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