Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!rochester!cornell!batcomputer!chow From: chow@batcomputer.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Help! Excel 1.00 vs. 1.05? (really MS v. everyone) Message-ID: <3078@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> Date: Thu, 3-Dec-87 19:08:46 EST Article-I.D.: batcompu.3078 Posted: Thu Dec 3 19:08:46 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 6-Dec-87 18:45:45 EST References: <870049@hpcilzb.HP.COM> <1211@uhccux.UUCP> <2799@sphinx.uchicago.edu> <3777@uwmcsd1.UUCP> Reply-To: chow@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Christopher Chow) Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY Lines: 62 Keywords: Microsoft bug MultiFinder || || Well, a call to Microsoft tech. support (very helpful, BTW) reveals that || Excel is HARD-CODED (gack) to address ONLY the LOWEST 1mb of RAM!!! || Since the bottom meg. of RAM was already in use, Excel refused to load! | | allow for room for the heaps to grow). So, to use Excel with MultiFinder, | you'd have to fill up the other 3MB of RAM before loading Excel. This | application strangeness is related to Microsoft's development systems | (you know the ones that cause Word 3.0 not to use resources except for a | huge 337K PCOD resource, and who knows what other problems). | Actually, Excel works fine on my 2Mb Mac II so you can use Excel under MultiFinder. I heard that Apple actually put hooks into Multifinder so that Microsoft products wouldn't be broken. What I don't understand is *why* ? A long time ago Apple stopped bundling MacPaint and MacWrite with the Mac to stimulate software development by third parties. More recently, a similar step was taken when Apple split of its application software group to form a new company (Claris). So it seems that Apple is making a concerted effort to promote the growth of Macintosh software by third party vendors. Looking back, Microsoft has been the other giant in the Macintosh software field, and its my feeling that they have taken advantage of their size in the Macintosh field to produce bad software. In particular, their development system, makes trashy applications. By trashy, I mean that although you can create quality software (e.g. Excel), the applications have fatal flaw(s). Most notable is the stupidity with the 1-Meg memory limit. It seems that Microsoft thought that the Macintosh software arch. dosen't allow for anything over 1-Meg...I guess we're lucky that they didn't decide to set a lower limit...like 640K. Furthermore, its not as if Microsoft didn't have the time to change their development system -- they were in the Macintosh software market as far back as the original Mac. So why did Apple put hooks into Multifinder for Microsoft? Granted the Excel and Word are important products, but they will still continue to function under System 4.1 and Finder 6.0. Thus, people can still work with Excel and Word so they wouldn't get mad at Apple. But now suppose that Apple didn't put in Multifinder hooks for MS products. Then people would have observed that while most programs worked with Multifinder, and that Multifinder is nice environment, Excel and Word don't work. If most things worked and a few things didn't then something is wrong with the few things. This would either force Microsoft to immediately clean up its act, or help foster an environment where someone else can write "correctly written" programs of similar power. In the end, the user community wins. Condoning Microsoft's mistakes dosen't help the user community. Before anyone flames me, think on this for a moment: Word 3.01 is a very sucessfull program, yet it comes directly from Word 3.00 which had over 475 documented bugs. Yet Microsoft thought that 3.00 was correct enough to release. What other third party vendor could have survived and have a very sucessful product after a start like Word 3.00? Does a company that can do something like this stifle competition? Christopher Chow /---------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Internet: chow@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (128.84.248.35 or 128.84.253.35) | | Usenet: ...{uw-beaver|ihnp4|decvax|vax135}!cornell!batcomputer!chow | | Bitnet: chow@crnlthry.bitnet | | Phone: 1-607-253-6699, USPS: 7122 N. Campus 7, Ithaca, NY 14853 | | Delphi: chow2 PAN: chow | \---------------------------------------------------------------------------/