Re: Ada for the Mac

["Marin David Condic, 407.796.8997, M/S 731-93" <condicma@PWFL.COM>]

Bob Kitzberger <rlk@RATIONAL.COM> writes:
>From the Wall Street Journal, Sept 5:
>
>> The result: Corporate users are dumping the Mac in droves. In March,
>> Northern Telecom Ltd. said it would replace 30,000 Macs with "Wintel"
>> machines, computers equipped with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating
>> system and Intel Corp. microprocessors. Eli Lilly & Co. is weeding out
>> 7,000 Macs.  Ernst & Young will purge about 2,000 Macs by the fall,
>> and Monsanto Co. will drop that many within a year. Numerous others,
>> including big users like Pacific Telesis Group and KPMG Peat Marwick,
>> are now reviewing their buying plans.
>
>   :-(  Sigh.
>

    Yes, but Apple wrote their own obituary on this one: "Been There,
    Done That."

    I used to be a Mac adherent because, in spite of all the problems
    with being a "non-conformist", I was getting an OS that was
    significantly *better* than anything Bill Gates had to sell. (All
    that crap piled on top of MS-DOS to try to make it more
    "Mac-like?")

    Once Windows progressed into a "real" operating system (By this, I
    mean WinNT, not Win95. Although Win95 comes close) it was
    impossible to justify continuing to "spit into the wind" just to
    own a Mac. What's the advantage? Apparently nothing, because as
    Apple says: "Been There, Done That." (id est, "There is no
    difference...)

    I still think that System 7 is more "orthogonal" and WinNT is very
    "organic", so I'd prefer that WinNT had taken the approach of
    truly being a "blank sheet" and not try so hard to be compatible
    with everything that went before. (Single characters for disk
    drive names? C'mon! It's ugly and doesn't have to be this way.)

    And there are/will be more Ada95 compilers to run on WinNT than on
    S-7.

    Now if Apple were to smarten-up and quit trying to play the
    "proprietary" game of getting 100% of an ever shrinking pie (and
    try to make money by *earning* it rather than *litigating* for
    it!) maybe they could get a silk purse out of this sow's ear. A)
    Make S-7 available on non-proprietary hardware and/or B) Port WinNT to
    the Mac and open up the box so other companies can play too.

    MDC

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        407.796.8997
M/S 731-96                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Fax:        407.796.4669
P.O. Box 109600                                 Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
West Palm Beach, FL 33410-9600                  Internet:   CONDIC@FLINET.COM
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