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  #31  
Old November 7th 18, 06:36 PM posted to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10
SilverSlimer[_2_]
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Default No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sendsit to Chinese server

On 2018-11-07 11:05 a.m., nospam wrote:
In article , Wolf K
wrote:

microsoft windows was mostly a copy of classic mac os,


IOW, mac os was really DOS? There's something wrong with your memory of
those far off days. Or else your confusing the user interface with the
OS. mac OS


i didn't say macos was dos. i said microsoft copied macos to create
windows.

not amiga os,
and even that took a decade for windows to be even somewhat useful,
with windows '95.


Windows was DOS with a pre-built menu system plus a few simple to use
settings (such as customising the menus for different users). It was
essentially useless until 3.x.


win 3.x was only slightly better than earlier versions. as i said,
windows '95 was when it was actually usable.


Not true, essentially since many companies at the time used Windows 3.11
for their businesses and some still use it to this day.

To control user access, you had to go
into DOS. But that was so limited in the early versions of DOS that any
attempt to limit access could be over-ridden during boot, something our
students found out almost immediately. From Win95 one, user access was
better controlled, but still easy to work around.

Windows NT was the first non-DOS version. It was a derivative of OS/2,
whose first version MS developed for IBM. Up to Windows 2000 IIRC, a
system folder was labelled OS/2


so far, so good.

There's more. FWIW, I preferred DOS over Windows, and OS/2 over both.
I liked Mac OS, but didn't like Apple's unwillingness to permit device
customisation beyond what they decided was acceptable. A DOS machine,
and hence Windows, was almost infinitely customisable.


complete nonsense.

apple did not stop *anyone* from customizing anything, and in fact, mac
os was designed to be tweaked and modified in all sorts of ways, with
full documentation as to how to do it.

because of that, a whole category of mac software and hardware existed,
doing things not possible on dos or windows.


That must be why Steve Jobs specifically stated that he wanted the Mac
to have proprietary ports, no internal expansion slots and an operating
system which looked the same no matter whose machine you were using. In
other words, that must be why Jobs did the exact opposite of what
Wozniak did with the Apple ][ whereupon he insisted on forcing people to
upgrade a whole computer to get one or two additional functions.

As was
Commodore's OS, but that's another story.


actually, not as much, but the key problem was it had very little
software available compared to mac, dos and windows. software
developers were not interested.


In comparison, sure. THAT is a correct statement especially the further
users got into the lifespan of a Commodore Amiga machine. However, fewer
titles does not translate into a machine being completely ignored by the
public or developers either.

--
SilverSlimer
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Minds: @silverslimer
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  #32  
Old November 7th 18, 06:41 PM posted to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10
SilverSlimer[_2_]
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Default No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sendsit to Chinese server

On 2018-11-07 11:51 a.m., Wolf K wrote:
On 2018-11-07 10:13, nospam wrote:
microsoft windows was mostly a copy of classic mac os,


IOW, mac os was really DOS? There's something wrong with your memory of
those far off days. Or else your confusing the user interface with the
OS. mac OS


He clearly meant the interface, but the reality is that Windows before
95 was not a copy of the Mac at all. Windows 1 and 2 went in a different
direction and 3, with its Program Manager, would be unrecognizable to a
Mac user. 95 was similar insofar as it used a Recycle Bin similar to the
Mac's trash can. However, Microsoft used psychological evaluations to
create the most innovative change to the GUI in the Start button, a
feature that practically every other GUI copied, so it cannot be seen as
a Mac close especially since the Mac didn't have that feature at all.
Finding programs, on a Mac, was suddenly much harder than it was in Windows.

snip

--
SilverSlimer
Proud recipient of special entitlements and fierce adversary of equal rights
Minds: @silverslimer
  #33  
Old November 7th 18, 07:41 PM posted to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10
chrisv
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Default No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sends it to Chinese server

nospam wrote:

win 3.x was only slightly better than dos


But it ran the new GUI-based software, which is what mattered. 95
being "better" didn't matter that much.

