This article has a huge black hole between the Atari 2600 in the early 80s and Doom on PC in 1993. To me, the first impressive PC game was Castle Wolfenstein. But before that, the entire second half of the 80s was dominated by Atari STs and Amigas as game machines. PCs and Macs during this period were "business" machines which didn't pander to the games market. For those of you not old enough to remember, the PC as dominant games platform is a relatively recent phenomenon.
I wouldn't worry about all this Death of the Internet stuff. It's just the pendulum swinging the other way from "the internet will change the whole world and wash your car for you" hype from the last few years.
Of course, as an aside, I always thought the best word processing app in terms of how well it worked and how easy it was to use, for most situations, was ClarisWorks. By version 3 it did everything you could want unless you were using your word processor for very weird things. Even small desktop-publishing businesses years ago were using it, it was so simple to use but versatile. MS Word is unintuitive bloatware compared to the elegance and simplicity that was ClarisWorks. And it was available for both Mac and Windows. To this day I'd be using ClarisWorks 4 if only I didn't need compatibility with the rest of the world, who are by and large using newer and newer MS.doc formats that ClarisWorks and AppleWorks can't handle.
I totally agree with your assessment of ClarisWorks. I used versions from 2 to 5, but haven't tried the latest incarnation as AppleWorks.
ClarisWorks, unlike MS Office, actually integrated the different functions, allowing the mixing of word processing, image editing, spreadsheets and databases in one document. When I think about it now, one of the best parts was that it was almost totally non-modal. Click in an image and now you're in a paint program, click on a spreadsheet cell and now you're in a spreadsheet program, but you've never left your document, and you've never had to issue a 'mode change' command.
If I were attempting an open source office-type application, I'd model it after ClarisWorks.
The slashdot blurb says "10000 lines of assembly code," when I don't actually think the article is suggesting he wrote the program in assembly language. The articles says that 10000 lines of code were written for the assembly program--a program which assembles data.
"Nowadays, anyone with some talent, a PC and a couple of peripherals and good mikes can produce music which would have required spending weeks in an expensive professional recording studio five years ago."
Actually, the PC can do what a Mac could do 10 years ago, what some rented analog gear could do 15 years ago, and what the punks started doing over 25 years ago.
A short history on music production and distribution:
In the mid 1970s, FM ruled the airwaves. DJs would play whatever track they wanted off of an album, unlike AM radio, which only played songs released as "singles" on 45 rpm records. This means that there were two broad classes of bands, pop groups and artists like Barry Manilow that released singles, and rock groups like Rush and Led Zeppelin that released albums. In today's terms, pop bands would be N-Sync, while rock bands would be Korn.
There were about 30 different record labels around the world, and they would select bands, pay them to make albums, then pay them a bit more if the albums did well. Bands that were destined for AM radio would be paid to record one song at a time, and would largely be forgotten afterwards. The 'real' artists behind such bands were usually the record producers. Think about The Spice Girls--any five British girls with big tits could have replaced them--it was the people who wrote the songs, recorded them, then designed a 'look' for the girls that deserve the credit.
At any rate, the tone of almost all the music was 'contentment.' From Genesis to Alice Cooper to Led Zeppelin, these people were pretty happy with life. Then came the punks.
No self-respecting velour and corduroy-wearing record rep wanted anarchists on their band line-up. These guys didn't sing--they just screamed! And they barely knew how to play their instruments! So the punk DIY ethic was born. (Do It Yourself.) Grabbing studio time wherever they could, they recorded their own songs, usually in one take, with no over-dubs, because studio time was too expensive. Anyway, it didn't matter that the recording quality sucked, because as musicians, they weren't that great. The power of the music lay in the incredible anger and rage. They would take their songs and release them the cheapest way possible--as 45 rpm singles, or sometimes, they would cram a dozen songs on a 45, but press it at 33 1/3, so they could fit around 20 short songs on it.
Small record labels were started, and they did quite well for themselves, because they didn't have high-rise offices full of coke-snorting executives to fund. The band or the small record label got to keep all the money for each record that was sold.
Which brings us to the 1980s. The big record labels were sort of freaked out that these DIY punk bands were starting to cut into their profits. It's hard to push a slick-sounding band like Trooper when The Dickies are what the kids really want to hear. So the labels started signing all the punk and ex-punk musicians they could find, and instead of letting them do their thing, they forced a much more polished sound on them, since they were still using their contented 1970s style producers. The result was New Wave, and it sucked big time. The music was overly sterile and passionless. (Compare Public Image Limited to The Sex Pistols--both had the same lead singer.) The musical format of choice was the 12" single--a full size analog disc with only one or two songs on it, and often a bunch of remixes of those songs. The real punks were all dead from heroin overdoses, and the pseudo-punk New Wave bands eventually morphed into all that dance shit that is still being played in clubs today--billed as 80s retro.
