Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 02:09:01 -0000 From: EvangeList <evangelist@apple.com> Subject: Tidbit - Praise From the 'Other Side' Keyword: Advocacy, Why Macs Are Better This tidbit is from: The Digital Guy Hi folks! This was actually from EvangeLista Tim Williams, <mail@williamsmunck.co.uk>, who spotted this tidbit in the *PC* magazine PCPro. Jon Honeyball was kind enough to allow us to reprint the article in its entirety to the EvangeList! I think you'll agree it's well worth the read. :-) Epilog Column, by Jon Honeyball. PCPro Magazine Issue 43 As a consultant, I'm often asked by businesses to recommend hardware for evaluation and deployment. And while it's true to say that no-one got fired for buying Compaq, IBM or HP, there's one name that's often strangely missing from business' shopping lists. I have this beast sat in front of me right now. It's very fast. It's easy to use. It runs office 98. In fact, I'm typing this article into Word 98. It runs FrontPage. And there's Microsoft Outlook for connection to my Exchange Server email backbone, and I can see my inbox just fine. It has Internet Explorer 4 on it, and Netscape 4 as well. And a big suite of Adobe tools like PageMaker, Photoshop and so forth. In fact, in terms of software, it has everything a business needs. It has an Ethernet network connection, peer to peer networking, a l7in monitor, full Internet connectivity. Stereo sound too, and a microphone. And a CDROM drive and a big hard disk. And a very sensible floppy disk arrangement too. The keyboard isn't bad and the mouse is perfectly workable. It's the very essence of a modern multimedia computer for the office or home. It runs all of the software that I need to work with, and works with all the other machines in the office. The price/performance is competitive too. So it should be on my recommendable list. And yet you're not buying it. It has plug and play that works far better than the PC to its left. Hardware expansion is no problem it has room for plenty of storage, and the internal PCI bus takes brand-name industry-standard cards. You can plug in several monitors at once, and get a desktop that spans all of them. It doesn't suffer from stupid limitations like 16 IRQs and being unable to use a modem on a port near a mouse. And yet you're not buying it. This machine has brand-name current version software dripping out of its hard disk. It's from a company that has, arguably, done more over the last 15 years to further desktop computing than all the mainstream PC vendors put together. And yet you're not buying it. I look at it and, to be honest, I'm baffled. This is a product with a staggeringly bright future, whose operating system today, although creaky in places, is very competent at performing the business and home tasks you throw at it. It runs all that software and integrates with your Novell or NT network, so what's the problem? And the next major release of its operating system, due months before Windows NT 5, will bring back into the fold some fabulous, tried and tested work that was initiated nearly ten years ago. It will be industrial strength, and best of all this new OS will run on the native hardware and there's a complete Intel build of the OS too. But if you want to stick with Microsoft OSes, there's a run-time for NT and Win95 too so you can run the apps there. And yet you're not buying it. If I worked for this company, I'd be tearing my hair out. You, dear reader, are quite happy to buy hardware that's backward, where 'prehistoric' doesn't even begin to do justice to some of its more 1960s, let alone 1970s, thinking: when was the last time you thought rationally about that parallel printer plug? How can we justify column inches and learned discussion about the pros and cons of Intel's Slot 1 for the Pentium II processor when the surrounding machine architecture is full of legacy design and twisted, nonsensical design? The parallel plug, a keyboard bus that requires a separate mouse port, shared IRQs for the serial ports, the AT bus, base port addresses the list is endless! Hardware configuration and BIOSes that look Byzantine in their complexity - - just what is a 'post-refresh burst rate delay' anyway, and do I want one, two or four of them? 'Plug and pray' speaks For itself and is often a bigger headache in the corporate support world than the problem it was attempting to solve. We still have ISA; EISA failed and PCI64 has gone nowhere. Limited, if any, hot plugging or fault tolerance can be found in mainstream machines. Where is the industry push for good technology like Firewire or even USB? And look at the operating systems - one wrong configuration and you're in trouble. 'Have you tried reinstalling the OS?' brings tears to the eyes of an IT manager. PC98 spec is a decent enough step, but why is this specification PC98 anyway: why wasn't it PC90 or even PC87 when the 386 shipped? In the PC market, this is just more 'me too' so-called engineering wrapped up in 'all tinsel and no Christmas tree'. A lowest common denominator 'it will do' illness and a cost-cutting frenzy par excellence pervades almost everything most vendors do. When the ingredients are like this, it's no wonder PCs are so costly to maintain. Ask yourself why total cost of ownership is such an issue now: when did you last think about TCO on your fridge? And you wilfully give money for this stuff. Maybe there was a reason in the past not to buy into this computer, but it's hard to find one today. My mother wanted a computer to 'browse that Internet thing'. She now has one of this brand I'm referring to, and <mum@woodleyside.co.uk> is now a live email address. She browses the Web, and is reassured by the smiley face she sees when she turns the machine on (go easy on her). Now I'll accept that this company has done some rash things in the past. But that was then; it's now making money. I accept that there were good reasons for corporates not to buy into this platform in the past but that was then. Maybe, just maybe, it's time for a fresh look? I have a brain. I have an Apple Macintosh. What's your excuse? Copyright 1998 PCPro Magazine and Jon Honeyball. All rights reserved. Authorised for distribution on the EvangeList mailing list via <evangelist@apple.com>. Contacts: Jon Honeyball (Contributing Editor, PCPro) <http://www.woodleyside.co.uk> Avril Williams (Editor PCPro) <http://www.pcpro.co.uk> |