Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cornell.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!houxm!vax135!cornell!rej From: rej@cornell.UUCP (Ralph Johnson) Newsgroups: net.micro.mac Subject: Re: mac compatibles ? Message-ID: <18@cornell.UUCP> Date: Thu, 29-Nov-84 22:57:29 EST Article-I.D.: cornell.18 Posted: Thu Nov 29 22:57:29 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 1-Dec-84 05:48:17 EST References: <91@vectron.UUCP> <1807@sun.uucp> <> Reply-To: rej@gvax.UUCP (Ralph Johnson) Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept. Lines: 45 Summary: I will probably not be the first to claim that your "facts" are wrong. Apple said that they wanted to sell 250,000 Macs the first year. They are apparently going to come very close to the target. The computer store that I frequent has 40 or 50 pieces of software for the Mac for sale. Of course, there seem to be a preponderance of filing systems and only one word processor. There are only half a dozen program development systems. However, that seems pretty good for less than a year since announcement. Mac owners that I talk to are generally delighted with their purchase. There will probably not be any Mac compatibles. Few people seem to realize the enormous amount of software built into the ROM. I heard that the first version of Quickdraw, done in Pascal, was 128K. After rewriting it in assembly it was 64K. After another year or so of optimization (and adding features) it was 16K, and that's what is in the 64K ROM. I think these numbers came from Byte, but I'm just remembering them, so don't trust them too far. There are many, many man-years of programs in that ROM, and it would be infeasible to rewrite them. Therefore, any Mac compatible will have to copy the ROM, and will be illegal in the US. In addition, Apple uses custom chips in the disk controller, (and perhaps elsewhere) making copying harder. I assume that Apple did it that way on purpose, to prevent the Mac from ending up like the Apple II in the far east. One reason that the Mac is harder to program than other machines is because it is so different. Programmers are fastest at what they know best, and the Mac is very different from anything else that they are likely to have used. I can remember the first time I used Lisp, thinking I was a hotshot programmer who could master any language in a week. A lot of people have been learning similar lessons from programming the Mac. Also, there is a lot more needed to learn to use the Mac than with other machines. However, the result is that programs have a more consistent user interface that on other machines, and so are easier to learn how to use. One problem is that most languages are not suited for the object oriented programming style that best suits the Mac. Neither C nor Pascal are really suitable. I predict that an object oriented interactive language would be vastly superior to the standard programming languages on a Mac. Ralph Johnson