Anyway, that brings us to the late 80s and early 90s. The big labels have all consolidated into a half a dozen huge multinationals. 90% of all music heard by the masses is controlled by these few companies. FM stations have discarded their album-rock format in favour of AM-style singles. Even if there are better songs on the album, they wait until a label 'releases' a song before they play it. (This is now a largely symbolic act, since all the songs are on the same CD. The stations just wait for the go-ahead from the labels to start playing the next chosen song. They are totally in the pockets of the big labels, and in many cases, are all owned by the same huge company.)
The next generation of DIY music is coming to a boil: Rap, Industrial, various forms of Metal--bands like Skinny Puppy, Public Enemy, Metallica (yes, they were cool once,) are either releasing through small labels, or are starting their own labels. The big labels are scared, and so they attack the DIYers on three fronts:
1. Copycat bands. Like the Monkees in the 1970s, copycat bands are pushed hard by the big labels. Vanilla Ice is pushed to white kids who like rap, Motley Crue is pushed to white kids who like metal, an uncountable number of bands that sound like Pearl Jam are pushed on everyone.
2. Buy the small labels or bands. Nirvana, who got started on SubPop, are snapped up for huge amounts of money. SuperChunk is promised a million dollars if only they'll sign. Helmet gets a million for recording Meantime, and their album Strap It On, originally released on Amphetimine Reptile, is re-released on a major label. It's funny, because major labels never new what was cool, and now they didn't even know what would sell any more. They waited for a band to 'make it' on their own, then they bought them out.
3. Country. One day all the media whores woke up and proclaimed that country was regaining popularity! There are no facts to support their argument, but if you keep saying it often enough, eventually the great unwashed masses start believing it. The year was 1991. The number one music genre, in terms of record sales, is Rap. Public Enemy and NWA sell the most records in that number one genre, yet the Rap award for the Grammys was not televised. The only "rap" act to perform on TV is Vanilla Ice. Why country? It's safe. It's contented. It's performed by white people. It sounds like 70s soft-rock. And the soft-rock scene of the 70s is the last time the big labels had total control. New Country is a return to paradise for the suits.
Anyway, now its the year 2001, and what's an independent spirt to do? Troll through www.mp3.com and find stuff you like. Get yourself some audio software and make your own techno and upload it--you don't even need a microphone! Stop listening to the radio. The radio has never represented a generation's music since the Boomers. Listen to streaming mp3. If a band releases a single, but it's on some weird propriety format instead of mp3, then fuck them. Don't even download it. But if you do, convert it to mp3 and stick it in your GNUtella.
Don't let Darek hear you talk like that! He'll whine your ear off.
His rant started off with some serious stretching of the truth, saying that Mac OS X won't run on anything older than 2 years old. This is simply untrue, as my Desktop G3 will be three years old in just two months, and runs Mac OS X beta just fine, thank-you. The exaggerations continue as he relates his 'history' of Apple obsolescing hardware.
In summer 1997, Apple sent around a notice that various ancient machines from the early to mid-80's would no longer be supported. Wow! Can't get a motherboard for a 12 year old machine anymore, but you can still get a motherboard for a 11.5 year old machine? Those bastards! Believe me, no one cared, in September 1997, that they could no longer buy a replacement motherboard for a Mac Plus that they bought in 1985.
He also cleverly reverses the usual stance that Macs have longer half-lives than PCs, and then accuses Apple of obsolescing hardware with OS releases. The first OS released that would not run on EVERY Mac was 7.6, and the only ones that were left out were the original Macs, Mac Plus, Mac SE, Mac SE-30, and the Mac II line. Boo fucking hoo.
Backwards compatibility means new hardware can run old stuff--old hardware running new stuff is forwards-compatibility. And Macs have backwards compatibility up the wazoo. You can, for instance, run ClarisWorks version 1 on a G3, and it works just fine. If you got ClarisWorks version 1 included with your 10 year old Mac, then no one has forced you to pay to upgrade it to run on your new Mac.
Many people complain about legacy code in their Wintel operating systems dragging down their latest and greatest chips, and this loon is complaining in the other direction. Most Mac owners are glad that Apple has the balls to dump support for old hardware in favour of getting the work done on the new stuff. This is true progress--and not just marketing hype.
