Re: [NTLK] NCU-like software native MacOS X: what prevents it

From: Stephen Jendraszak (stevehj_at_mac.com)
Date: Tue Jan 29 2002 - 17:33:17 EST


On Tuesday, January 29, 2002, at 04:27 PM, Tom Sheppard wrote:
> Stevie boy wants to kill anything considered too pass=E9 for him, such
> as
> floppies, serial and SCSI devices, 2 year old printers, faxing (whatever
> happened to NeXT's built-in faxing anyway?), DVD support for 2.5 year
> old
> Lombard PowerBooks, support for WaveLAN/Orinoco cards in X and the
> latest,
> CRTs.
>
> Now maybe The Steve is trying to advance civilization by forcing us to
> abandon old technology and embrace the new (at added cost to us and
> increased profits to Apple), but I'm an old fuddy-duddy who thinks
> that I
> should be able to continue to use my equipment as long as it meets my
> needs=

Apple (or the company's CEO, for that matter) has not killed the floppy,
serial devices, or SCSI. These devices are antiquated. The technology
(save for some special applications) had outlived it's useful life. It
was time to move on to faster and more elegant solutions in NEW
computers. In NO way does this change the usefulness of the product you
had already bought. A Mac IIsi still does everything it did in 1990. Is
it supported by Mac OS 8, 9, or X? No. But that doesn't mean that Apple
"killed" your IIsi. Until it breaks down (and Macs last a LONG time, on
average) it will do everything it did when you bought it, and probably
more. It can be upgraded to a point, but eventually, if you want to run
the latest OS and do the things that newer machines can do, you will
simply have to invest in new hardware. I don't like this anymore than
you do, but it is the way the computer industry works. There is no
computer company that fully supports hardware for 5-7 years. You think
Windows XP runs on a 7 year-old PC? The progress of technology in this
industry is just too fast for hardware to be capable of doing EVERYTHING
for that long. But, the fact that all of us are still Newton owner's
shows that just because a technology or peice of hardware is no longer
supported does not mean that it is no longer useful.

On the other hand, I agree with you regarding DVD support. But WaveLAN
is not an Apple technology... why should they write the drivers for it?
Isn't that the responsibility of the company who made it?

sj

http://homepage.mac.com/stevehj

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