Let's face It: Apple invented personal computers, mp3 players and smart phones

[rcgldr]

In case it isn't clear to others here, the initial versions of OS/2 targeted 286 systems, so they used the 16 bit extended memory model. IBM never made a 386 based AT, and only released the 386 on it's PS/2 systems that used micro channel, while the PC clone vendors developed the EISA standard and did make 386 based "AT" clones. The later OS/2 2.0 supported 386 and 32 bit flat address virtual address space. Compounding the problem for IBM was that the marketplace assumed that OS/2 need to run on PS/2 and vice versa (the joke was you needed half an operating system to run on half a personal system, a reference to the /2 in the names).

As for Windows NT, it was always 32 bit only (386 or above), there was substantial changes made to the code in order to allow device drivers to run at ring 0 (this was done for performance). Microsoft later reduced the percentage of device driver code that ran in ring 0 with Windows Vista and again with Windows 7, which resulted in slightly slower performance, on my system, for the same game, same settings, frame rate is about 7% slower for Win 7 versus Win XP. These days, blue screens even with WIn XP are fairly rare.

I still have what could be considered a collectors item:

 

[OmCheeto]

Good grief. Someone remind me in the future, that discussing computer history is as pretentious as politics, religion, and driving, and that I should stray away from such threads.

 

[wukunlin]

Good grief. Someone remind me in the future, that discussing computer history is as pretentious as politics, religion, and driving, and that I should stray away from such threads.

If you look at the most loyal apple customers, their infatuation with apple products have certainly surpassed religion levels.

As for the reminder for these discussions, I think we had some sort of warning on page 1: :w

I see Mac hatred in many forms all over the internet and it is almost always that whole adolescent Ford vs/ Chevy mess, unworthy of any comment.

Seriously, when people get emotional with brands, the "discussions" always drive my palm to my face. An informed consumers quickly jump from brand to brand between purchases, except may return to particular ones for loyalty programs. I remember how I once told people to not touch a Dell computer with a 10 ft pole and less than a year later I bought a Dell laptop (the one I'm using right now) after seeing how efficient they carried out their warranty services in Auckland (a friend of mine had a desktop which motherboard kind of self destructed when still covered by warranty. He emailed them on the day, which is a Sunday, and on Monday 7 am, 2 technicians knocked on his door and fixed everything up and left well before 8 am).

 

[rcgldr]

I see Mac hatred in many forms all over the internet.

Most of that is historical. The current Macs are essentially PC clones, OS-X (user version was released in 2001) is a pre-emptive mult-tasking OS, so the main complaint is the pricing, and the restriction of what third party components that are allowed to be used in Macs (like memory upgrades). I don't know what the options are for components like video or sound cards on Macs.

IBM sold off it's PC division to Lenovo back in April, 2005, so the PC compatible market is now all clones, much of it for systems that cost less than $1000, and with laptop type systems being popular for the home, while desktops remain the key systems used by corporations.

 

[enorbet]

Good grief. Someone remind me in the future, that discussing computer history is as pretentious as politics, religion, and driving, and that I should stray away from such threads.

:) It is rather soap opera like (I think "contentious rather than so much "pretentious") and probably for good reason. With so much at stake and in an entirely new paradigm still being created this was nothing less than corporate warfare and the opponents were extremely passionate. There are reports of actual death threats being leveled on what was then social networking sites. As regards this thread one can see that much like national warfare, the victor gets to own the most widely known version of the history.

Many at IBM were so embarassed by being beaten a 2nd time by Billy and the Boys that they distanced themselves from OS/2 letting it "die on the vine". To them it was like being beaten senseless with one's own arm. This added to the not unfounded critique that IBM lacks good marketing ("If IBM bought a Sushi Business they would market it as raw, dead fish") was the demise of a truly Mission Critical capable OpSys... well not actual demise since they sold it off and it became eComStation but it's market share is substantially less than 0.5%.

I find it rather entertaining but would find it a lot more entertaining if fewer good ideas benefiting fledgling PC design were stifled during the conflagration in the interest of corporate profit to benefit shareholders, but like Lenny Bruce said "What is, is the Truth. What should be is a dirty lie".

I must agree however that History is not hard Science but rather considerably biased opinion, and that includes PCs and Operating Systems.