The simple answer to confronting marketing hype, and to avoid your machine becoming obselete, is to look within yourself. Just because OS X beta is out now, doesn't mean that you have to run out and buy it. And just because a new OS is released doesn't stop your current Mac from remaining functional. Does my old Mac LC 630 still do everything that Apple promised it would, when I bought it in 1994? Yes. Did I have to buy a new G3 to continue the existing functionality. No. I bought one because I wanted one. If an old Mac falls in the forest, does it make an obsolete sound?
I think that our friend Darek -- faced with the difficult proposition of un-announcing some products that he has been demoing at shows -- lashed out at Microsoft, Intel, and Apple out of intense, personal feelings of guilt. While he apparently didn't promise that the new products would ship, by demoing them at a series of trade shows, he has certainly inferred that they would.
The mental process is the same that takes place in a small child who is caught with his/her hand in the cookie jar. "Well, I know I was taking cookies without asking, but Billy broke your vase last week, and Suzy told a lie to the teacher, and Johnny says the 'F' word, and Intel's new chip doesn't work, and Microsoft is evil, and Apple is trying to make money off selling new stuff!"
"It's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done" - Orbital
Actually, Orbital sampled The Butthole Surfers for that quote. It's from their cover of Black Sabbaths' "Sweatleaf", which The Butthole Surfers renamed "SweatLoaf" for their "Hairway to Steven" album.
"so why would you really _need_ to redo the UI? as long as it runs, it runs."
Good point, but I think that this discussion is largely missing the real point. Mac users don't need applications--we got applications we love--we need a rock-solid OS. That's why the OS is being replaced, and replaced in such a way that old apps come along with it. Someone can put a Mac-looking front end on Nedit, but you'll get BBEdit away from me when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Oh, wait, you made a typo. This is what you should have written:
(Why does it use all parenthesis? (That's impossible to get right on the first time:))
Seriously, though. Functional languages limit the programmer, and although it could be argued that the limitations are good, there will always be less acceptance because of the limitations. Furthermore, if you want to do functional programming in C or Java, go right ahead. Those languages aren't stopping you. But if you want to do procedural in Lisp...
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's antics make me grimace.
Apple's antics make me smile.
I can't wait to re-visit my little Orc buddies. I'm not even sick of StarCraft yet!
I get a little upset at people who think that a simple statement of fact like that is crowing.
You see, it's not that the original poster dislikes Mac Users, he just dislikes uppity Mac Users.
I agree wholeheartedly. I would love to see a Perl Studio in the manner of AppleScript Studio.
Alas the govt does not have the same luxury.
Unfortunately, governments go bankrupt all the time. Take a look at what is happening in Argentina right now.
Exactly!
This article has a huge black hole between the Atari 2600 in the early 80s and Doom on PC in 1993. To me, the first impressive PC game was Castle Wolfenstein. But before that, the entire second half of the 80s was dominated by Atari STs and Amigas as game machines. PCs and Macs during this period were "business" machines which didn't pander to the games market. For those of you not old enough to remember, the PC as dominant games platform is a relatively recent phenomenon.
I think that it is an entirely appropriate show for people with "half a brain." People with whole brains can watch Star Trek Enterprise.
My main beef with Andromeda is that disgusting character that looks like a fox made out of aging meatloaf. He raunches.
Where I work, there was a rash of nerf-gun incursions a little over a year ago. You guessed right -- it got old really fast.
"probably not being radiated by microwave energy"
It's precisely from being radiated by microwaves. Seeing dead birds around microwave towers is what gave people the idea to make microwave ovens.
I wouldn't worry about all this Death of the Internet stuff. It's just the pendulum swinging the other way from "the internet will change the whole world and wash your car for you" hype from the last few years.
Of course, as an aside, I always thought the best word processing app in terms of how well it worked and how easy it was to use, for most situations, was ClarisWorks. By version 3 it did everything you could want unless you were using your word processor for very weird things. Even small desktop-publishing businesses years ago were using it, it was so simple to use but versatile. MS Word is unintuitive bloatware compared to the elegance and simplicity that was ClarisWorks. And it was available for both Mac and Windows. To this day I'd be using ClarisWorks 4 if only I didn't need compatibility with the rest of the world, who are by and large using newer and newer MS .doc formats that ClarisWorks and AppleWorks can't handle.
I totally agree with your assessment of ClarisWorks. I used versions from 2 to 5, but haven't tried the latest incarnation as AppleWorks.
ClarisWorks, unlike MS Office, actually integrated the different functions, allowing the mixing of word processing, image editing, spreadsheets and databases in one document. When I think about it now, one of the best parts was that it was almost totally non-modal. Click in an image and now you're in a paint program, click on a spreadsheet cell and now you're in a spreadsheet program, but you've never left your document, and you've never had to issue a 'mode change' command.
