While I avoid Macintosh “enthusiasts” as much as I do the Linux variety, I still use the Apple ecosystem and though I have tried them, none of the other choices have been able to match the utility and pleasure of it. Google, Samsung, and Microsoft (who had a really great start with Windows Phone but dropped it. I had and liked a Nokia MS Phone and probably would have kept using the WP if it hadn’t evaporate) haven’t managed to do the wrist-to-server thing that I find so compelling.

Apple doesn’t do so well at the server end of that world, having given up on their serious enterprise offerings, but because MacOS is UNIX, that is easily overcome with Linux substitutes able to easily integrate. I used Windows intensively for the 15 years or so between Windows 1.0 and the release of OS X. Desktop and server, professionally, at a very high level. I didn’t expect to find OS X so compelling, but it was.

Today, I use the Apple ecosystem because of how well it works and how nice it is to own and use. The Rolex analogy fails for me because while there might be a “luxury” component to Apple products, for me they genuinely work better. It feels like many people think that there is nothing to Apple’s products but snob appeal and Stockholm Syndrome—I think this is uninformed.

I use Apple’s product in spite of others who use it and behave like unctuous nitwits. I use Linux in the same manner. And, I use Windows as well despite a large share of the nitwit population championing it against both Linux and Windows. In the end, part of my Apple choice is aesthetic, and I will not, I couldn’t, rationally defend that. But, the other part is instrumental. For me and my family, and many others who are not religious fanatics about brands, it simply works better than other options.

Could I use a Windows/Android ecosystem option? I am sure that I could, and it is far better than previously, but ni my estimation and experience it would be a downgrade and much more work to duplicate what functionality it could replicate.

 

I don't see any reason that might have changed in the last 10 or 20 years.

There were prominent scandals with Foxconn, the assembler of iPhones. Apple was not blameless in that they seemed to look the other way while demanding very low overheads from Foxconn who chose ot make the work conditions very bad.

When it became public, there was a lot of trouble for Apple. They did respond with some actions.

Thing is, there is no reason to think that any other brand manufactured in China is any less likely to have contractors who are not treating employees properly. I don’t think it is a particularly solid stand to say “I don’t buy Apple because of factories in China” as it would really require not buying anyone producing in China without some sort of very tight surveillance program.

This is a fraught question, though, and a debate I am not willing to have because from an ethical perceptive it rapidly devolves into an infinite regress of boycotting and abandoning technology. I don’t want to cause suffering with my purchase choices and I actively seek choices to reduce that. In some cases, though, the trade off means leaving the technological world upon which my life is now based.

Because of that, and because of the very real dilemmas in choosing not to trade as a protest which does remove innocent people’s source of income, I do my best but can’t be concerned with purity or naïve optimization that imagines not buying a product is an unalloyed good.

If I couldn’t sleep at night because of the inequities in the world, many of which benefit me as a first world, prosperous person—and there was a time when I couldn’t, literally—I would never get any sleep because those things are not going away and I know very well that not being a saint, I can’t sacrifice my prosperity in a clearly futile effort to help others I can’t actually help.

I could completely impoverish myself and literally make no difference at all. This is, I have decided after long consideration, not righteous—it’s dysfunctional. Instead, we, my wife and I, try to use the wealth we have access to not only to benefit ourselves but others as well by buying as many provably ethically produced products as we can and by financially supporting organizations that directly help others with fundamental necessities—food, clothing, and shelter.

We are keenly aware of the feeling of not knowing where your family’s next meal is coming from, or how you will get warm clothes for your children. It’s a terrible thing and if we can effectively help some people not suffer it as much, it’s worth the price. But we can only do this because we otherwise maintain our own position not needing such help.

Anyway, this is far afield of the original topic or even a reasonable distance from it. My lengthy response reflects my long and rigorous consideration of it. I am not a saint. I can’t give up all of my comfort for people that as a group will not be reduced by me doing that. I often feel the disparity of my way of life versus the overwhelming majority of people on this planet.

The best I can do, I have worked out, is to help when it can make a difference and never forget that I did nothing to earn this incredible good fortune. I am in this position because of circumstance. I won the birth lottery and that doesn’t confer merit. If I worked hard it is because I could. It is not something I did to make that possible and those who can‘t do what I did because of where and when, and to whom they were born aren’t lesser people on account of it.

There is, in aggregate, enough wealth in this world to ensure those in the lowest socioeconomic conditions could live comfortable and healthy lives—but the way thing are currently arranged, might makes right is the operative principle underlying any version of the prevailing ethical system someone my articulate. I don’t believe it must be this way, I believe it is now things have turned out.

