Peter wrote:<<My how things change.>>
Hi Peter,
Indeed they have! I'm still amazed that it happened so quickly. We
been married since 1968 so for me, that's when my adult hisroty began. I
eventually worked developing and maintaining plans and schedules for
constructing things like like nuclear aircraft carriers, nuke power plants,
refineries, that kind of stuff. Doing that required lots of draftman time
and paper. We even had electric erasers - one secretary heard about them
and thought it the height of laziness, until she saw what we had to do when
we needed to change the schedule. Even small modifications often required
huge amounts of drafting time. Computers gradually began to do this for us.
Over the years we used main frame time via remote input which cost our
clients tens of thousands of $s per month in processing time. Then a
*machine* would draw the schedules.
The most amazing thing about this revolution was what happened during
the past 20 years. I worked for a large corporation during that time -
which was when PCs found their way onto everyone's desk. I also worked in
cost control and we went from handwritten spreadsheets to computerized
spreadsheets (Lotus 123) which was a revolution of its own accord.
I'm continually amazed at how the last 20 years saw the corporate world
go from virtually everything starting as a hand written document to 100%
computerized print-outs. 20 *freakin* years! That's the blink of an eye -
most corporations move at a snails pace when revolutions are knocking at the
door.
I also think that speed is what caused Apple to fall behind - they fell
behind and could never catch up. and once the business world started down a
path they're not going to be redirected easily. And the more time passes
the more the business world becomes dedicated to the path they have chosen.
It becomes self perpetuating - almost a Catch22 but a slightly different I
think.
Once the business community had taken the chosen path, they'd have to be
offered a *huge* advantage to change directions & as far as I know, the huge
advantage wasn't clearly evident. Plus, once the Win way was chosen, their
advantages (and disadvantages) became wellknown while Apple stuff was ....
well, not a "pig-in-a-poke" but it wasn't something totally integrated into
their business.
But it's all history now.
Larry T (67 MGB, 74 911, 78 240D, 91 300D)
www.youroil.net for Oil Analysis and Weber Parts
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.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Frederick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Mercedes Discussion List" <mercedes@okiebenz.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 11:55 AM
Subject: Re: [MBZ] Fw: Alert on Critical MicrosoftMessenger
ServiceVulnerability
Ah, Apple is much more innovative than Microsoft, for many reasons (the
foremost is that Jobs was a MUCH better programmer). Their "failure"
was not using common marketing/service standards such as "the customer
is always right", alienating much of the business world because they
were either unable or unwilling to integrate standard business hardware
-- they had the software earlier.
Such goes the world -- it's not the brightest and the best, it's what
people want (or to put it more bluntly, buy)!
"Standards" in the normally accepted form are just now becoming part of
the computer world. Up to now, it's been whatever someone invented and
got enough people to buy so that everyone had to have it. Not thought
out, codified, and accepted FIRST, but whatever happened. Hence goofy
things like disks the size of a common cocktail napkin, awkward
keyboard layouts (remember the function keys on the side?) and other
serious lunacy.
The Apple III needed LSI chips VERY badly -- it got so hot (NMOS, too,
no CMOS) that the chips would crawl up out of the sockets from thermal
cycling. Way ahead of it's time. The IIGS was a dud as well --
trapped in PRO-DOS, it should have blown an AT out of the water, but
could only be used as a large, expensive Apple II. It ran at twice the
clock speed of an AT on a chip that used less than half the clock
cycles per instruction that could address more memory, but Apple never
managed to develop an OS for it that didn't require replacing all the
expensive software. Not that the software was all that good by modern
standards (can you imagine, a word processor that took spaces off a
line for "control character" -- which had to be typed in by hand! My
how things change.
Peter
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