If I were attempting an open source office-type application, I'd model it after ClarisWorks.
Mike van Lammeren
I heard that Le Louvre is trying to snag momo.museum! It's an outrage!
Mike van Lammeren
The slashdot blurb says "10000 lines of assembly code," when I don't actually think the article is suggesting he wrote the program in assembly language. The articles says that 10000 lines of code were written for the assembly program--a program which assembles data.
Mike van Lammeren
Hilarious!
Mike van Lammeren
Actually, the PC can do what a Mac could do 10 years ago, what some rented analog gear could do 15 years ago, and what the punks started doing over 25 years ago.
A short history on music production and distribution:
In the mid 1970s, FM ruled the airwaves. DJs would play whatever track they wanted off of an album, unlike AM radio, which only played songs released as "singles" on 45 rpm records. This means that there were two broad classes of bands, pop groups and artists like Barry Manilow that released singles, and rock groups like Rush and Led Zeppelin that released albums. In today's terms, pop bands would be N-Sync, while rock bands would be Korn.
There were about 30 different record labels around the world, and they would select bands, pay them to make albums, then pay them a bit more if the albums did well. Bands that were destined for AM radio would be paid to record one song at a time, and would largely be forgotten afterwards. The 'real' artists behind such bands were usually the record producers. Think about The Spice Girls--any five British girls with big tits could have replaced them--it was the people who wrote the songs, recorded them, then designed a 'look' for the girls that deserve the credit.
At any rate, the tone of almost all the music was 'contentment.' From Genesis to Alice Cooper to Led Zeppelin, these people were pretty happy with life. Then came the punks.
No self-respecting velour and corduroy-wearing record rep wanted anarchists on their band line-up. These guys didn't sing--they just screamed! And they barely knew how to play their instruments! So the punk DIY ethic was born. (Do It Yourself.) Grabbing studio time wherever they could, they recorded their own songs, usually in one take, with no over-dubs, because studio time was too expensive. Anyway, it didn't matter that the recording quality sucked, because as musicians, they weren't that great. The power of the music lay in the incredible anger and rage. They would take their songs and release them the cheapest way possible--as 45 rpm singles, or sometimes, they would cram a dozen songs on a 45, but press it at 33 1/3, so they could fit around 20 short songs on it.
Small record labels were started, and they did quite well for themselves, because they didn't have high-rise offices full of coke-snorting executives to fund. The band or the small record label got to keep all the money for each record that was sold.
Which brings us to the 1980s. The big record labels were sort of freaked out that these DIY punk bands were starting to cut into their profits. It's hard to push a slick-sounding band like Trooper when The Dickies are what the kids really want to hear. So the labels started signing all the punk and ex-punk musicians they could find, and instead of letting them do their thing, they forced a much more polished sound on them, since they were still using their contented 1970s style producers. The result was New Wave, and it sucked big time. The music was overly sterile and passionless. (Compare Public Image Limited to The Sex Pistols--both had the same lead singer.) The musical format of choice was the 12" single--a full size analog disc with only one or two songs on it, and often a bunch of remixes of those songs. The real punks were all dead from heroin overdoses, and the pseudo-punk New Wave bands eventually morphed into all that dance shit that is still being played in clubs today--billed as 80s retro.
Anyway, that brings us to the late 80s and early 90s. The big labels have all consolidated into a half a dozen huge multinationals. 90% of all music heard by the masses is controlled by these few companies. FM stations have discarded their album-rock format in favour of AM-style singles. Even if there are better songs on the album, they wait until a label 'releases' a song before they play it. (This is now a largely symbolic act, since all the songs are on the same CD. The stations just wait for the go-ahead from the labels to start playing the next chosen song. They are totally in the pockets of the big labels, and in many cases, are all owned by the same huge company.)
The next generation of DIY music is coming to a boil: Rap, Industrial, various forms of Metal--bands like Skinny Puppy, Public Enemy, Metallica (yes, they were cool once,) are either releasing through small labels, or are starting their own labels. The big labels are scared, and so they attack the DIYers on three fronts:
Anyway, now its the year 2001, and what's an independent spirt to do? Troll through www.mp3.com and find stuff you like. Get yourself some audio software and make your own techno and upload it--you don't even need a microphone! Stop listening to the radio. The radio has never represented a generation's music since the Boomers. Listen to streaming mp3. If a band releases a single, but it's on some weird propriety format instead of mp3, then fuck them. Don't even download it. But if you do, convert it to mp3 and stick it in your GNUtella.
Mike van Lammeren
"The article told him so."