A PostScript - While IBM originally underestimated the adoption rate of the x386 and got stuck for a bit in x286 land (not able to switch on-the-fly from Protected Mode) OS/2's whole reason for being was to develop a single OpSys that (borrowing heavily from Unix design) could be deployed on all levels of computers from Mainframes down to PCs.

 

[rcgldr]

While IBM originally underestimated the adoption rate of the x386 and got stuck for a bit in x286 land (not able to switch on-the-fly from Protected Mode) OS/2's whole reason for being was to develop a single OpSys that (borrowing heavily from Unix design) could be deployed on all levels of computers from Mainframes down to PCs.

Well part of that was IBM's fault by tying the 386 to the PS/2's micro channel bus. I recall an early PS/2 with a 16mhz 386, that cost $10,000. 2 or 3 months later, it was 20 mhz 386 PS/2 for $8,000. At that price, the adoption rate would have been slow, but then the EISA 386 clones were released costing less than $3,000. As mentioned before there was a perception that OS/2 and PS/2 were somehow tied together, and I don't know how much of this was IBM's fault.

I'm not sure about IBM's planned usage of OS/2 or Unix on their mainframes. IBM already had OS/Mxx and VM/370, which eventually led to Z-OS, which includes virtual machine like features, being able to run Unix programs, and also legacy programs in 24 bit, 31 bit, or 64 bit addressing modes. I'm not sure how much existing Cobol / HLASM, Fortran programs, and database file structures were tied into IBM's existing operating systems.

 

[wukunlin]

I still don't understand why anyone take the apple "lifestyle" thing seriously.

 

[voko]

There was a period of over 10 years and iirc between ~1993 - 2004 in which the hardware of Macs was considerably superior to most PCs.

This sort of claim is meaningless, because "considerably superior" and "most PCs" are undefined, and perhaps undefinable, being purely subjective.

The PC back then was (and is now) an open platform and I am quite sure that any hardware the Mac had could in principle be matched and outmatched, given a formal metric. Since you singled out the SCSI thing, I can recall that in ca 1996 I used a Windows NT 3.51 system, with two Pentium Pro CPUs and a couple of SCSI HDDs organized into a stripe-set. Should I mention that it was a robust preemptive multitasking system, something that Apple fielded five years later?

But it is interesting that you also say "I was appalled when I discovered the cost of SCSI". That sounds right; SCSI back then was a lot more expensive than ATA (I am not sure that "ATA" existed as a term as early as 1993 though), so perhaps "most PCs" could just do without for much lower price?

 

[enorbet]

ping voko - I don't see that claim as meaningless at all since SCSI drives from 1993 - 2004 are demonstrably superior and in every single testable category compared to their closest rival EIDE/PATA drives. Some people may judge that the 5 year warranty (compared to 1 for ATA) alone was enough to justify the higher cost. Not only was bandwidth much higher but access times were around 0.10 of ATA. Unless you really want a comparison chart I think "considerably superior" is a safe assessment by anyone aware of the specs and/or has "felt" the difference in speed...as apparently you have and I am in a state of anachronistic jealousy :)

The term "most PCs" did lack a qualifier so I will append that now. There is probably no way to know how many Mom 'n Pop store PCs were put together and sold, nor the many homebrews, but I also think it is safe to deduce that the majority of PCs were bought from Dell, Compaq, Sony, IBM, etc. and they kept records, so I will add this qualifier, making it "most commercial PCs" the majority in use.

The OP wanted to delete this thread because he was "compromised" at the time and perhaps a little carried away with absolutes or hyperbole. That MS (with a huge amount of help from IBM) beat out Apple by 5 years on a fully developed, robust preemptive multitasking system might possibly be a surprise to OP I doubt many here find that surprising and some know it from experience.

I absolutely agree with "most PCs could just do without for a much lower price" as there is always a market for cheaper and with good reason. I know if my only choice was somehow just a crappy computer or no computer I'd opt for crappy over none in a heartbeat. Bottom line is that Apple has always aimed at the high end. They sometimes, if not often, hit that mark and in anything remotely resembling a free market higher prices are usually justifiable by those that want luxury or they go out of business.

That PCs have had a few star-studded benefits in the past is not in doubt at least by me. The sheer numbers of PC user/consumers has been a driving force only recently exceeded by wireless telephony, feeding back into lower prices and greater features/performance in leaps, and around again. So I understand why Apple used to be considerably more expensive, but I also understand why they had to come around closer to PC ways after around 2004 because the bang for buck, hardware wise, at consumer level was/is no longer there because those with the numbers flourished and the "also rans" faded. As some have pointed out here, when comparing similar features and specs, Macs are at least comparable in price now.

