Marty Michener wrote:
>
> Ok, I guess I do get your point, sort of, despite your utterly prepostero=
us
> denial of brains.
>
> I have run PC's since a Radio Shack "XT" in 1985 where I bought and add=
ed
> my first 10 pound 30 meg hard drive, and I have never had a lost file, a=
> system crash, a virus or any hard disc damage or lock up (the way Walt
> recently had with distant lightning). I guess I'm just overbearingly
> lucky. Why then didn't the Lord make me lucky enough be able to afford a=
> Mac in the first place?
I did not loose data to lightning. That did mess up some ethernet ports.
It was a recent problem that lost no data. I've never lost data due to a
lightning strike.
I lost data when a Quantum 72 gig hard drive went bad inside the sealed
unit. Something dragging in there making lots of noise and not allowing
the disks to reach 10,000 rpm. It's not a bad head or anything obvious
loose. I've been inside a couple times now without finding the problem.
I think it's the brake mechanism which is hard to fully get at without
removing the platters. (I long ago gave up on expecting to recover
anything and am just satisfying curiosity now). This sort of problem can
happen regardless of the platform. It's a true mechanical failure in the
hard drive.
> I did buy one two years ago at the insistence of my artist daughter for h=
er
> use, and on installing the Cannon printer ruined the hard drive
> permanently. So I took it back to the store and the same thing happened=
> with my second G3 Mac (OS 9.0), and then the store ran completely out of =
G3
> Macs (although they had a repair bin full of returns, all with defunct HD=
),
> so I had to order a third one from another source. It turns out the
> problem was that the Adobe "type manager" that installed "as an extra" wi=
th
> the Canon printer software (which you would get for free with a PC but
> cost extra with Macs) was one version shy, OS8, so all you had to do was=
> download a new Adobe manager from the web, except that your computer woul=
d
> never boot so you could get online in the first place. I have never had=
> such a problem with a PC, I wasted a whole week.
I cannot feature how this would permanently damage a hard disk. I did
not see any mention of any large group of defective drives. I did see
mention of the Adobe Type Manager problem. I know quite a few mac people
reported simply putting in the system CD provided with macs, booted from
the CD and reformatted the hard drive to fix it. Of course this resulted
in having to reinstall the system, from the same CD. Your experience is
very atypical of the usual for a new mac. The usual is bring it home,
hook it up, turn it on and use it. No problems, no having to call tech
support, no real need to look much at the manuals. Even when adding new
hardware or software.
I've installed a new Cannon photo quality ink jet printer here not too
long back, only a year or so. Software installed on all our macs with no
problem whatsoever. A very nice printer, nearly as good as a dye sub.
Note that Adobe Type Manager is for Postscript. Both macs and windows
use apple's Truetype as their native font system. Though Microsoft
implemented it slightly different than apple leading to some interesting
problems when designing some font for both platforms.
> I would never give YOU grief for running a better system, which (for what=
> must be the ten thousandth time) I freely admit Mac must be (for everyone=
> but me and my daughter). When my brother-in-law and nephew (2 years ago,=
> and more devoted Mac users do not exist on planet Earth) wanted audio
> editing software they kept asking me why Cool Edit was not available for=
> Macs. If only I could ever afford one .
>
> . . some day I hope to join the closed architecture band. I am sure much=
> of the virus security is because it is so much harder to write viruses fo=
r
> the closed proprietary architecture - it certainly is much harder to writ=
e
> ANY software for Macs, I have been looking for a good program for three
> years - which is undoubtedly why Mac programs are so much more
> expensive. There are at least four IDEs I have bought and tried for PC
> windows application writing (C++, Visual Basic, Professional Basic,
> Delphi). Now Cool Edit also joins this holy echelon, moving up where
> apparently it belongs among the higher priced spreads.
Current Mac architecture is BSD Unix. Antique, but supposed to be well
known. You can even turn on the command line and have that simplistic OS
if you wish. It's not as good as the Mac OS was in terms of some aspects
of user friendly, but it's still pretty good.
Mac programs tend to be more expensive because they are written better.
Mac users demand much more user friendly software because they know they
can get more done that way. I don't claim to be any kind of PC expert,
but I do have a PC, and every piece of software I have for it feels like
it should have been reworked, compared to similar mac software. And that
includes one program that cost $1500. I just figure PC folks must like
computers that constantly get in the way of productivity. And software
that is not well integrated with software from other suppliers. It is
harder to do quick and dirty mac programs, the system is designed to
encourage more polished stuff that works with the other programs on the
mac. Windows programs built to the same level of polish as mainline mac
programs would take as much time and cost as much. And would save
windows users a whole batch of time and aggravation.
Codewarrior is where you should look for a standard mac programming
environment. Quite a few languages in one package. There is much better
documentation for writing for the mac OS than for windows.
Adobe has priced Cooledit about like Peak, but far less than Spark XL.
It will be interesting to see if they put out a mac version. Adobe
generally does a very good job with their software. And they do make you
pay for that care.
Walt
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