Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!we13!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uiuccsb!grunwald From: grunwald@uiuccsb.UUCP Newsgroups: net.micro Subject: Re: MacIntosh and the Emporor's clothes - (nf) Message-ID: <5396@uiucdcs.UUCP> Date: Sun, 5-Feb-84 22:31:32 EST Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.5396 Posted: Sun Feb 5 22:31:32 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 9-Feb-84 05:17:43 EST Lines: 26 #R:fortune:-241500:uiuccsb:4400036:000:1353 uiuccsb!grunwald Feb 5 13:24:00 1984 What I don't understand is their big university-oriented push and the consequent interest in places like CMU, Harvard, Dartmouth and so on. It does not seem to be the machine to require your students to buy. I like funky interfaces and everything, but christ, an M.E. student wants to be able to solve ODE's (or whatever they use) for stress analysis. What good is the integrated display for this? I imagine they'd rather have an FPU. For writers and managers who need to publish cute reports, I can understand the appeal. But could you imagine using this as a software production machine? It would take so much more work to develope a program like "make" in that enivornment because you'd want to include all the human factors considerations. In fact, with "make", you really don't need all that -- you just want it to work and compile your programs for you. Now, I could see a multi-window, multi-tasking environment for program development; however, with no memory management hardware, I don't think we'll see it on the Mac for a while. It seems to be a system better aimed at the buisness departments of schools instead of the engineering campuses. Unless they develope some interesting packages for it, I think it'll mainly compete with the IBM PC market for buisness use. But, I imagine it'll keep them afloat for a while.