 

[voko]

I don't see that claim as meaningless at all since SCSI drives from 1993 - 2004 are demonstrably superior and in every single testable category compared to their closest rival EIDE/PATA drives.

SCSI vs EIDE, perhaps. But SCSI in a Mac vs an EIDE in a PC is not so clear cut. As mentioned earlier in this thread, Apple's (initial?) implementation of SCSI could hardly be characterized as superior to anything, which basically reduced the superiority of SCSI hard drives to "5 year warranty", which was as dubious a trait as it is now, if not more.

To make matters even fuzzier, Macs did use IDE back then.

Bottom line is that Apple has always aimed at the high end.

That is not true. Look at this baby: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Quadra_605 That was anything but high end in 1993.

I do not think it is possible to substantiate technically that the Mac ever was the superior platform, because it is simply not true. It enjoyed a cult status for a while, for largely non-technical reasons I believe, and even then it imploded, because "you cannot fool all the people all the time".

 

[rcgldr]

Windows NT 3.51 system, ... a robust preemptive multitasking system, something that Apple fielded five years later?

The MAC did have A/UX (Apple / Unix) as an option going back to 1988. As for OS-X, it was mentioned that a preemptive multitasking system would released with MAC OS 6, then 7, then 8, ... and it wasn't until OS-X that it happened. Part of this was Apple wanting near 100% backwards compatability, which apparently was difficult for some apps, and it got dropped when OS-X was first released.

IBM also made a Unix variation with windowing called AIX which could run on the PS/2 (1987), which some referred to as "AIX and panes".

 

[enorbet]

ping - voko
initial != 1993-2004. 5 yr warranty dubious? Personal experience - I had a 5 drive Seagate SCSI raid and Seagate drop-shipped not one, but two replacement drives over the course of the first year. They arrived at my door within 2 days of my phone call. By comparison, even with the same manufacturer, Seagate, it took just shy of 3 weeks to replace an ATA drive since I had to return the defective (in the original packaging I might add) drive before they would replace it.

Just because one entry model used IDE does not sufficiently make matters fuzzier in the overall, and verifiable generalizations. I see nothing low end in the model you linked for consumer use in 1993. For one thing it is not possible to compare CPUs just by clock speed. How many Instructions per Clock and the complexity of those instructions has to be factored in. There is a reason that Industrial Light and Magic, Pixar, and the majority of professional recording studios chose and still choose Macs, although of late both Windows and Linux PCs have made inroads.

As for imploding -

Again I am not a Mac fanboi so nothing I am recounting is even attempting to denigrate any sacred cows you may have. PCs dominate the numbers and that happened for a reason as well, and they just keep getting better although I have severe doubts about UEFI. However to attempt to write off Apple/Mac as overpriced junk is specious at best.

 

[Jamin2112]

The funny thing is a large chunk of apple product users would say the same thing you wrote in the OP when they are sober

The funny thing is that OP just interviewed for a Jr. Game Developer 6-month contract position at Microsoft and is waiting to hear back.

 

[russ_watters]

Those aren't the only choices for buying a Mac, but the real question is, why do Macs sell at all given their higher prices? Your take on the market is simplistic, and you're comparing apples to oranges. Apple doesn't participate in the low end of the market, so comparing a $1000 MacBook to the $400 laptop you can pick up at Best Buy is misleading at best. When compared to PCs offered in the high end of the market, Macs are competitively priced.

Assuming that's true, it explains Apple's perpetual lack of market share: PCs are offered at all price points while Apples are only offered at the top. That leaves PCs with sole possion of the bottom 80% (guess) and Apple and PCs splitting the top 20%.

 

[voko]

The MAC did have A/UX (Apple / Unix) as an option going back to 1988.

In 1988, it did. In 1996, it did not, just like I said. None of the Power Macs ever had it, either.

For the latter, there were MkLinux and Linux/PPC, followed by a slew of other Linux distros, and, later, BSD ports, but I would be very surprised if any of those ever gained significant traction with Apple's non-geek clientèle.

