create something just that much better than what is available and to create "cool" things that influence how we interact with computers and the data that drives our lives (movies, music, scientific data etc...etc...etc...).
Re:Revolution (Score:2, Insightful)
The iPod is a neat gadget, granted, but it's not going to change the world. I'm not even sure I'd classify the Apple II or Macintosh as "revolutionary".
Cutting-edge for their time? Absolutely. But "revolutionary", next to databases and the Internet, just doesn't apply.
Re:Revolution (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not even sure I'd classify the Apple II or Macintosh as "revolutionary".
The Apple II may not have been revolutionary in terms of technology, but they definetly started the revolution of the way technology is used in classrooms.
The Apple II was found in a very large number of schools, even if it was just a single machine in the library, and introduced millions of children to computers.
Apple has changed the computing world (Score:5, Insightful)
The Apple II was revolutionary because it successfully moved home computing from kits to mass appeal. The Apple II flooded schools, giving a generation of children hands-on experience with computers. Apple did it first on a wide scale, if not best. The success of the Apple II also pushed IBM into the PC market.
The Macintosh was revolutionary because it brought the graphical user interface to everyday use. Predecessors tried and failed (including Apple's Lisa). But at the time the Macintosh hit the market, the command-line mentality was entrenched. I remember vividly reading monthly screeds railing against icons and the mouse by major voices in the computer industry. Where are we now? The GUI dominates everything, for good reason. It makes the computer a more accessible tool, even if far from perfect.
The other, less recognized, benefit of the Macintosh is the blossoming of desktop publishing and image editing. With Mac OS and laser printers people were able to create beautiful, expressive documents instead of just printouts. Coupled with the GUI it led to a much easier way to lay out all aspects of the page before printing. Photoshop provided similar ease of use for image manipulation on the Mac.
Sony's Walkman, while not a spectacular device from a purely technical standpoint, was revolutionary because it gave everyone portable music. The iPod seems to be heading in the same direction for digital music, even though the iPod is far from the first mp3 player.
Revolutions are not founded just on brilliant technology but on the right mixture of technology with social acceptance, like Henry Ford who altered the course of society by mass-producing the automobile. Changing the way people conduct their lives should be the measure of what is and is not revolutionary, not whether or not the technology is something unique.
Re:Revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of it is having "taste". E.g. Apple "copied" Xerox's and others' earlier work and produced the Mac UI -- which was better than anything that preceded it. With Apple's UI to borrow from, Microsoft repeatedly made kludgier, inferior imitations. Everyone copies someone, but taste determines what you've copy, and know when you've done a good job.
Another part of it is avoiding kludges. E.g. QuickTime was a revolutionary product, but it also had a fully extensible and general architecture which none of its clones can yet match. A single QuickTime movie can automatically select between multiple audio and video tracks to cope with different localization, bandwidth, and hardware requirements -- this is a 1.0 feature. Consider that MPEG came out initially without a robust mechanism for keeping audio and video in synch (just start playing both tracks at the same time, and hope).
Apple without Steve managed to produce the Newton (which could have been another stroke of lightning, but was released too early and with software too far in advance of its hardware) and managed the PowerPC transition flawlessly. Steve without Apple built Pixar and created NeXT (which for most of OS X's elegance deserves credit) and WebObjects.
Having just purchased a TiVo, I expect Apple to show TiVo a thing or two next... Sure, the UI is PRETTY...
Re:Revolution (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me correct you and everybody else on this point. Apple PAID for the GUI in the form of stock which Xerox desperately wanted at the time.
Re:Revolution (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Revolution (Score:3, Interesting)
I once had the privilege to sit in front of one of workstations at Xerox Parc circa 1983, when I was invited to visit some friends from the University of Waterloo who had transfered to PhD programs at Stanford. One of these friends had a cool job on the side at Xerox.
The main thing I remember is that the machine had a useful THREE button mouse. Not long afterwards I bought one of the early generation Fat Macs, with its completely crippled one button mouse.
What you got with the Fat Mac was a monochrome s
Some points to reconsider (Score:3, Insightful)
Like Steve Jobs other companies Pixar and NeXT, there is a substance to Apple's products that tells a story. It goes beyond simple packaging to encompass the whole user experience.
NeXT wasn't exactly successful, despite it's original product being just as "insanely great" as some other things Jobs touched.
If a product does not meet these crite
Re:Revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think Jobs and company were ever trying to have the most market share. Maybe the best computer and enough customers to support it. but no, having the most market share requires sacrificing too many goals of good engineering design.