--
'Actually printing and audio do not "just work" in Linux, It can be a
nightmare.' - "True Linux advocate" Hadron Quark
  #34  
Old November 7th 18, 07:47 PM posted to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10
Snit[_2_]
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Default No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sendsit to Chinese server

On 11/7/18 10:41 AM, SilverSlimer wrote:
On 2018-11-07 11:51 a.m., Wolf K wrote:
On 2018-11-07 10:13, nospam wrote:
microsoft windows was mostly a copy of classic mac os,


IOW, mac os was really DOS? There's something wrong with your memory
of those far off days. Or else your confusing the user interface with
the OS. mac OS


He clearly meant the interface, but the reality is that Windows before
95 was not a copy of the Mac at all.


Of course it was. The whole idea of what a window was changed for
Windows 95 to become very much what it was on the Mac.

Windows 1 and 2 went in a different
direction and 3, with its Program Manager, would be unrecognizable to a
Mac user. 95 was similar insofar as it used a Recycle Bin similar to the
Mac's trash can. However, Microsoft used psychological evaluations to
create the most innovative change to the GUI in the Start button, a
feature that practically every other GUI copied, so it cannot be seen as
a Mac close especially since the Mac didn't have that feature at all.


The Start button was not copied from the Mac, sure.

Finding programs, on a Mac, was suddenly much harder than it was in
Windows.


At the time most people did not have many apps, but sure, there is truth
to what you say.


--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They
cannot use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel
somehow superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

https://youtu.be/H4NW-Cqh308
  #35  
Old November 7th 18, 07:58 PM posted to comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.os2.ecomstation
John Varela
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Posts: 21
Default No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sends it to Chinese server

On Tue, 6 Nov 2018 17:51:37 UTC, SilverSlimer
wrote:

On 2018-11-06 11:34 a.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

My exposure to OS/2 was fairly limited as I only used it on shoddy
hardware and didn't do much with it but Peter Köhlmann around here in
comp.os.linux.advocacy seems to have very fond memories of it despite its
marketplace failure.

OS/2 ⤲ half an operating system?

Its name derives from the PS/2 and was meant to suggest that it would
work best on PS/2 devices which, I assume, IBM expected to have dominate
the computer space.

Looking back, the PS/2, as sturdy as it was, could not have dominated a
space in which computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST could do more
for a lot less money.


no they couldn't. those were toys.


1) Could you write essays and do spreadsheets on the Amiga or the Atari ST?
2) Could you edit graphics and make banners?
3) Could you play games in addition to doing useful work?

They might have served as a console to many people, but both computers
could still be as useful as a PS/2 was.

what killed it was that microsoft forced windows everywhere, often
illegally.


Windows was a non-factor when the PS/2 line was killed off. The reverse
engineering of the BIOS and the creation of the compatible PC did a lot
more than Windows could ever hope to do. The introduction of EISA as an
answer to MCA was pretty much the last nail in the coffin of the PS/2 if
not OS/2. What you're suggesting is only somewhat true of OS/2 but you
can't deny that Windows, while technically worse than OS/2, was more
than enough for regular users and often a much more interesting product.
For crying out loud, OS/2 banked on its Windows 3.1 compatibility to
sell copies and had little to no software written directly for it. Why
would you need OS/2 to run Windows 3.1 when you can just install Windows
3.1?


The reason I switched from DOS to OS/2 was that I needed access to
both a TCP/IP LAN and to Netware. I could do that with DOS by
swapping config.syses and autoexec.bats and rebooting but that was a
pain. OS/2 as early as v. 1 or 2 (I forget which) could run both
protocols simultaneously. I put OS/2 on my home computer(s) and
stayed with it until 2006, when I got an iMac. I am running OS/2
right now in a VM, because ProNews/2 is still my favorite news
reader.

--
John Varela
  #36  
Old November 7th 18, 09:51 PM posted to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10
Snit[_2_]
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Posts: 2,027
Default No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sendsit to Chinese server

On 11/7/18 12:19 PM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2018-11-07 11:05, nospam wrote:
In article , Wolf K
wrote:

microsoft windows was mostly a copy of classic mac os,

IOW, mac os was really DOS? There's something wrong with your memory of
those far off days. Or else your confusing the user interface with the
OS. mac OS


i didn't say macos was dos. i said microsoft copied macos to create
windows.


Nah, they both copied Xerox. And it was the GUI they copied, not the OS.