He shouldn't believe everything he reads on the internet.
Mike van Lammeren
Don't let Darek hear you talk like that! He'll whine your ear off.
His rant started off with some serious stretching of the truth, saying that Mac OS X won't run on anything older than 2 years old. This is simply untrue, as my Desktop G3 will be three years old in just two months, and runs Mac OS X beta just fine, thank-you. The exaggerations continue as he relates his 'history' of Apple obsolescing hardware.
In summer 1997, Apple sent around a notice that various ancient machines from the early to mid-80's would no longer be supported. Wow! Can't get a motherboard for a 12 year old machine anymore, but you can still get a motherboard for a 11.5 year old machine? Those bastards! Believe me, no one cared, in September 1997, that they could no longer buy a replacement motherboard for a Mac Plus that they bought in 1985.
He also cleverly reverses the usual stance that Macs have longer half-lives than PCs, and then accuses Apple of obsolescing hardware with OS releases. The first OS released that would not run on EVERY Mac was 7.6, and the only ones that were left out were the original Macs, Mac Plus, Mac SE, Mac SE-30, and the Mac II line. Boo fucking hoo.
Backwards compatibility means new hardware can run old stuff--old hardware running new stuff is forwards-compatibility. And Macs have backwards compatibility up the wazoo. You can, for instance, run ClarisWorks version 1 on a G3, and it works just fine. If you got ClarisWorks version 1 included with your 10 year old Mac, then no one has forced you to pay to upgrade it to run on your new Mac.
Many people complain about legacy code in their Wintel operating systems dragging down their latest and greatest chips, and this loon is complaining in the other direction. Most Mac owners are glad that Apple has the balls to dump support for old hardware in favour of getting the work done on the new stuff. This is true progress--and not just marketing hype.
The simple answer to confronting marketing hype, and to avoid your machine becoming obselete, is to look within yourself. Just because OS X beta is out now, doesn't mean that you have to run out and buy it. And just because a new OS is released doesn't stop your current Mac from remaining functional. Does my old Mac LC 630 still do everything that Apple promised it would, when I bought it in 1994? Yes. Did I have to buy a new G3 to continue the existing functionality. No. I bought one because I wanted one. If an old Mac falls in the forest, does it make an obsolete sound?
I think that our friend Darek -- faced with the difficult proposition of un-announcing some products that he has been demoing at shows -- lashed out at Microsoft, Intel, and Apple out of intense, personal feelings of guilt. While he apparently didn't promise that the new products would ship, by demoing them at a series of trade shows, he has certainly inferred that they would.
The mental process is the same that takes place in a small child who is caught with his/her hand in the cookie jar. "Well, I know I was taking cookies without asking, but Billy broke your vase last week, and Suzy told a lie to the teacher, and Johnny says the 'F' word, and Intel's new chip doesn't work, and Microsoft is evil, and Apple is trying to make money off selling new stuff!"
Mike van Lammeren
Actually, in the 1970s, Apple had to pay off the Beatles for their Apple Records company.
Mike van Lammeren
Wait a minute...the chip used to have pins to control clockspeed...now it doesn't...Statue of Liberty...it was our world all along! You Bastards!
Mike
Mike van Lammeren
"It's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done" - Orbital
Actually, Orbital sampled The Butthole Surfers for that quote. It's from their cover of Black Sabbaths' "Sweatleaf", which The Butthole Surfers renamed "SweatLoaf" for their "Hairway to Steven" album.
Mike van Lammeren
"...European language..."
You know that English is a European language, right?
Mike van Lammeren
How ironic! The moon landings were faked in Canada too...
Mike van Lammeren
"so why would you really _need_ to redo the UI? as long as it runs, it runs."
Good point, but I think that this discussion is largely missing the real point. Mac users don't need applications--we got applications we love--we need a rock-solid OS. That's why the OS is being replaced, and replaced in such a way that old apps come along with it. Someone can put a Mac-looking front end on Nedit, but you'll get BBEdit away from me when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Linux == great OS
Mac == great apps
Mac OS X == great OS with great apps
Mike van Lammeren
Oh, wait, you made a typo. This is what you should have written:
:))
(Why does it use all parenthesis? (That's impossible to get right on the first time
Seriously, though. Functional languages limit the programmer, and although it could be argued that the limitations are good, there will always be less acceptance because of the limitations. Furthermore, if you want to do functional programming in C or Java, go right ahead. Those languages aren't stopping you. But if you want to do procedural in Lisp...
Mike van Lammeren
"/* Try writing 'GNU' without using an acronym. Go ahead. Try it. I dare ya. */"
gnu
Mike van Lammeren