It could be different but knowing that I have only a few years left in my life, and knowing that I need to make sure my children and grandchildren are safe and secure, I am pragmatic about what steps I can take to achieve the goal I would most like: equity for every person on the earth, safety from fear of hunger and violence, and opportunity to make their lives the biggest version of their life they have the potential to do.

I will stop here, though I could certainly go on. I apologize for the very long post though, of course, those who really care about that don’t have to, and won’t, read it. I don’t blame anyone for not slogging through this screed, I certainly don’t take prudence about personal time as an insult.

 

The Rolex analogy fails for me because while there might be a “luxury” component to Apple products, for me they genuinely work better.

Of course it falls flat when you didn't read the analogy I made. I never used the word "luxury" when I compared to Rolex. Read it again and let me explain.

An Apple product is a lot like a Rolex. A Rolex doesn't keep time any better than a Casio but, Rolex owners sure talk about watches a lot more than the average person.

For those who couldn't read between the lines, Apple products are like Rolex watches in that Apple users tend to talk about computing devices way more than the average person - they may even start threads about it on an electronics circuits site.

 

Of course it falls flat when you didn't read the analogy I made. I never used the word "luxury" when I compared to Rolex. Read it again and let me explain.



For those who couldn't read between the lines, Apple products are like Rolex watches in that Apple users tend to talk about computing devices way more than the average person - they may even start threads about it on an electronics circuits site.

Why are you so abrasive and petty?

 

That "scandal" was misreported. Yes, there were problems being separated from their villages and families for extended periods for their first time in their lives. The international press made a field day out of it citing the "cruel" working conditions.

In truth these were pretty good jobs, allowing young low-skilled workers the opportunity to work and save enough money in a couple of years to build a house, then off to the country for a good life after "retirement", still in their tender young years. That, and while there did not have to scare up food daily.

I have seen several electronics production lines in China and I think the Foxxconn lines seem similar as far as working conditions are concerned, except that it was more like a Ford-style production one than other lines in China.

 

If we want to get into the Apple Mac vs IBM PC debate then I have a long list of beefs as to why the IBM PC was a piece of junk. I am sure you have heard it from me before so there is no point in my repeating it.

The Intel/IBM/MS alliance set back the personal computer revolution by about 25 years.

 

The Intel/IBM/MS alliance set back the personal computer revolution by about 25 years.

So what held Apple back, or do you consider them 25 years ahead of the PC?

 

Here is an example of how IBM with its corporate enterprise image held back the computer revolution.

When companies realized and recognized that the PC was the wave of the future, they directed their IT managers to computerize their departments. Every IT manager was tasked with selecting a computer brand. Of course, since IT managers knew little about what was going on it the PC world, selecting IBM was the safe choice. If problems occurred in implementation you could blame the maker since you chose the "best" that was available.

Your reputation and job was on the line if you chose a Mac and things did not pan out as expected.
One can argue that it was purely a business decision and not a technical one.

 

So what held Apple back, or do you consider them 25 years ahead of the PC?

The first and obvious example was Apple Macintosh introduced (copied from Xerox) the concept of GUI while IBM/MS was still stuck on DOS line-command interface. MS Windows in effect had to copy the Mac GUI.

 

In the early years of the Macintosh, I implemented a graphics based control system written in HyperCard. It was used on a complex installation to manufacture radioactive pharmaceuticals.

The now popular LabVIEW suit was first implemented on the Macintosh.

 

In the early years of the Macintosh, I implemented a graphics based control system written in HyperCard. It was used on a complex installation to manufacture radioactive pharmaceuticals.

The now popular LabVIEW suit was first implemented on the Macintosh.

Why are you so abrasive and petty?

No abrasion intended. Just a noteworthy fact - and I tried to be as soft about it as possible on my first post but it was misinterpreted. So I clarified.

 

No abrasion intended. Just a noteworthy fact - and I tried to be as soft about it as possible on my first post but it was misinterpreted. So I clarified.

No, you are abrasive. The first post was abrasive, the second even more so. You criticize and belittle people, it seems, as often and as severely as you feel you can get away with.

Apparently what you said didn’t matter:

An Apple product is a lot like a Rolex. A Rolex doesn't keep time any better than a Casio but, Rolex owners sure talk about watches a lot more than the average person.

because your purpose wasn’t to make a point about Apple products but about me, and I ignored that and responded to what you actually said since the attack was couched in vagary and had I responded to that part you’d have mentioned the part I did respond to.