Nope. Apple did copy Xerox some but they PAID to do so. And they then
made a LOT of modifications to the GUI. Here are just some:

* Double clicking
* Trash can (or the like)
* Graying out inactive items
* Full file system in GUI (as icons)
* GUI based hierarchical folder structure
* Drag and drop
* meta-data associations with icons
* self-redrawing windows (and double buffering)
* Checkmarks next to menu items
* Keyboard shortcuts
* X to close a window (NeXT, really)

....

--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They
cannot use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel
somehow superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

https://youtu.be/H4NW-Cqh308
  #37  
Old November 7th 18, 11:46 PM posted to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10
SilverSlimer[_2_]
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Posts: 120
Default No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sendsit to Chinese server

On 2018-11-07 12:11 p.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

Windows was DOS with a pre-built menu system plus a few simple to use
settings (such as customising the menus for different users). It was
essentially useless until 3.x.

win 3.x was only slightly better than earlier versions. as i said,
windows '95 was when it was actually usable.


Not true, essentially since many companies at the time used Windows 3.11
for their businesses and some still use it to this day.


win 3.x was only slightly better than dos. it wasn't until win '95 when
windows took off because only then was it functionally better than what
existed before.

put another way, win '95 caught up to where mac os was a decade earlier.

microsoft word and excel were on a mac long before they were on windows.


True about the first part, but Windows 95 was actually a much better
operating system than the Mac OS of the time so they didn't catch up as
much as they improved upon Apple's archaic design.

There's more. FWIW, I preferred DOS over Windows, and OS/2 over both.
I liked Mac OS, but didn't like Apple's unwillingness to permit device
customisation beyond what they decided was acceptable. A DOS machine,
and hence Windows, was almost infinitely customisable.

complete nonsense.

apple did not stop *anyone* from customizing anything, and in fact, mac
os was designed to be tweaked and modified in all sorts of ways, with
full documentation as to how to do it.

because of that, a whole category of mac software and hardware existed,
doing things not possible on dos or windows.


That must be why Steve Jobs specifically stated that he wanted the Mac
to have proprietary ports, no internal expansion slots and an operating
system which looked the same no matter whose machine you were using. In
other words, that must be why Jobs did the exact opposite of what
Wozniak did with the Apple ][ whereupon he insisted on forcing people to
upgrade a whole computer to get one or two additional functions.


he didn't say that, the ports weren't proprietary, and nobody had to
upgrade a whole computer to get additional functions.


The original Mac line was very much proprietary. Read the line about the
Macintosh 128k at Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K#Peripherals

Absolutely none of what the Macintosh included as ports was standard and
that's one of the many reasons you couldn't just buy any printer and had
to rely on whatever Apply would ship.

in fact, the pinouts of the ports were documented in inside macintosh,
a book available in any bookstore, along with full documentation of mac
os. *anyone* could buy it, not just developers. the information was not
secret.

mac os was *very* customizable. anyone who claims otherwise doesn't
know what they're talking about, regurgitating the old myths.


You have a very bizarre idea of what proprietary means. It's not closed,
it's proprietary meaning that it belongs to Apple and is not shared by
other companies. Proprietary comes from the French word "propriété"
meaning that it has an owner which, in this case, is Apple. In the same
way that the Macintosh had proprietary connectors, so did the PCjr and
the PS/2 in the MCA internal expansion port.

As was
Commodore's OS, but that's another story.

actually, not as much, but the key problem was it had very little
software available compared to mac, dos and windows. software
developers were not interested.


In comparison, sure. THAT is a correct statement especially the further
users got into the lifespan of a Commodore Amiga machine. However, fewer
titles does not translate into a machine being completely ignored by the
public or developers either.


it was mostly ignored. not zero, but close enough.


That's a much fairer assessment.

--
SilverSlimer
Proud recipient of special entitlements and fierce adversary of equal rights
Minds: @silverslimer
  #38  
Old November 7th 18, 11:55 PM posted to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10
SilverSlimer[_2_]
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Default No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sendsit to Chinese server

On 2018-11-07 12:11 p.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

Looking back, the PS/2, as sturdy as it was, could not have dominated a
space in which computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST could do more
for a lot less money.

no they couldn't. those were toys.

The Amiga was another machine ahead of its time.

no it wasn't. the amiga was in every way a toy. it had less software
support than the mac did and what it did have was not professional
quality, almost no stores sold it because it wasn't compelling and it
crashed if you looked at it wrong.

