[ale] mac v pc

[D. Alan Stewart]

How 'closed'? Anyone can develop and sell a PCI board, an ATA device, a 
USB or Firewire peripheral, or software for Apple systems. There's no pound 
of flesh you have to give first and the information you need to do it is not hard 
to come by. As for the computer and operating system, Apple tried 'opening' 
that up and it almost put them out of business.

I respect their right to make a profit. I can understand the desire to maximize 
that profit. I try to get as much as I can for my work too! I've benefited greatly 
from their work. What is a fair price is decided jointly by me, Apple, and the 
market. There is a place in the world for propietary software and hardware. 
Whether you want to buy it or not is up to you, there are plenty of people 
who do.

The integration and control Apple has over their platform is an advantage to 
those that want 'no-hassle' computing. It also has allowed Apple to be 
innovative, introducing new technology to the mass market such as: SCSI 
(1986), 24-bit color (1987), generalized support for mulitple displays (1987), a 
32-bit OS (OS 7 in 1990), Quicktime, Quicktime 3D. It's allowed them to 
make changes in their architecture that would be near impossible to achieve 
in the Intel market: switching keyboard and mouse interfaces to ADB and 
then to USB, switching the expansion bus from NuBus to PCI, switching 
processor families from 68xxx to PowerPC, and now to fundamentally 
different operating system.

BTW, I'm the author of mtf, Linux software for reading Microsoft Tape Format 
(NT Backup) tapes, and it is released under an open source license. My time 
was paid for by my company. I have for 10+ years had a job writing 
proprietary software (for Unix, DOS, Windows, and Linux). For years that has 
been for internal use only, but within a month we will have a 
software/hardware product for sale at $20K (and up). It's Linux-based.

> Apple hasn't done any better -- they've just refused to allow anyone else
> to even enter the market in any meaningful way.  All closed systems (IBM
> mainframes, for example) are the same....  Intel may have compatibility
> problems, but that's the price you pay for the advantage of being able to
> choose between multiple vendors.
> 



D. Alan Stewart
Senior Software Developer
Layton Graphics, Inc.
155 Woolco Dr.
Marietta, GA 30062
Voice: 770/973-4312
Fax: 800/367-8192
FTP: ftp.layton-graphics.com
WWW: www.layton-graphics.com


"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they
are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do
not refer to reality." - Albert Einstein

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