Most people want to buy a satisfactory computer - that's all. Once they find computers that promise to satisfy their needs, then they shop by price. They don't care if the disk drive dies in a year or if the fan sounds like a jet taking off. If you've ever noticed, those specs aren't mentioned in the advertised specs. If you buy a Macintosh, it will still be working quite well five years down the road. Whereas users in the Windows world are developing a throw away mentality, when it gets so clogged with viruses and spyware, they just toss it out and buy another Wal-Mart Price Point Special. Sure, you can buy 3 of those for the price of an Emac, but then, you will need at least 3 if you throw it out when it gets sluggish. Or you will need to learn a lot more about viruses and other products of the darkside than interests me.
Re:Revolution (Score:2)
It is not trivial to be first.
We are merely giving a true innovator his due.
The man has more of a vision than simply being the next Carnegie or Rockerfeller.
Good times. (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, the memories. QuickDraw. Wish I still had that box, bet it would fetch some bling-bling on Ebay
Re:Good times. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good times. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good times. (Score:3, Informative)
In other words, you seem to have found yourself in one of the few places in the world where Apples were more popular than Commodores. They were outnumbered everywhere else by a 5:1 margin.
Re:Good times. (Score:2)
I and a friend skipped school that morning, and my mother drove us there to load up the car with whatever we could salvage for ourselves. Among the treasures was various Mac LC IIs and IIIs, some strange monitors I'd ne
Re:Good times. (Score:2)
Re:Good times. (Score:3, Informative)
The only 128K Mac I could find on eBay was priced at $406 [ebay.com], which seems horribly overpriced to me (I've seen 128K Macs bundled with dot matrix printers in local want ad magazines for $25 to $50), even if it does still boot. Everymac.com says its list price was $2500 [everymac.com], though the street price was closer to $1800, IIRC. I bought a 512K Mac (2nd generation) for $1299 in 1985. Comparable PC clones were $1500 to $2500.
Still have it, st
Mac era Steve Jobs (Score:4, Funny)
Funny... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Funny... (Score:2)
And lightning is striking a third time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Very true! (Score:2)
Re:And lightning is striking a third time... (Score:5, Funny)
bay area rapid transit
What the fuck is WTF?
WTF is... (Score:2)
It's useful. You can look stuff up an' stuff: www.google.com [google.com].
One big failure... (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm... something that will revolutionize the way we get around... cities will be built around this invention of the millenium... what was that thing again? Wasn't it banned from sidewalks in 30 cities around the country?
Too fast to be pedestrian and too slow to be a vehicle: the Segway was doomed to be a toy from the start. Oh yeah, and that price....
3 times! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:3 times! (Score:2)
Re:3 times! (Score:2)
Re:3 times! (Score:2)
Not really. But, also, yes.
The point is that it's not the iPod that is "revolutionizing" personal music consumption, but the combo of the iPod and iTunes. In the end, you'll find that it's iTunes that will have the greater impact. Apple figured out that the iPod razor will mean a lot of iTunes blade sales.
More importantly, this is the sort of thing that Apple is really good at - not
Re:3 times! (Score:2)
Re:3 times! (Score:2)
Re:3 times! (Score:2)
Re:3 times! (Score:2)
Insanely Great (Score:3, Informative)
He also wrote "Hackers" (don't confuse it with the lame movie of the same name) which deals with the origins och hackers and really cool old-school stuff.
Apple II? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Atari 400/800 were close, but the VIC20/C64 democratized it. Since all 3 were 6502-based (OK, 6510 in C64), they all had the same basic inherent limitations, but Commodore blew up the markets for both the Apple II and Atari computers.
Too bad Commodore couldn't market Eternal Life (tm).
Re:Apple II? (Score:2)
Re:Apple II? (Score:2)
And the Apple II pre-dated the C64.. Not sure about Vic20 or Atari's stuff though.
Re:Apple II? (Score:3, Informative)
Aside: You must be European, as the Vic-20 and C64 didn't catch on nearly as much in the USA as the Apple II did.
Re:Apple II? (Score:3, Informative)
Bah, you call that impressive? (Score:2, Informative)
The thing was developed in TWO WEEKS. [commodore.ca] The OS took another TWO WEEKS.
In 1981.
And blew the doors off of anything Apple was selling. And kept blowing the doors off of Apple until 1992.
You all were playing Sticky Bear and Oregon Trail while I was playing, well, everything from Donkey Kong to Project Firestart.
And, oh yeah, it's still in Guinness for selling better than any other sing
Re:Bah, you call that impressive? (Score:2, Interesting)
The C64 is a minor extension of the VIC-20, and its operating system is a minor extension of the VIC's OS as well. The VIC-20 was not developed in a matter of weeks.