A whole bunch of lies and it's trivial to verify nowadays.

nothing about it is a lie.


I've done enough research about the Amiga to know that your statement
was complete garbage.


research != experience. i used mac, pc, amiga and atari back then and
ended up writing software for the first two. the latter two were toys.


That is _your_ experience, not everyone's.

The Amiga was first released as a production tool despite the fact that
it was first envisioned and became somewhat of a console. Look at the
Amiga 1000 and you'll know that it looked like and was very much a
production computer. That the Amiga 500 was eventually released and
marketed in the same fashion as the Commodore 500 (and available on
store shelves _everywhere_ despite what you claim) does not change that
it was produced to be a workstation and simply became a console because
that's what Commodore knew how to sell.

complete nonsense.

major software developers ignored the amiga. businesses definitely
ignored it. very, very few computer stores sold it. even the mac had
far more traction than the amiga ever did. it was a toy.


Software developers did not ignore it and the plethora of games shows
that it was very popular for a long time.


games = toy. thanks for the confirmation.


Your statement was that developers ignored it (it's still quoted). The
presence of games for the platform means that it was in fact NOT ignored.

The issue with it, just like
the Atari ST, is that piracy was unbelievably high and THAT discouraged
developers from _continuing_ to produce software for it.


piracy existed on all platforms and was no more a deterrent on amiga &
atari than anything else.

in fact, there was *more* piracy in raw numbers on mac and pc because
there were far more users to pirate stuff.

businesses was where the money was, and very, very few businesses
pirated software. they had too much to risk by doing so.


Piracy was what publishers blamed for the lack of software available for
the Atari ST. Apparently, despite the fact that more software was
available for the PC and the Mac, piracy was so easy on the Atari ST and
the number of users participating in the practise so high that it
discouraged anyone from developing for the ST. However, they did write
software for it and EVENTUALLY stopped. The reason developers didn't
stop writing software for the PC and the Mac is that even though people
pirated software, the number of users in general and the ratio of people
_not_ pirating was high enough for development to be profitable.

microsoft windows was mostly a copy of classic mac os, not amiga os,
and even that took a decade for windows to be even somewhat useful,
with windows '95.


Considering how many of us wrote essays, produced spreadsheets and first
browsed the web through Windows 3.1, I wouldn't say that the operating
system was useless before 95 emerged.


people did that with dos.

the point is that win3.1 was only marginally more capable than dos.


It could go onto the Internet (which wasn't possible with DOS at the
time), allowed you to use more than one program at a time and made the
mouse peripheral useful for the first time. I'll accept the "marginally
more capable" assessment though I don't believe it to be entirely accurate.

hobbyists liked the amiga because it was cheap and had some games.
otherwise, it was nothing special. the amusement of the bouncing ball
demo wore off very, very quickly, as in minutes.


They liked the Amiga because it did more than the PC at a lower price
and had better specifications throughout.


except that it didn't. had that been true, businesses would have bought
amiga in droves and saved money in the process.

the reality is that they didn't, because the amiga *didn't* do more
than the pc.

it did less, much less, largely due to a lack of quality software, and
what it did do was not particularly good.


Everyone who looked back at that period as well as the Amiga has
conceded that a lack of PC compatibility is what doomed the Amiga, not a
lack of capability. While you _could_ use PC documents on the Amiga, the
software was different and the PC format too strong for people to
consider Amiga-based workarounds when they could just as easily buy a
similar machine for the home as what they used at work. The PC wasn't
better than the Amiga or the Atari ST; it was merely more familiar to
anyone who used a computer at work.

It wasn't perfect and much of
that was Commodore's fault but some people managed to keep using their
Amiga well into the late 90s because it COULD do everything that they
wanted to do including Internet-related tasks.


so could macs and pcs, with significant software and hardware support
the amiga did not have.


Well, after 1994, it's clear that the Amiga couldn't compete since
Commodore went bankrupt. What I'm saying is that the original 1985 Amiga
1000 or 1987 Amiga 500 could do on those original machines what Macs and
PCs of _later_ years could accomplish. Of course a PC or Mac from 1994
could go on the net, but could one from 1985 or 1987 do so?

