Apple are the best thing since sliced bread

"Ben" wrote in message
ups.com...
After watching a few of thier keynote speaches on the internet, i now
totaly worship all things apple.

Afterall, what would you rather have, a big nooisy beige box that might
work if u ask nicly, or a sexy sreamlines clean cut compact machine
that you could throw rocks at and still have it work smoothly?
(and i dont even have a mac, or an ipod!)

I'd rather have one with a working spell checker ;0)

Ben wrote:
After watching a few of thier keynote speaches on the internet, i now
totaly worship all things apple.

Afterall, what would you rather have, a big nooisy beige box that might
work if u ask nicly, or a sexy sreamlines clean cut compact machine
that you could throw rocks at and still have it work smoothly?
(and i dont even have a mac, or an ipod!)


Monopolies begger ( and beget monopolies ). 'Nix' works (mostly)
anywhere..;-)

On 18 Dec 2004 11:20:39 -0800, "Ben" wrote:

After watching a few of thier keynote speaches on the internet, i now
totaly worship all things apple.

Afterall, what would you rather have, a big nooisy beige box that might
work if u ask nicly, or a sexy sreamlines clean cut compact machine
that you could throw rocks at and still have it work smoothly?
(and i dont even have a mac, or an ipod!)


As trolls go, this one is pretty old, lame, and boring. Try "AA"
instead of "SAA".

- Craig

After watching a few of thier keynote speaches on the internet, i now
totaly worship all things apple.

Afterall, what would you rather have, a big nooisy beige box that
might
work if u ask nicly, or a sexy sreamlines clean cut compact machine
that you could throw rocks at and still have it work smoothly?
(and i dont even have a mac, or an ipod!)

Now with "Spellchecker" (tm)
jc


--
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/jc_atm/

In that case, what was the best thing before sliced bread?

"Ben" wrote

After watching a few of thier keynote speaches on the internet, i now
totaly worship all things apple.

Afterall, what would you rather have, a big nooisy beige box that might
work if u ask nicly, or a sexy sreamlines clean cut compact machine
that you could throw rocks at and still have it work smoothly?
(and i dont even have a mac, or an ipod!)

I would rather have a posting with correctly spelled words.

What you say is mostly correct. PCs dominate industrial controls and
instrumentation mainly because of the Basic that originally shipped with
DOS, and the follow on Visual Basic for Windows. Those two combined
account for 99% of the world's bad software. Yes the stuff "works", but
it's also usually unsupportable, spagetti-code crap. Truly useful and
semi-structured versions of Basic like the one developed by HP, and also
Apple were kicked to da curb by the stuff given away free by Microsoft.
In 1985, Bill Gates was so worried about the potential of Apple's
multi-threaded, multi-tasking Basic that he threatened to stop
development of Word and Excel on the Mac unless they gave him the rights
to the code. Apple rolled over and killed their uber-Basic because the
prevailing wisdom was the Mac needed Word and Excel.

Twenty years later, those old DOS and VB apps are rapidly becoming
obsolete as the people who wrote and supported them retire or die. The
Mac runs BSD UNIX now and other than inertia, there really is no limit
to the applications that can be written for OS X. In our lab and shop,
we use HTBasic on PCs, and LabView on Macs.



Jon Isaacs wrote:

This is the common view, but I wonder if it's true.


Seems to me that it is not too difficult to see what Apples market share is.
2%, seems about right.

You list a few users who seem to prefer Macs but how about listing the folks
who are on the PC side.

In my business, instrumentation and measurement, even the guys who have a Mac
on their desktops have labs full of PCs interfaced with test equipment. Some
stuff is available that is Mac compatible but most of it is not.

In factories, machines are interfaced with interfaced with PCs...

Both have their advantages, but the flexibility that the PC provides in both
software and hardware configuration makes it the platform of choice for most
uses.

Jon

It's good that you qualified this statement. Just give me a holler
when your 12-year-old Mac dies and I'll send you some links for parts.

All the 12 year old Macs around here have long since been disposed of....
obsolete.

And of course my local store still has power supplies and stuff that will fit a
12 year old PC.... no need to go out of town.

Even allowing for the typo(s), I've no idea what this means. If it
means an OS and hardware that can run *NIX apps, Mac apps, and Windows
apps, it sounds like an endorsement, however unintentional.

The lab environment is not only about software but hardware as well. That
does not mean hardware that will run the software, rather hardware that is
compatible with the external hardware that the computer is operating...

For example, in the lab we use high speed digitizer cards (A/D) that require 2
ISA slots per card and I can gang these cards. We use them for dynamic
mechanical measurements mostly, though they are handy for a variety of
measurements. These cards are 100 Megasample, 12 bit dual channel and guess
what, even if a Mac could run the software, it couldn't run the hardware.

There are lots of examples like this. The Imacon 200 for example, a 16 frame
Imaging camera capable of operating at 5 nano-second frame timing uses an
interface specifically designed for the PC and specific software for the
operation of the camera. Just won't work with a Mac..


And these may help awaken you to the current state of art:

I checked out a couple of the links.

I am not discussing a laboratory where one does computations, rather an
experimental laboratory where one makes measurements.

In our experimental laboratory, the computers are used to operate various sorts
of equipment, might be that high speed camera, might be a servo-hydraulic load
frame, might be just about anything.

In the vast majority of the cases the computer is secondary to the
instrumentation from both a cost and from a complexity standpoint. The
computer just needs to be reliable, robust and easy to repair.

For that, manufacturers seem to choose the PC when they choose a platform to
design a system around....

In my experience, in laboratory settings, may see Macs on peoples desks for use
as a personal computer but it is rare to see a Mac hooked up to equipment that
is actually making measurements or controlling something.

In some fields it might be more common.

Jon Isaacs