 

[voko]

initial != 1993-2004

I had a question mark after 'initial', because I did not know when the Mac got a proper SCSI implementation. Feel free to feel that in. All of that is moot, anyway, because bus-mastering EISA SCSI cards were already available in 1993, so it is simply wrong to say that SCSI was something that PC users could only dream about. Besides, Apple switched to PCI in 1995, from which point a lot of imagination is required to distinguish between "Mac hardware" and "PC hardware", CPU excepted.

Just because one entry model used IDE

Just one? Really?

I see nothing low end in the model you linked for consumer use in 1993

Then perhaps you could see that this statement of yours is drastically different from "Apple has always aimed at the high end"?

For one thing it is not possible to compare CPUs just by clock speed. How many Instructions per Clock and the complexity of those instructions has to be factored in.

As I said earlier, this sort of hand waving is meaningless. Give us something unambiguous and measurable; else, you might just as well be saying "Macs are superior because I say so".

There is a reason that Industrial Light and Magic, Pixar, and the majority of professional recording studios chose and still choose Macs

From 2006 on, all the Macs are PCs, hence the reason must have nothing to do with hardware superiority, real or imaginary, of Macs over PCs. Which strongly suggests it was equally irrelevant before.

As for imploding -

This diagram is irreverent for the period we have been discussing, and it is also irrelevant because the "Mac" there is a PC.

However to attempt to write off Apple/Mac as overpriced junk is specious at best.

I am not doing this. I, however, find the following claim subjective and misleading: "There was a period of over 10 years and iirc between ~1993 - 2004 in which the hardware of Macs was considerably superior to most PCs".

There were, as you admitted, "entry models" of Macs that were anything but superior to contemporary PCs. There were Macs that did not have "advanced hardware". There were even Macs during that period which did not support virtual memory because requisite hardware was simply not present in them; given that, how can you seriously speak of hardware superiority?

 

[vela]

Assuming that's true, it explains Apple's perpetual lack of market share: PCs are offered at all price points while Apples are only offered at the top. That leaves PCs with sole possession of the bottom 80% (guess) and Apple and PCs splitting the top 20%.

I'm sure Apple's screw-ups during the 90s had a lot to do with it too. ;) But after Jobs took over again, Apple has focused on the higher end of the market, where there's a lot of money still to be made. Marketshare isn't really important; profit-share is. The low-end of the market is not a very profitable segment of the market where a company has to compete on price, so margins are razor-thin. It helps explain why a company like HP wants to spin-off its PC business, despite having a comparatively high marketshare.

http://www.asymco.com/2013/04/16/escaping-pcs/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2691932/hp-reportedly-set-to-split-off-pc-printer-business.html

 

[enorbet]

@voko I'm not sure why it is that you don't see the overall picture as I have contained it. Extremely few commercial PCs EVER shipped with SCSI and there were numerous models that had SCSI by default by Apple. Why is it so hard to see that a company that concentrates on high end might have an entry level item? The bulk of their business has been high end. Clock speed x IPC IS measurable. Clock speed alone is spacious and indeterminate.

Even after 2006 it is not correct to say that "all Macs are PCs" and seems very much like the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. How many PCs, even now, but especially from 1999 forward had FireWire? Are you going to argue that USB even through version 2.0 was better in any way than FireWire of the same time period?

Regarding the Market graph, I didn't bring that time period up. You did when you said "it imploded, because 'you cannot fool all the people all the time'".

Yes you are doing this (re: overpriced junk). There it is. There's your bias right there. You are of the opinion that Mac buyers are pretentious, elitist, art students that got hoodwinked until they learned better, presumably from your point of view by trying the ALWAYS superior, in quality and price, PC. Apparently you are going to spin any data I show to twist it to your agenda and since "one convinced against his will, remains unconvince-ed still" I'll leave you with a quote from the Hal 9000

HAL: "Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye."

 

[wukunlin]

@enorbet May I asked in a civilized manner, hoping to fulfill my curiosity: For the typical PC users I know, mainly using computers for games, web surfing, multimedia, office work and occasional programming, would having SCSI and firewire have made our lives significantly easier?

 

[voko]

I'm not sure why it is that you don't see the overall picture as I have contained it. Extremely few commercial PCs EVER shipped with SCSI and there were numerous models that had SCSI by default by Apple. Why is it so hard to see that a company that concentrates on high end might have an entry level item? The bulk of their business has been high end.

"Extremely few", "numerous", "concentrates" and "bulk" are meaningless and subjective; this is a recurring problem in your argument. You need verifiable statistics corroborating your claims, not anecdotal evidence you have solely supplied so far.