I can't say good things about
the operating system since I don't know it that well but it was indeed
ahead of its time since it could multitask AND the Amiga could run Mac
software better than Macs themselves if you purchased the software to do
so.

absolutely false. the amiga wasn't ahead of anything.

many other systems could multitask, including the mac, plus the mac
emulator on the amiga was a complete joke. it ran a few things but not
particularly well and nowhere near what an actual mac could do.


A complete lie. Mac OS before OS X lacked pre-emptive multitasking. It
had cooperative multitasking which was complete garbage compared to what
the Amiga was doing.


false. classic mac os had limited preemptive multitasking as well as
cooperative multitasking, the latter of which is not garbage. it's
simply a different model, with advantages and disadvantages. app
developers could choose whichever worked best for a given product.

Also, here's an Amiga running Mac software.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jph0gxzL3UI In this case, it's an
upgraded machine but those kinds of upgrades existed even at the time.
Clearly, it would have been slower than what the video shows in 1993 or
1987, but even THEN, it ran the software faster than a stock Mac with
full compatibility.


it was not faster. i know the fanbois liked to claim that it was, using
contrived demos, but that was an alternate reality in which they lived.
very few apps worked properly with the compatibility card.

In other words, you're full of crap.


nope.


Since I can't test it myself, I'm not going to challenge your assessment
further. However, they have a video to prove their point whereas you
only have words so you can imagine which, to me, is more credible.

A class in our sister
school made a great little video illustrating the hiker's mantra to
"Leave no trace (in the bush)", all using bundled/built-in software. the
Amiga could play a video in the background while you working in the
foreground, though why you would that distraction was never
satisfactorily explained. One of several machines whose innovations we
now take for granted on all three major platforms.

nothing it did was innovative, one of many reasons why it failed.

It failed because Commodore didn't know what to do with it since
Tramiel, the real genius, left the company. They also dragged their feet
in improving the product which is why the Amiga 600, 500+ and 1200 were
barely any better than the original product despite being released some
8 years later.

it failed because it was a toy.


It failed because people didn't understand what it was (a game console
or a computer) and neither did Commodore. Your falsification of history
is unwelcome.


nope. it failed because it was nowhere as good as macs and pcs, it had
very little software and hardware support, with too few customers to
keep it viable. software and hardware developers mostly ignored it, and
without key titles and expansion cards, businesses also ignored it.
simple as that.


If you say so.

--
SilverSlimer
Proud recipient of special entitlements and fierce adversary of equal rights
Minds: @silverslimer
  #39  
Old November 8th 18, 12:04 AM posted to comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.os2.ecomstation
SilverSlimer[_2_]
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Posts: 120
Default No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sendsit to Chinese server

On 2018-11-07 1:58 p.m., John Varela wrote:
On Tue, 6 Nov 2018 17:51:37 UTC, SilverSlimer
wrote:

On 2018-11-06 11:34 a.m., nospam wrote:
In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

My exposure to OS/2 was fairly limited as I only used it on shoddy
hardware and didn't do much with it but Peter Köhlmann around here in
comp.os.linux.advocacy seems to have very fond memories of it despite its
marketplace failure.

OS/2 ⤲ half an operating system?

Its name derives from the PS/2 and was meant to suggest that it would
work best on PS/2 devices which, I assume, IBM expected to have dominate
the computer space.

Looking back, the PS/2, as sturdy as it was, could not have dominated a
space in which computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST could do more
for a lot less money.

no they couldn't. those were toys.


1) Could you write essays and do spreadsheets on the Amiga or the Atari ST?
2) Could you edit graphics and make banners?
3) Could you play games in addition to doing useful work?

They might have served as a console to many people, but both computers
could still be as useful as a PS/2 was.

what killed it was that microsoft forced windows everywhere, often
illegally.


Windows was a non-factor when the PS/2 line was killed off. The reverse
engineering of the BIOS and the creation of the compatible PC did a lot
more than Windows could ever hope to do. The introduction of EISA as an
answer to MCA was pretty much the last nail in the coffin of the PS/2 if
not OS/2. What you're suggesting is only somewhat true of OS/2 but you
can't deny that Windows, while technically worse than OS/2, was more
than enough for regular users and often a much more interesting product.
For crying out loud, OS/2 banked on its Windows 3.1 compatibility to
sell copies and had little to no software written directly for it. Why
would you need OS/2 to run Windows 3.1 when you can just install Windows
3.1?