Really? The Commodore 64/128 blew the doo
Re:Bah, you call that impressive? (Score:2)
By 1988, the Commies were more of an historical curiosity than anything else.
Re:Bah, you call that impressive? (Score:3, Funny)
Excellent argument. Somewhat akin to:
Dude 1: My '83 Chevy Citation was better than your '87 Dodge Daytona.
Dude 2: No. Clearly it wasn't.
Dude 1: Yeah, well the '87 Corvette sure was.
Dude 3: WTF?
I'm Dude 3.
Re:Bah, you call that impressive? (Score:2)
Re:Bah, you call that impressive? (Score:2)
Re:Bah, you call that impressive? (Score:2)
Yeah, well a stock MSD SuperDrive (1541 "compatible") would get--based on your numbers--12kbps or better. They had a 300% speedup on most operations over the 1541, and didn't have all the head allignment problems of the 1541.
Additionally, using the MSD knocked the time for formatting a disk from 1.5 minutes down to 17 seconds. It was awesome.
Unfortunately, the drive wouldn't load most copy-protect
Minor trivia tidbit -- (Score:2)
Re:Minor trivia tidbit -- (Score:2)
I don't think these machines count though since they were kit computers.
The "first" personal computer? (Score:2)
Er...uh...I don't think so. CP/M [ic.ac.uk] was there years before the Apple, and there was a big (for the time) user base of CP/M computers. Not just in business, but hobbyists as well.
Re:The "first" personal computer? (Score:2)
Re:The "first" personal computer? (Score:2)
The first PC? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The first PC? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's Apple got?
Existence?
Re:The first PC? (Score:2)
Also, it is Microsoft that has been trying through the 90's to catch up to Apple. You give DOS far too much credit.
So Apple is to blame (Score:4, Funny)
Damn Jobs.. Damn him!!
Things were better when you had to almost be an EE to have your own computer at home..
Microsoft is to blame here (Score:2)
Except lusers bought IBM PCs when they really needed Apple PCs.
IBM invented the "PC": Apple did microcomputers (Score:2)
only twice? (Score:2)
(4) Integrated graphical applications such as Multiplan, MacWord, MacPaint, etc.
(5) Multimedia software such as iPhoto, iMovie. These are distant decendents of the NeXT software line.
(6) iPod and iTunes. Too early to tell.
Understanding the Macintosh Revolution (Score:3, Insightful)
1. A 32-bit (internally; it had a 16-bit bus) microprocessor.
2. Bitmapped graphics *only*. No text mode. The visual difference was huge.
3. High-resolution graphics: 512x384, compared with the roughly 320x200 graphics of the 8-bit home computers. (Note that you could get better graphics for the PC, but as an expensive add-on.)
4. Applications geared toward using bitmapped displays, like MacPaint (which was stunning at the time) and MacWrite.
5. Lots of other little things taken for granted: the mouse, the desktop metaphor, shutdown and disk ejection controlled by the system, digitized sound, icons representing applications.
All in all, this was quite a shock to the average person who didn't know about the research going on elsewhere.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:3, Interesting)
Xerox invents GUI and does nothing with it - Apple is good for commercializing the technology and not giving credit
BLASPHEMER! MOD THIS FOOL INTO OBLIVION! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Junior, you have it right.
If Apple hadn't stolen/borrowed the GUI from Xerox, it might never have seen the light of day.
Xerox management did not think the GUI was useful and did not plan to create any product using it.
Microsoft, in turn, stole/borrowed the GUI from Apple and their version didn't actually become useful until 1992 or so, with Win 3.1!
So yes, Apple gets the credit for the first widely available and actually usable GUI, by being first to market.
Go read some history...
Memories (Score:2)
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, Microsoft teamed with IBM to create OS/2.
In fact, Windows 3.0 and OS/2 1.3 were a collaberative effort and were released at the same time in 1990. Both had a very similar gui.
The kicker is that OS/2 1.0 was released in 1987 with a GUI. Windows 1.0 (released in 1985) was also released with a really crude gui, that was in no way a rip off of anything else out there (it was quite ugly and lame compared to OS/2)
Go read some history...
Actually, I thinky ou should go read some too...
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Apple and Microsoft Declare War
Bill Gates also decided the GUI was the way to go during this time. After seeing that Apple refused to license the Mac OS, he announced Windows in 1983, and how it would revolutionize the PC industry. The first version of Windows would not be released for 4 more years. During the development of Windows, Bill Gates feared Apple would sue him due to the fact that his OS was looking a lot like the Mac OS. So on November 22, 1983, John Scull
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Doing the math, according to the Apple Museum, it would have come out in 1987. I refute the credibility of the source you've quoted.
