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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
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