The reason I switched from DOS to OS/2 was that I needed access to
both a TCP/IP LAN and to Netware. I could do that with DOS by
swapping config.syses and autoexec.bats and rebooting but that was a
pain. OS/2 as early as v. 1 or 2 (I forget which) could run both
protocols simultaneously. I put OS/2 on my home computer(s) and
stayed with it until 2006, when I got an iMac. I am running OS/2
right now in a VM, because ProNews/2 is still my favorite news
reader.


I never had the chance to use OS/2 for any significant length of time
since my hardware - when OS/2 was still competing - wasn't good enough
to run it and because the system itself seemed fairly counterintuitive
to me. Add the fact that software was scarce and there truly was little
reason to use it, IMO. My experience with IBM itself, at the time, was
also fairly negative so I'm not convinced that the PC platform would
have been better off had it won the race over Windows either.


--
SilverSlimer
Proud recipient of special entitlements and fierce adversary of equal rights
Minds: @silverslimer
  #40  
Old November 8th 18, 02:13 AM posted to comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.os2.ecomstation
Leonard Blaisdell
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Default No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sends it to Chinese server

In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

I never had the chance to use OS/2 for any significant length of time
since my hardware - when OS/2 was still competing - wasn't good enough
to run it and because the system itself seemed fairly counterintuitive
to me. Add the fact that software was scarce and there truly was little
reason to use it, IMO. My experience with IBM itself, at the time, was
also fairly negative so I'm not convinced that the PC platform would
have been better off had it won the race over Windows either.


I'm truly enjoying this afc flashback thread. The subject is a little
more modern and crossposted, but that's OK.

leo
  #41  
Old November 8th 18, 05:33 AM posted to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10
nospam
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Posts: 4,718
Default No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sends it to Chinese server

In article , Wolf K
wrote:

microsoft windows was mostly a copy of classic mac os,

IOW, mac os was really DOS? There's something wrong with your memory of
those far off days. Or else your confusing the user interface with the
OS. mac OS


i didn't say macos was dos. i said microsoft copied macos to create
windows.


Nah, they both copied Xerox. And it was the GUI they copied, not the OS.


not quite. apple and xerox had a financial agreement allowing for apple
to use xerox's ideas and build upon them.

apple added significant ideas from what xerox had. classic mac os was
*not* a direct copy, and the difference between them is significant.



There's more. FWIW, I preferred DOS over Windows, and OS/2 over both.
I liked Mac OS, but didn't like Apple's unwillingness to permit device
customisation beyond what they decided was acceptable. A DOS machine,
and hence Windows, was almost infinitely customisable.


complete nonsense.

apple did not stop *anyone* from customizing anything, and in fact, mac
os was designed to be tweaked and modified in all sorts of ways, with
full documentation as to how to do it.

because of that, a whole category of mac software and hardware existed,
doing things not possible on dos or windows.


OK, my error. FTR, DOS was fully documented, too: I spent a lot of time
learning DOS (have of course forgotten 90% or more of it) and batch
files and such. Plus all the undocumented stuff that fellow geeks
discovered.


there was dos documentation, but it wasn't available at the local
bookstore in a book published by microsoft. many third party authors
wrote about it, some better than others.

However, Apple very quickly built a walled garden, for good reasons, at
the time when MS was strong-arming PC makers into selling Windows
machines, giving away API data, and encouraging everybody and his goat
to write for Windows.


absolutely wrong. apple never built a walled garden. period.

i don't know why, but these myths never seem to die.

classic mac os was *extremely* customizable, so much so that the entire
os could be patched out. apple not only didn't stop developers from
patching the os, but there was extensive documentation how, including
safe practices to minimize problems. there was also extensive
documentation on hardware cards as well.

Apple's design philosophy diverged from the then
prevailing attitudes. Steve Jobs realised that a computer is an
appliance, and set out to design the most reliable and easy to use
appliance possible. He also realised that for a lot of people computers
were geeky weirdness, so he set out to make it both a useful and very
cool appliance, one that you didn't have to understand in order to use.
Just like a car.


that part is true.

That was his innovation. [1] Technologically, Apple
innovated hardly at all.


that part is absolutely false.