The rest of your message is even less rational, with argumenta ad hominem and outright lies. Why so emotional?

 

[rcgldr]

Getting back to the original topic:

Apple invented personal computers.

Kit based systems like the Altair 8800 were released in 1975, and some computer clubs were selling completed kits. The Apple II, Commodore Pet, and the TRS-80 were all released in 1977.

mp3 players

The SaeHan/Eiger MPMan, Diamond Rio, and Hango Jukebox were released in 1998 (Asian version of MPMan released 1997). The Creative Nomad, Cowon CW100, and Archos Jukebox were release in 2000. The iPod was released in 2001. As mentioned before, I still have an original DIamond Rio (its stored somewhere in our home).

smart phones

Nokia 9000 released in 1996. Blackberry released in 2006. iPhone released in 2007.

 

[Mark44]

@voko and @enorbet (and any other offenders):
If you can't keep the discussion civil, there will be consequences...

 

[enorbet]

@enorbet May I asked in a civilized manner, hoping to fulfill my curiosity: For the typical PC users I know, mainly using computers for games, web surfing, multimedia, office work and occasional programming, would having SCSI and firewire have made our lives significantly easier?

Hello.

Gaming - While it isn't really on the exact topic of this thread I think it is safe to say "Yes". In gaming, load times can be severe which is why many hardcore gamers now use SSDs. Being able to access multiple drives simultaneously or in raid was the only way to get close to what is now fairly commonplace w/ SSDs. SCSI drives had access times up to 1/10th that of IDEs and better than 1/2 that of SATA.

Web Surfing - no great gains here other than less vulnerability, mostly through obscurity, but still real.

Multimedia - Absolutely! This is why (not to beat a dead horse, but) Pro Recording Studios, Industrial Light and Magic, Pixar and numerous other multimedia users tended to gravitate to Mac. Windows has since caught up and Linux is slowly getting there, but Macs still proliferate in this field and for good reason.

Office Work - MS has quite the stranglehold here so even though Open Office and LibreOffice aren't bad at all, this is still easiest on a PC running Windows.

Programming - Neither Windows nor Mac would be my first choice for this field. It's great that Mac has "gone BSD" but they still do their best to make it difficult for casual users (and anyone else, by extension) to get "down to the metal" and that certainly includes Windows where, recently, even having Admin rights is still locked out of some deeper areas, even with downloaded improvements. For programming, I think Linux and true BSD are the best platforms.

FireWire - Although USB tried to name itself "poor mans SCSI" it has never been the self-aware bus that SCSI is. FireWire comes very close and did so by necessity since it was used mostly for connection to disks or mutimedia devices like Camcorders. I do thin we would be somewhat better off if FireWire had greater market share but they were up against the giant, Wintel. Today though, USB has become very solid so this is a bit of a non-issue anymore. USB won.

BTW - I know it is difficult when reading text dislocated from tone of voice and body language to sense the "feel" of a post. I honestly thought the civilized thing to do was break off from some posters. Apparently my words weren't clear enough, so I apologize for that. I truly wasn't angry or spiteful and certainly not to you.

 

[enorbet]

@voko and @enorbet (and any other offenders):
If you can't keep the discussion civil, there will be consequences...

I thought backing out was civil, but I will try to be more gentle.

 

[rcgldr]

SCSI drives had access times up to 1/10th that of IDEs and better than 1/2 that of SATA.

Depends on when and what company. Sata drives have been available with 7200 and 10,000 rpm for over a decade, and in many cases, it's the same drive mechanics with a different board, one for Sata, one for SCSI. Seek times are artificially reduced by "destroking" the drive to only use the outer tracks of a drive, which reduces capacity and seek times, and improves average transfer rate since bit density is fixed and the surface velocity is higher on the outer tracks.

Office Work - MS has quite the stranglehold here

Part of this is pricing, and part of this is Microsoft's policy of supporting products for up to 10 years or more. Some company's are still paying Microsoft for continued support of Windows XP. Link to article:

http://www.zdnet.com/after-30-years-why-did-the-mac-never-break-into-big-business-7000025743

As for home users, once you get past the $1,000 price point, Apple has most of the market place, with the main exception being gamers, but much of the gaming industry has switched to consoles, and the game stores don't carry many PC games since the trend is for PC games to be purchased via download.