NewtonTalk.net April 2009 archive: Re: [NTLK] Safari Pad

From: Ryan Vetter <physicalconstants_at_yahoo.ca>
Date: Thu Apr 23 2009 - 15:11:37 EDT

Good comments. OS X is sluggish no question.

----- Original Message ----
From: Stefan <info@punkt-x.de>
To: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 5:46:11 AM
Subject: Re: [NTLK] Safari Pad - Apple's Tablet Computer

Hello Rick,

I don't want to be bossily and I'm conscious
about this to be a Newton list, so I'm not sure
what/how much to answer.

> > I believe, our dear Steve is not the solution, he
>> is part of the problem. He killed the Newton
> > mainly because he hated Sculley, IMHO.
>
>...."Eventually the 'slate' at $4000-$5000 was obviously not saleable
>[...] The rest is fairly public history of a product that cost too
>much for what it did and was never small enough to really be a hand
>held device. Relative to the total R & D dollars Apple spent on the
>whole newton developement cycle Apple never recovered the first dollar
>of profit above the $400 million sunk R & D costs.
>Š

I think, that's no contradiction to my opinion.

When you are so far that you produce the thing,
all R+D-costs have already incurred.

If you have all machinery and supplierchains
established it can only be a question of the cost
per piece to cancel or not. We don't know the
real background calculations.

But even given a too high price per unit PLUS the
financial situation you mention in the following
paragraphŠ - there is no reason not to start
again later on. There are some informations we
will be missing for ever, I regret.

We all over here are sad about the early death of the Newton.

> > OS-X for example was and is so
>> feature-loaded that most machines are too slow to
>> get the feeling of speed. A good operating system
>> and the most important applications should run on
>> every sold computer of the producer with
>> satisfying speed. That's not the fact.
>
>Say again? I have a lot of Macs of various vintages. I have, for
>example, a G3/466 clamshell iBook, bought second-hand in 2002. It has
>run, so far, every Mac OS incarnation from 9.1 to OS X 10.4.11. Every
>Mac OS installation has run on that iBook quite satisfactorily. Every
>Mac OS X version has even felt a little snappier than the previous
>one. (This has been particularly noticeable when upgrading to OS X
>10.2 (Jaguar) from 10.1.x and to Panther from Jaguar.

"Satisfactorily" isn't really good in my eyes :-)

I'm using some of these computers too, with OS 8 and OS-X (as possible).

The Pismo for example is a quite fast laptop with
OS 9 and can be handled very good with OS-X.
But I wouldn't call it snappy. Same with the
G4-400 and even my G4 1.67 PB isn't a racer.
If you compare it with OS 9, running on the same
machine. And I think, that's no really unfair
comparison. And there might be a reason why Apple
stopped the new models supporting OS 9.

YES, I know about the advantages of OS-X. And in
fact I nearly never go back to OS 9 (not even in
classic mode). But my only complaint was the
capacity-fretting behaviour of OS-X.

Have you ever felt the speed of an upgraded OS 9
machine? That's what I feel as progress.
A Cube with 1.5 GHz upgrade, a PPC 9600 with G4-800 MHz.

To feel so snappy performance you probably have
to buy the top model all the time.
And the next OS-X version will take that away
again. That's what I call (making?) addictiveŠ

I own and tried a version of BeOS on a midrange
PPC and a PC too. It is so fastŠ
Maybe that was only by some trick (?), I'm no
programmer. Unfortunately the company and the
follow-up died too. So there's only linux and
OS-X.

>Mac OS X has actually extended the already long life of older Mac
>systems.

That's only part of the truth: You could use them
with OS 9 as well and much faster.

My hypothesis on that affair:
We have been conditioned to want the newest all the time.
And that's the hype the whole technology industry
depends on: faster, newer, more lovely.

But really B E T T E R too???

You mustn't think I don't remember the freezes
and crashes of the old systems. I do.
But we shouldn't be sheep for the wolves of the industryŠ

Cheers back
Stefan

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