Ever since, Apple's competitors tried to catch up, and have succeeded in
doing so.


it took a decade for microsoft to catch up with windows 95.

currently, apple's competitors are again trying to catch up, microsoft
in particular. windows phone was a complete failure and surface is
trying to copy the ipad and not doing very well at it.

Since Steve's death, Apple's ability to innovate design and
function has slowed, so that current smartphones equal or exceed the
iPhone's capabilities,


nonsense.

and the high end tablet has become a new form
factor for the PC.


yep, mobile is the future, not just apple.

Fromm what I've seen/read of the latest iPad, it's
finally catching up to that level.


then you haven't read much.

As was
Commodore's OS, but that's another story.


actually, not as much, but the key problem was it had very little
software available compared to mac, dos and windows. software
developers were not interested.


I think it was because Commodore didn't understand that a computer isn't
just the hardware. Unlike Apple and the DOS machine makers, they sold a
bare machine, with a few pointers to where usable software could be
acquired. They also for too long neglected both in-house and supported
3rd party software development. By the time they realised that a
personal computer is an appliance, it was too late.


another problem was there was very little developer support.

apple and microsoft had developer programs, conferences, trade shows
and quite a bit more.

That's how I see it, anyhow.


unfortunately, some of what you see is incorrect.

[1] My brother has been an Apple user since Apple II. He never cared to
know how the machine worked, he just wanted an easy to use way of
cataloguing his stamp collection. He 's used Filemaker for years.


there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

one need not be a mechanical engineer to drive a car.
  #42  
Old November 8th 18, 05:33 AM posted to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10
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Posts: 4,718
Default No. 1 paid utility in Mac App Store steals browser history, sends it to Chinese server

In article , Snit
wrote:

microsoft windows was mostly a copy of classic mac os,

IOW, mac os was really DOS? There's something wrong with your memory of
those far off days. Or else your confusing the user interface with the
OS. mac OS

i didn't say macos was dos. i said microsoft copied macos to create
windows.


Nah, they both copied Xerox. And it was the GUI they copied, not the OS.


Nope. Apple did copy Xerox some but they PAID to do so. And they then
made a LOT of modifications to the GUI. Here are just some:

* Double clicking
* Trash can (or the like)
* Graying out inactive items
* Full file system in GUI (as icons)
* GUI based hierarchical folder structure
* Drag and drop
* meta-data associations with icons
* self-redrawing windows (and double buffering)
* Checkmarks next to menu items
* Keyboard shortcuts
* X to close a window (NeXT, really)


that's a good list, however, there was no 'x' to close a window in
macos. that came later with nextstep, which microsoft also copied.

one key difference not listed was arbitrary regions, allowing for
overlapping windows. xerox thought it was too difficult to do. bill
atkinson thought xerox actually had done it, so he went off and did it,
not realizing it hadn't been done. xerox was stunned when they saw mac
os with regions. he tells the story better than i do.
  #43  
Old November 8th 18, 05:33 AM posted to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10
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In article , Wolf K
wrote:

microsoft word and excel were on a mac long before they were on windows.

[...]

https://www.reference.com/technology...34eb9f5980d955


that refers to the dos version of word. read what i wrote. i did not
mention dos.

the dos version of word was very primitive in comparison to word on the
mac and later windows, greatly limited by dos. it did not do wysiwyg
and was at its core, a dos app with a mouse to perform dos commands.

http://toastytech.com/guis/word115load.png

the mac version of microsoft word was a complete rewrite from scratch,
using mac toolbox apis and with full wysiwyg, as were all apps on a
mac.

excel never was on dos. multiplan was, but it was not as capable.

it was several years later when microsoft office appeared on windows.
  #44  
Old November 8th 18, 05:33 AM posted to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10
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In article , Wolf K
wrote:

games = toy. thanks for the confirmation.


Interesting example of snobbery. You seem to suffer from Presbyterian
hangover syndrome. You know: "work good, play bad". ;-)


it's not snobbery in the least.