In fact, I responded to the part that wasn’t a personal attack which was intended to be charitable–but once again concerning you my charity is misplaced. I said:

The Rolex analogy fails for me because while there might be a “luxury” component to Apple products, for me they genuinely work better. It feels like many people think that there is nothing to Apple’s products but snob appeal and Stockholm Syndrome—I think this is uninformed.

Which is not a misinterpretation of what I replied to, whether you used the word “luxury” of not. But, you have helpfully pointed out that the “doesn’t work better” part of your comment was entirely secondary to your meaning, so much so you even forgot you wrote it.

Your point was to make a personal attack, and not based on facts and arguments that justify it, just “get this guy talking about something he likes that makes him ‘one of them’”. It’s a classic ad hominem attack. And no matter how you couch it, it is abrasive and petty.

As much as I have tried to come to sincerely come to some understanding with you it’s done no good—you aren’t interested in getting along so now I will not respond to you any more because my time here with the overwhelming majority of simpatico members is far more important to me than your pissant kvetching and self-serving maundering.

From a purely moderation point of view, it’s time to return to discussing Apple products and not Apple users so more personal attacks will not last long in the thread.

 

I was an early adopter of the Macintosh ecosystem.

In my opinion, the Macintosh based on the Motorola MC68000 was technically superior to any Intel based 8080 system.
The IBM PC itself was a kludge from the start. Hardware developers from there on after wasted years designing workarounds to the 640k memory limitation and the video memory hole with extended and expanded memory gobbledeygook.

Intel 64k memory segmentation dug us all into a deeper hole.

Hardware IRQ selection and configuration was ill conceived.
Whoever thought that having to twist an interface cable to select a second disk drive was a clever idea ought to be shown the exit door.

While PC HW designers were still messing with RS-232 serial and Centronics parallel interfaces, Apple Macintosh introduced the Apple Desktop Bus in 1986 which eventually paved the way for USB in 1995.

 

I was an early adopter of the Macintosh ecosystem.

In my opinion, the Macintosh based on the Motorola MC68000 was technically superior to any Intel based 8080 system.
The IBM PC itself was a kludge from the start. Hardware developers from there on after wasted years designing workarounds to the 640k memory limitation and the video memory hole with extended and expanded memory gobbledeygook.

Intel 64k memory segmentation dug us all into a deeper hole.

Hardware IRQ selection and configuration was ill conceived.
Whoever thought that having to twist an interface cable to select a second disk drive was a clever idea ought to be shown the exit door.

While PC HW designers were still messing with RS-232 serial and Centronics parallel interfaces, Apple Macintosh introduced the Apple Desktop Bus in 1986 which eventually paved the way for USB in 1995.

Apple also provided native networking (though not the best, infinitely better than none), file sharing. SCSI drives, and FireWire among other things. They had some trouble with data-bus-of-the-month syndrome but every one of them was more capable than the AT bus and most were better than the fake Microchannel Architecture of the PS2s.

There were also networked laser printers, and serious font support and screen rendering with Postscript for the printers. In general Apple adopted the more sophisticated and technically excellent options well ahead of the PC world.

 

While PC HW designers were still messing with RS-232 serial and Centronics parallel interfaces, Apple Macintosh introduced the Apple Desktop Bus in 1986 which eventually paved the way for USB in 1995.

You remind me, as well, that although the hegemony of the PC platform did have the positive consequence of creating a common platform for adoption, and in that way definitely advanced the use of desktop computing if not the technology itself—there was another huge problem that caused a years-long legacy we are mostly finally free of: redirector-based network file services.

Because MS DOS and initially, Windows which sat on top of it, had no inherent support for network file services, when the programmers at Novell first conceived of Netware they decided the “easy” thing would be to just hook DOS INT 21 and handle file access requests for network drives as if they were local. Simple.

But, it wasn’t. It turned out since there was never any idea in DOS that file access requests would have to be centrally handled, the OS—and many of the programs that ran on it—didn’t only use INT 21. This lead to all sorts of incompatibilities and messes, and became its own legacy requiring more advanced ideas about networking to accommodate the ill-conceived redirector idea.

The network stack, too, was a bolt-on when it was finally bolted on to DOS/Windows. In the end, I do credit MS for helping to make the adoption of networking and network file services practical and acceptable. In particular, the introduction of the very poorly implemented “Windows for Workgroups“ version 3.1, which shipped in a box with two 10base2 cards, a pair of tees, a cable, and a screwdriver sporting the WfW logo. I still have one.

During the introduction I was working at the biggest Windows magazine of the time as the networking columnist and so we had a visit from the WfW product manager to give us the news ahead of release. Of course it was exciting to see MS adding networking into Windows so it wasn’t a patch—but WfW, particularly the .1 version, left much to be desired.

