On 2002-01-30 2:04, "Stephen Jendraszak" <stevehj_at_mac.com> wrote:
> But you can, through a SCSI card, use SCSI
> devices. And there are both cards (for PowerMacs) and adapters (for ANY
> new Mac) that allow serial connectivity.
I know these things exist. I have them both. How they work is another
matter.
> Now, as for OS X drivers, that
> is not entirely Apple's fault. The perepherial manufacturers, who wrote
> the drivers for "Classic" Mac OS, are also the ones who should write
> drivers for OS X. Mac OS X does support SCSI.
Even with OS 9 we've seen limited support from vendors because the market is
too small. Adding X into the equation fragments an already small market. I
know Apple is hoping the market grows, but if I was a device manufacturer
I'd be asking the same tough question, "Is it worth it to develop drivers
for a small fragment of a small fragment of the market?" I'm not surprised
that many have said no, just disappointed.
>> And will continue to work like this as long as we blindly accept it. I
>> have
>> an Epson 800N printer which is networked via Ethernet. Epson decides
>> they
>> won't support it in Mac OS X ...
>
> This is not Apple's fault.
I wonder. I was just at the QPS site trying to find out about my CD-RW drive
and support in X and QPS is laying the blame on Apple for the problem.
<http://www.qps-inc.com/cgi-bin/display?sn=41016148054622&tm=osxusb&dir=supp
ort>
Are other vendors of other peripherals having the same problems? My guess is
yes due to the other comments I've heard about X's printing deficiencies.
When the OS vendor makes it difficult to develop drivers, then it's not
surprising when vendors (possibly Epson) decide they can only do so much. I
still maintain Epson's printing architecture is broken since it should be
more device independent (like Postscript), so it's a mix of Apple and Epson
support.
> Aqua is beautiful, and easier to use. It is
> a step forward.
I'd have to disagree. Aqua is fuzzy with all the anti-aliasing and drop
shadows and that slows it down. Transparency is just dumb. Why do I want to
read the text of an email message behind a menu that's dropped down in
front? Of course you can't read the email text because it's too obscured,
but not enough because it makes the menus difficult to read. I like the
comment by one publisher who said, "We pay extra to get quality paper that
you can't see through and yet Apple doesn't give you any way to turn
transparency off."
I don't find X easier to use, just different. Some things I like, others you
have to wonder what they were thinking.
> People said the same thing about the original
> Macintosh... "We could do the same jobs on the same chip a lot faster
> with a command line. The GUI uses too many system resources."
No doubt when my next laptop has dual 1 GHz CPUs and drivers for the fancy
video card, I won't notice the speed of the GUI, but right now my Lombard is
sluggish. Whenever I boot back into 9 it just feels so darn fast. Heck,
using OS 9 on my 7100/66 is faster than X on my 400 MHz G3.
> I understand that the [AirPort/Orinoco] cards are very similar, but the
principle remains.
> Apple supports the hardware it made. It does not have a responsibility
> to create drivers for third party hardware that they do not sell.
Then why does Apple support the cards in OS 9? I suspect there's some tiff
between Lucent and Apple that results in the customers losing.
>...
> The key
> is, not to expect old hardware to work with the latest new gizmo or
> software. You bought the WaveLAN card, I imagine, for wireless
> networking in OS 9. It still does that. It was never promised that it
> would work in OS X without 3rd party drivers. You bought the SCSI
> DVD-RAM drive, I would think, to burn DVDs on a SCSI Mac. They still
> work, they just aren't yet supported by the latest OS.
That's going to be a real problem because any time I buy any peripheral I
have to say to myself, "Gee, I'm buying this new quantum flux capacitor that
has a driver for OS 12.2.1 but I really shouldn't expect Apple to support it
when 12.2.2 comes out. Apple is supposed to be releasing a speed bumped G7
CPU too but I probably won't be able to use my 3 month old quantum flux
capacitor on it. Yup, I'll just run out and buy a new one because Apple
doesn't want to spend much effort on backwards compatibility. Saves Apple
money and costs me a bundle."
I'd rather buy new computers and peripherals because there was a compelling
reason to rather than Apple changing the rules and causing vendors to
scramble to release a new driver, which they may decide is too much work.
Seems that buying peripherals for Apple computers is becoming a bit of a
crap shoot.
...Tom
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