As games became increasingly graphics intensive, that drove the
development of the graphics subsystem, ie, the video and the GPU. It's
because of the gamers that we have fast, high-resolution displays. It's
because of the gamers the we have fast CPUs. BTW, GPUs have been used
for computationally intensive tasks such as weather modelling.


not in the mid-1980s, it didn't.

btw, apple had a video card that implemented quickdraw, the graphics
imaging model for macos, on the video card itself using an amd risc
cpu, an early form of gpu acceleration, and because of the way mac os
was designed, apps didn't need to do much, if anything, to support it.
  #45  
Old November 8th 18, 05:33 AM posted to comp.sys.mac.system,comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-10
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In article , SilverSlimer
wrote:

Windows was DOS with a pre-built menu system plus a few simple to use
settings (such as customising the menus for different users). It was
essentially useless until 3.x.

win 3.x was only slightly better than earlier versions. as i said,
windows '95 was when it was actually usable.

Not true, essentially since many companies at the time used Windows 3.11
for their businesses and some still use it to this day.


win 3.x was only slightly better than dos. it wasn't until win '95 when
windows took off because only then was it functionally better than what
existed before.

put another way, win '95 caught up to where mac os was a decade earlier.

microsoft word and excel were on a mac long before they were on windows.


True about the first part, but Windows 95 was actually a much better
operating system than the Mac OS of the time


no, it definitely wasn't.

so they didn't catch up as
much as they improved upon Apple's archaic design.


mac os wasn't archaic in the least and was well ahead of what existed
at the time.

win95 & win98 still had dos under the hood.

There's more. FWIW, I preferred DOS over Windows, and OS/2 over both.
I liked Mac OS, but didn't like Apple's unwillingness to permit device
customisation beyond what they decided was acceptable. A DOS machine,
and hence Windows, was almost infinitely customisable.

complete nonsense.

apple did not stop *anyone* from customizing anything, and in fact, mac
os was designed to be tweaked and modified in all sorts of ways, with
full documentation as to how to do it.

because of that, a whole category of mac software and hardware existed,
doing things not possible on dos or windows.

That must be why Steve Jobs specifically stated that he wanted the Mac
to have proprietary ports, no internal expansion slots and an operating
system which looked the same no matter whose machine you were using. In
other words, that must be why Jobs did the exact opposite of what
Wozniak did with the Apple ][ whereupon he insisted on forcing people to
upgrade a whole computer to get one or two additional functions.


he didn't say that, the ports weren't proprietary, and nobody had to
upgrade a whole computer to get additional functions.


The original Mac line was very much proprietary.


it was not.

Read the line about the
Macintosh 128k at Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K#Peripherals

Absolutely none of what the Macintosh included as ports was standard and
that's one of the many reasons you couldn't just buy any printer and had
to rely on whatever Apply would ship.


nonsense. the original mac used two industry standard rs422 serial
ports, a superset of rs232. wikipedia is wrong when it calls rs422
nonstandard.

as for printers, that required little more than writing a printer
driver, or putting postscript in the printer.

there were non-apple printers, although not that many early on since
writing a printer driver was fairly involved and printer companies were
still deciding whether supporting the mac was worth it from a business
perspective. apple did not prevent anything.

in fact, the pinouts of the ports were documented in inside macintosh,
a book available in any bookstore, along with full documentation of mac
os. *anyone* could buy it, not just developers. the information was not
secret.

mac os was *very* customizable. anyone who claims otherwise doesn't
know what they're talking about, regurgitating the old myths.


You have a very bizarre idea of what proprietary means. It's not closed,
it's proprietary meaning that it belongs to Apple and is not shared by
other companies. Proprietary comes from the French word "propriété"
meaning that it has an owner which, in this case, is Apple. In the same
way that the Macintosh had proprietary connectors, so did the PCjr and
the PS/2 in the MCA internal expansion port.


apple did design quite a bit and the ip did belong to them, however,
the details were available for anyone to write apps or design hardware.

many companies did exactly that.

as i said, inside mac was sold in normal bookstores alongside other
computer books. *anyone* could buy a copy and start writing apps,
without apple even knowing about it, let alone approve it.

As was
Commodore's OS, but that's another story.

actually, not as much, but the key problem was it had very little
software available compared to mac, dos and windows. software
developers were not interested.

In comparison, sure. THAT is a correct statement especially the further
users got into the lifespan of a Commodore Amiga machine. However, fewer
titles does not translate into a machine being completely ignored by the
public or developers either.


it was mostly ignored. not zero, but close enough.


That's a much fairer assessment.


and quite accurate.
 




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