I told the PM, “this is great except for two things: there is no security and no support for ODI network drivers”. At the time there were two predominant network driver stack standards: ODI and NDIS. MS had chosen NDIS. There was nothing wrong with NDIS but Netware used ODI and most businesses used Netware.

There were more network nodes using NDIS, so that gave the appearance of it being the majority standard. But there were many times more sites using ODI because NDIS was the stack used by Banyan Vines (in many ways a far superior and more advanced product than Netware but at that time uninterested in “small” installation, which attitude changed far too late).

Vines sites had thousands of nodes. It was used by government agencies and very large, competent organizations. In particular, Vines had StreetTalk a genuine directory service. Netware had nothing like it, and while it eventually got NDS (Netware Directory Service) it was all catchup to StreetTalk which Banyan eventually tried to spin off and sell as a separate product supporting Netware and Microsoft NT with limited success.

But it was the same story, flawed as it was Netware had a dominant position, and it allowed the adoption of networking by focusing the efforts of the entire LAN ecosystem on a shared platform. And that platform used ODI drivers.

The product manager listened to my complaints and said “oh, we’ve asked our big customers about these things and they are fine with them”. Well, of course, because they weren’t going to adopt the crappy thing! So Windows for Workgroups 3.1 was released and it had excellent early adoption by very small businesses who didn’t yet have any network installed.

I called the product manager for Lantastic, arguably the best peer-to-peer networking add-on for DOS and WIndows of the day. It wasn’t a NOS (Network Operating System), there was no centralized server. It just enabled sharing among the peers in a small enterprise and did it pretty well. It was the most mature option, and certainly high on my recommendation list when it was called for.

I asked him what he thought about WfW and what the going-forward strategy of Lantastic would be. I had learned that the way a company succeeded in the Microsoft ecosystem was to constantly shift in a way that made their product a value-add to the MS offerings–not by competing with them. So far, Lantastic had been doing that, but I am not sure that was clear to them.

I hadn’t said it in so many words, but my question was based on the (obvious to me) idea that Lanstastic‘s current strategy had just become a dead end. WfW made their product, as it was currently positioned and imagined by them, redundant. They were currently like a car that had been traveling at a decent speed but suddenly lost its engine. It wouldn’t stop instantly since they weren’t putting on the brakes but the idea it was somehow going to be able to keep going was clearly wrong.

His response was “WfW is crap, our product is much better!”. I told him I certainly agreed with him and there was no doubt they had something much better (at the time) but I was asking about how they planned to compete against the product in a market where you can “get networking free” and the overwhelming majority of customers couldn’t tell their product was superior and if it was explained would shrug and say, “why do I need that?”.

And, of course, they did need it, and would find out for experience but purchase decisions are made before experience, being the source of it. His response was “we have a much better product, we will be able to sell it because it’s better” (he was pretty agitated, because even if he didn’t want to face it, he knew he had a huge problem—literally an existential crisis). I was getting nowhere so I thanked him and hung up.

Of course what I predicted came to pass. Lantastic didn’t die overnight but is lost momentum until it jut didn’t matter any more . I don’t think this was a necessary outcome. They were smart and experienced people who knew what the gaps in WfW were and had technology to fill them. Had they adopted a value-add strategy they might be around selling products today, who knows?

But, WfW with no security and no support of the actual dominant driver stack shipped with its ethernet cards, tees, terminators, cable, and screwdriver. And people bought a lot of those kits. And, only a couple of months later, WfW 3.11 shipped with, wait for it… security options and ODI driver support.

I learned something about Microsoft from this. Almost certainly their internal roadmap had this laid out. What they were selling wasn’t network-enabled Windows, that was just a necessary thing to sell… network cards. Yes, WfW 3.1 was actually about selling the ethernet adapters. And what an amazing integrated strategy it was.

Previously, at Comdex in 1990, Bill Gates had given a keynote address called “Information at Your Fingertips”. It talked about the adoption of networking, the adoption of email, the document-centric world we currently take for granted (at the time, the new and unreleased “OLE”, Object Linking and Embedding, and even tablet and pen computing”. It was quite far reaching.

I was there as a member of the press at the time and my colleagues who were quite seasoned and informed computer journalists and consultants were more than skeptical. The idea, for example, that there would be interoperating email that allowed one organization to email another seamlessly, on a schedule of a few years, was absolutely absurd to them.

Given what they knew at the time, and how things were currently arranged¹, they were right in saying that it look more like decades than years before email between businesses was a thing, or, failing that even intra-organization email for small businesses which was perceived as having little or no utility.