As well, don't knock OS/2... It was a huge part of the Windows and OS/2 development. With Big Blue backing Microsoft, the legal coffers were a lot deeper than Apple's.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Hell, I used it as my home OS right up until Win98 came out...
I'm still responsible for 10 OS/2 boxen where I work...
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:3, Informative)
What are you on about? Apple bought it from Xerox fair and square. Even that crummy made-for-tv movie Pirates of Silicon Valley got that right. In fact, PARC wasn't even able to sell the concept to Xerox's board. So if they didn't even know what they had or cared what they did with it, why give them the credit? They were too blind to even see what they had. They're dumbasses and deserve to be relegated to t
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:3, Insightful)
Usefull?
Have you used it? Or used anything that is actually less stable than Windows 95(!)?
Oh, the BSODs...
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Usefull?
Have you used it? Or used anything that is actually less stable than Windows 95(!)?
Well, of course I have.
I've been in the business since 1982.
Windows 3.1 was surely a piece of crap, that's easy to see with 15+ years of hindsight...
But back then, it was not too shabby, except when compared to a Mac...
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
I didn't say that no one would ever have come up with it, but Xerox sat on that thing for YEARS before Apple finally took the ball and ran with it...
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Admittedly, Commadore, in 1985 was pumping out Amiga, which itself had a decent enough GUI...
well it depends on perspective? (Score:2)
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Xerox - invented GUI, did nothing with it.
Apple - designed usable GUI, built computer around it.
Microsoft - saw Apple GUI and feared it. Designed inferior GUI and forced its OEM partners to distribute it, thus guaranteeing its success.
Apple designed and built a system (remember, there was a hardware component to Apple's GUI - the Toolbox ROM). Microsoft glued pictures onto DOS.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:3, Insightful)
Good point. Apple runs on proprietary hardware. By comaprison, gluing puctures onto DOS and making run on every POS IBM-compatible was just a walk in the park, right?
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Xerox did NOT invent GUI (Score:3, Informative)
Xerox refined it and tried to commercialize it. Xerox did build a functional computer (the Star) which sold poorly.
Apple refined it further, creating the Lisa, and finally succeeded in commercializing it, with the much cheaper Macint
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Your post sounds like Microsoft distributed Windows to everyone by themselves. Microsoft didn't deliver anything without the help of OEM manufacturers. Microsoft allowed PC manufacturers such as Gateway and Dell to deliver its OS, and gave them huge incentives to only deliver Microsoft OSes. Where do most people buy their PCs from? That, plus the whole episode known as 1995 (PC prices lowering,
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft saw this as an opportunity and copied it, unfortunately they failed in it's eye-candy (3.1 - 3.11 etc..). As Apple continue to become better, MS would release more versions, updated to compete. I remember seeing the early screenshots of OSX on rumor sites and then during keynotes. Sure enough, XP was out the door. In fact if I remember correct there were early basic versions of XP released - it would seem that MS wanted to make the general public beleive they were first at bat... Apple Music Store, Microsoft Music Store - QT, Win Media Player - If you see Apple release something, MS is not far behind to release the same thing. It suprises me that MS even bothers to change the graphics from the apple logo to their own.
Oh.. I love my unix (any and all flavors - it simply can't be beat), and I use Win 2k mostly due to work requirements, so the Apple Fanatic clause does not apply here. It's merely the facts - MS has historically repeated itself with copies. I can't remember the last thing that MS released first - actually thought it up, developed it, revised it and released it.
And it's not just Apple that MS does this to. Look at the recent Search Engine Wars..Google, Yahoo and MS.
Oh and lets not forget how MS pushed the whole USB is great.. it will be the standard! It supports so many things on the chain... ummm, but Apple always did this... In "The Day" I remember having modems, printers, FM Radio Tuners, Graphics Tablets, Keyboards and Mice all on a single chain.. no problem for Apple. At the same time USB was widely wupported by Microsoft (the company) Firewire was also debuting... Looks like Firewire won.. Apple won, again.
And for a company that everyone seems to down all the time - I must give it to Apple, last year (I beleive it was a year ago) it was reported that they became debt free - as far as I know they are the only one that can say that. Other than operational expenses (day to day) they owe no one.. zip, zilch, nada, zero. They must be doing something right. 10 years ago everyone said Apple wouldn't make it, they be closed in a year.. the saem thing again 8 years ago, then 5 years ago, then two years ago.. and then less that a year ago.
