I'm sorry, I didn't mean to indicate that I expected YOU (or anyone on
the list, really) to write support for connecting Newtons over ethernet
in X. I was just saying that in general, if "someone" did, I will be
willing to pay for it. And that is saying something, because I am a
college student, and contrary to what you imply, I don't have lots of
cash lying around. But I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only one on
the list who would buy such a product.
I understand that in a pinch, even for someone with a newer Mac, a
serial connection may be required. But in a pinch, personally, I
wouldn't mind rebooting in 9, or starting Classic, and using NCU 1.0. It
would be great if I didn't have to do that, though, for day-to-day use.
You use a beige G3 with serial ports. Okay. When I came to school, a new
iMac was part of my scholarship. But until then, I had never owned a new
computer, and the newest machine I had owned was a Bondi iMac, which I
bought used for $600. It is from very close to the same time as your
machine, and runs at the same clock speed. I don't mean to imply that
your machine, or my old iMac, is useless. Far from, they still do
exactly EVERYTHING they did when they were bought. With additional RAM
(and a lot of it), OS X feels fairly responsive on my old iMac. (It is
now in the hands of my younger brother.) But there are some things that
newer machines can do that those machines cannot, and I don't think it
is fair to expect Apple to add support for things like the old iMac
graphic card (Rage IIc), as some users have demanded. Nor is it fair to
demand full support for a hardware technology (serial ports) that Apple
no longer puts on it's computers, and that exist on only a handful of
machines that even have the potential to run OS X (and even then, cannot
run it without upgrades, namely in RAM).
It IS fair, in my opinion, for programmers to demand documentation for
the APIs, and to call an OS that lacks such documentation incomplete.
But complete or not, I for one really enjoy OS X. It has yet to crash on
me. The interface is beautiful. I am enjoying learning a little Unix for
fun. iPhoto is a great application, and is OS X only. I have no
benchmarks to back this up, but while I admit that OS X "feels" slower
than OS 9 on a given computer, the speed is more than acceptable, which
is more that I could say for the Public Beta or version 10.0. Apple is
constantly optimizing the OS, making it better and faster, and I am sure
they are constantly working on documenting APIs too. X may not be
finished yet, but it is on the way.
By way of closing, I understand that many Newton-specific tasks,
including programming, require a serial port. That is fine. For the
needs of this community, and no doubt others as well, the serial port
still has some important uses. I do wonder why the fact that I like OS X
"concerns you." And I am sorry if I offended, either by my lack of
understanding the problem you were facing (I am not a programmer), or by
sounding like I expected you to create support for the feature I wanted.
sj
On Monday, January 28, 2002, at 08:46 AM, Paul Guyot wrote:
>
> Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 17:11:04 -0500
> From: Stephen Jendraszak <stevehj_at_mac.com>
>
>> I can understand Apple not supporting serial connections in X, since
>> less than a handful of supported machines have serial ports. But what
>> concerns me, being an iMac owner, is EtherTalk. If I could get a native
>> connection in X, over ethernet... I would be willing to pay for that.
>
> OK. Let me put it in another way *again* and for the last time.
> Connection to NewtonOS from MacOS X via EtherTalk requires a protocol
> for which there is no documented API. Nicolas thinks that this
> protocol is nevertheless available (it seems to be in Darwin),
> though. But until we find out how to call that, the only way is to
> implement it ourselves. You'll understand that I have other things to
> do than writing ADSP support for MacOS X.
>
> On a side note, EtherTalk support for a NCU replacement isn't all. If
> you lose all the information on your Newton, you need a way to get
> the Lantern package (Newton Devices) and the Ethernet driver for you
> Ethernet card before your Newton can connect via Ethernet. After a
> brain wipe, to install these packages, the only ways are Beam, IrDA,
> Serial and LocalTalk.
>
> Additionally, please have in mind that some people (not loaded enough
> to afford a new apple computer every 2 years, especially if they
> invested in "no longer supported technologies" such as SCSI) use old
> macs such as this G3/233 beige which I'm typing on and which has two
> serial ports (and apparently refuses to work properly under MacOS X).
> Such people sometimes happen to be "concerned" by folks like you who
> believes in the ads saying that MacOS X is the best OS on Earth and
> wants NewtonOS connection with it.
> And with no serial port, no Newton low-level debugging is possible.
> Serial ports are not that "out". Just in case you wondered how some
> similar people work on drivers just because you "are concerned" by
> cheap storage, for example.
>
> Paul
> --
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>
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