But, a careful analysis of Gates’ speech, particularly with add of hindsight, shows a very solid understanding of how email was one of the enabling technologies of the Information at Your Fingertips vision—and it really was a vision. It was much more prescient, clever, and global than anyone there could give it credit for being.

As an aside, Gates specifically praised Apple’s introduction of MacOS as a very important milestone, a GUI-based OS by a major computer company. Gates has always admired Apple, and both he and Jobs visited PARC and saw Xerox innovation in UI, network, and printer technology.​

​

Gates rescued Apple at one point with a large, personal investment in the company. Microsoft made it possible for companies to adopt OS X by porting Office to it—something they didn’t have to do and the absence of which would have made the success of OS X much less likely if not impossible. So this “Microsoft vs. Apple” stuff wasn’t shared at Microsoft, nor Apple—even with Jobs’ famous criticism of Windows.​

But, I wasn’t as skeptical as my colleagues. Perhaps that was naïveté, or maybe not since I had chosen networking as my focus and I already knew about ARPANet and SMTP-based interoperating email. Their focus was on the fractured private e-mail network software market where there was no standard and competition meant interoperability seemed against th ebest interests of the various vendors.

Gates repeated the same theme for his Comdex keynotes for years. Each time, he was able to show how the vision had advanced, and how things were moving in the direction of pervasive network access to data and document-centric systems which we do have today.

And that’s the thing, I realized that Microsoft’s product introductions, and development choices, which looked chaotic on the ground, were actually very orderly seen from the air. There was a real strategy at work, and it was a global one. That’s why, although MS knew very well that WfW had huge gaps, they released it—it was the “driver” for the network cards the really wanted to sell.

And it worked, WfW meant that small businesses, the majority of computing seats, were getting network connections for the first time. This critical enabling technology had to be in place for anything else to work, and now it was. And, it was like “wetting the sponge”². Once the MS adapters were being adopted, it made a market for others and people started to put network adapters in all of their machines but not buy the hardware from Microsoft because they could find it cheaper.

A related example: email was also a critical enabling technology in the IaYF strategy. So Microsoft bought a really crappy but ready to ship email package called Network Courier from a small company in Seattle. It was bad. I hated it. But, people bought it and while they abandoned it as soon as they realized things could be better, they had become reliant on email and so it had worked.

So, bottom line, Microsoft and their partners (as in the alliance mentioned by @MrChips) both stunted and advanced desktop computing. A real vision from Gates and Microsoft gave us network connectivity before it could have been expected, and a focus on the IaYF strategy allowed the evolution of desktop computing to take a good direction while MS hegemony may well have been a necessary evil while there was still no standards-based interoperability.

I am grateful to Bill Gates for the good things his persistent pursuit of IaYF brought and while I often bemoaned the practical result of the chaotic appearance of MS product choices, in retrospect more than at the time, I can see it wasn’t chaotic it was just “the next possible” while keeping an eye on a much bigger picture.

—
1. Keep in mind that ARPANet wasn’t a thing available to the general public at the time. To access it you needed to have some relationship to a large defense contractor, scientific research organization, a university, or the DoD. Or, you could, as I did get an MCIMail account which let you send and recieve email using SMTP through their service as well as some other cool things. But I had an email address, on the (eventually to be “Internet”) a rarity outside the groups mentioned above.

2. If you pour water on a dry sponge it runs right off. There is a huge potential for absorbing it but it doesn’t penetrate. If you put a few drops on the sponge and wait, it will be absorbed and provide a path for the rest of the water into the sponge. Pouring water onto a wet sponge has a very different effect, hence “wetting the sponge” as a metaphor for opening up a potential to absorb something.

 

There is one place that Apple shined in the early days of computing - networking. I some original Macs and Mac Ci and Si and an Apple a network with an Apple laser printer using AppleTalk - initially launched in the mid-late 1980s

Security allowed the owner to set files as shareable and can be set up with workgroups to assign specific teams access. No server needed, just the file shared on the individual desktop units. Unfortunately, the Apple OS didn't allow a multiuser environment or login password protection at the time so security was only as good as the lock on an office door.

Apple could have had a huge contract for administration at government labs but they wouldn't comply with some of the hurdles as a supplier to the US government for large contracts. It is also possible that the contract was way more than their capacity. A DARPA and National Lab Acquisition team came to our lab, interviewed us and got a demo of laser printer quality and office networking. They wanted to get rid of all the typewriters and install an Apple Mac on every admin's desk. it didn't really happen for another 7 years - with Windows PCs.