[Info-vax] OT: About Digital and divisions

[JF Mezei]

Neil Rieck wrote:

>  If I didn't say it clearly before then let me say it now "Apple/Jobs
> no longer wanted other companies making making hardware" for the mac.

Note that the Macintosh had a SCSI port (at least the Mac+) which
allowed 3rd party hardware/drives to be connected. This included MIDI
interfaces for musicians. One of the serial ports could also be used for
networking with appletalk.

So while the box itself was not accessible, there were interfaces on the
outside which were.

And it didn't take long for tools to become available to open the Mac so
you could add your own memory in it.


> In the Apple ][ days it really was "Apple" and "the Apple compatible
> industry" vending to the world

I had never heard of Apple II compatible machines. In fact, even the
diskettes were proprietary because Woz had devices his own way to dump
data to them.

And yes, it is true that the Apple II continued to gnerate the funds to
sustain Apple after the Mac was introduced.


> compatible add-ons. So today we have a very closed Apple product line
> vs. an ISA (industry standard architecture) PC which is very much
> open. What does this mean today?

It means that when Steve Jobs found out that iFixit was selling parts to
do self repairs for the iPhone, he ordered the 2 screws that allow
access to the iPhone be changed to soe proprietary tool. iFixit
responded by selling "iphone liberation kits" which includes that
proprietary took and standard phillips screws from the original batch.

This was not a question of revenue, it was a question of conviction by
Jobs that customers should never have to open their gear.



> Last December an old Apple buddy sent
> me an email telling me that he just bought a new Core-i7 based iMac
> for CA$2500. This was the same month that I bought a similar Windows-
> based systems from Futureshop for CA$1195.

The Apple computers tend to be loaded with many items which are optional
on wintel boxes. If you don't want/need those items, then yeah, the
wintel boxes are cheaper. But if you want them, you will find the prices
are not all that different between the two machines. And you need to
compare the price with the full Windows edition (Professional I think it
is called).


Note that an iMac includes the screen, keyboard and mouse, and many
wintel packages don't. So one has to be careful comparing apples with
oranges.



> To bring my arguments back to the purpose we all hang out in this
> newsgroup, new Alpha systems really dropped in price when DEC shifted
> from mostly closed semi-open.

And Apple has been using COTS since the Mac days, although for its disk
drives, it has its own firmware on otherwise COTS hardware.  The
disquette drive on the original drive came from Sony. It looked
proprietary because Apple was first to use this commercially, but it was
developed by Sony and was to become an industry standard.

In the case of DEC, it may have bought drives from Maxtor, but it wasn't
just firmware that was different, it was also the interfaces since DEC
didn't do SCSI or IDE back in the 1980s.

And while Alpha prices did drop when DEC shifted to COTS, there was
still a premium on them because DEC wanted more money. And DEC still
charged an arm and a leg for compilers.

> case for Alpha systems being (on average) ten times cheaper than VAX
> while also being ten being ten times more powerful than VAX. I can
> only assume than Itanium has continued this trend.

You know, runnning ALLIN-! on a 4000-600 with DSSI disks seemed just as
fast as running it on a DS10-L with IDE disks which are slow as
molasses.  So the CPU may have been much faster, but the use of
el-cheapo peripherals really slowed down those alphas.



> Not sure what "bible" you are reading (perhaps it is the current book
> from the "church of jobs" :-),

No, it is the Book of Jobs from the Church of Apple. You need to get
your religions right :-)


> Woz went back to Apple after the accident and was treated like a
> second class citizen relegated to the 8-bit division. 

At that time, Jobs was treated like a 3rd class citizen and sent to work
in a different building and not allowed to work on the Lisa project.
Woz was apparently not interested in working on the "illegal" Mac
project in a different building and wanted to work on the Apple II
(which was still the mainstay of Apple's revenus).

> The Mac was
> going to be a Jobs-only-creation with no interference from the likes
> of Wozniak. 

That is an interesting spin because apparently Jobs asked Woz to come
work for his group. Considering how bad a condition Jobs was in, I would
not be susprised if Woz had turned it down.  Woz was likely refused
entry into the Lisa project though. But this would have been Apple
management, not Jobs' doing.

If Woz had been allowed to work on the Lisa project, things might have
been totally difeferent for Apple and Jobs. Had the Lisa been succesful
instead of being a big flop, Jobs' group would have served no purpose
and the Lisa would have been the project that replaced the Apple II.

But what happened is that the Lisa floppped, and Jobs managed to get the
Mac out at the right time and worked against Apple to market the hell
out of his pet project. That famous "1984" superbowl add had been
rejected by the Apple board BTW, and Jobs and his ad agency managed to
keep it running in one slot claiming it was too late to resell that
slot. (but the other slots were cancelled)


> p.s. People forget that Apple made lots of money from 8-bit Apples
> long after the Mac was introduced. Jobs hated this fact but it is a
> prime example from companies who produce products which compete with
> themselves. For more examples, see the book "In Search of Stupidity"

When the Lisa flopped and Mac succeeded, Jobs was re-admitted into Apple
due to his success. But he did not manage the now official Macintosh
group well, there were software delays which the non-computer-savvy
managers at Apple didn't understand and they progressively sidelined him
and offered him another skunkworks project in a separate building where
he could have fun and play, but Jobs fought for control of his company
and lost.

Note that Woz didn't go teaching right away. He had a go at making
remote controls and durng Jobs's short time after the Mac success where
he had power at Apple, he told the industrial design company Apple was
using to prevent Woz from using them because Woz's products might end up
looking too much like Apple products.  Needless to say that started a
rift between the two that lasted a long time.

Jobs was a very colourful fellow. And it remains to be seen how Apple
will change now that it wont have to cope with his tamper tantrums.