Fact is, despite Linux, MS needs Apple. Without Apple MS becomes a true monopoly. Hence the reason for MS's developement departments for Linux and Apple - They need competition, without it they lose!
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:2)
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:3, Interesting)
Xerox certainly advanced the game a very long way from Englebart's original concepts, but there's little doubt that they took a lot of their ideas from the system he demonstrated in 1968, which included a very basic form of GUI, a mouse, and local area networking.
There is no doubt in my mind that Englebart's ideas were the inspiration for the Alto and Star com
Re:If Command line was so inhospitable? (Score:2)
You don't see any traces of a command line when the system does system checks at startup or when users log in to their accounts.
When you launch the terminal you see this "black box" as completely subservient to the Mac GUI. It doesn't take away the menu bar and the window itself has an aqua scrollbar and traffic light close/minimize/maximize arrangement in the upper left.
I specula
Re:If Command line was so inhospitable? (Score:2)
Read your history [kernelthread.com] before you start trolling. Mac OS X is a Unix-based operating system, derived from NEXTSTEP. The command line is included so that way Unix users and former NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP users can feel comfortable in Mac OS X.
When Apple bought out NeXT Computer, they realized that not only they need to keep the interface of the OS Mac-like, but they also need to make the OS Unix-like, too; what would have been the point of buying a Unix-based operating system if the resulting product wasn't goin
Re:If Command line was so inhospitable? (Score:2)
Necessity vs. Availability / A Change in Paradigm (Score:2)
Re:20Years Later, Computers Are Dumb Devices.... (Score:2)
If you're waiting for a VR world with the complexity of the real world including artificial human actors, I doubt you'll see that in 20 years. My guess is 50-200 if ever. And whenever it comes, we will have achieved the Singularity [caltech.edu], and AI will start making all the advancements for our civilization.
If you just want multiplayer games where all the actors can be human, then
Re:20Years Later, Computers Are Dumb Devices.... (Score:2)
Re:20Years Later, Computers Are Dumb Devices.... (Score:2)
Re:Reality distortion field alert (Score:4, Interesting)
As I recall (and this may be apocryphal - somebody correct me) some workstations overcame this in a second way - they ran two 68K's in parallel, one a clock cyle or two ahead of the other and, when the early one faulted, they asserted an interrupt (which saved state properly) on the second processor. They reloaded the state of the first processor from the second after the "page fault" was handled and went on their way. Yes, it was slow and it sucked, but it worked.
Re:Reality distortion field alert (Score:5, Insightful)
The Lisa was a commercial disaster. The Macintosh -- which lacked a memory management unit not because of shortfalls on Motorola's part but rather because it was deliberately omitted as a cost-saving trade-off --sold spectacularly well. The goal for the Macintosh unit was to sell 50,000 units in the first 100 days. They sold more than 70,000. The Mac exceeded every commercial expectation.
The real business problem of the Mac was that Apple basically saturated their market. Within a year of the Mac's introduction, everybody who could justify owning one owned one.
While it is true that desktop publishing was big for Apple, it's completely wrong to say that it "saved the Mac." To the contrary, the Mac created the desktop publishing industry. Apple had the Mac Plus and, as you point out, the LaserWriter, but those were just two pieces of the puzzle. The other three were LocalTalk, PostScript and PageMaker. These five things came together to be the desktop publishing industry.
So you see, it's wrong to say that publishing saved the Mac. It's more accurate to say that Apple and the Mac helped create desktop publishing. Apple built a product which saturated the market, so they went off and, along with some very smart people, created a whole new market. See?
That has, incidentally, been Apple's business model for the past 20 years. You saw it most recently with the iPod. Apple produced a product for a very small niche market, saturated that market, and used the resulting momentum to gain industry support and build a sort of coalition of businesses that could create an entirely new market: Internet music delivery.
That's Apple's way. That's how they do things.
Re:Reality distortion field alert (Score:3, Interesting)
Minor technical nitpick--Motorola in fact did not have an MMU available at all until well after the first Macintosh shipped, and they didn't have a working CPU/MMU combination for a couple of years after that. The posts above this about the dual-68010 hacks are true. I know; I was working with Masscomp workst
Re:Reality distortion field alert (Score:2)
Re:Does it say how they ripped off UCSD Pascal? (Score:2)
Oh yeah, sure! "intermittent bug that never showed up in testing, related to 'finder' not the OS?" Any paper longer than 10 pages and a few graphs invariably and without fail had exactly the same problem -- furthermore, this reference claims that the deadlock would eventually be broken, and then not appear again. Never saw that happen. Why was everybody darn sure to get a second floppy drive for their Ma