50 most influential gadgets from Time

On 2016-05-10 18:10, nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne
wrote:


No it was usig a graphical interface that chneged things for teh
average computer user as before then you prettyy much had to klnow
about computers just to type a CV or anything. Even in the early 80s
our studetns were taking their written work to secratraies for typing
up because they couldn't do it themselves. This didn't happen in
DOS. WYSIWYG was what did it.

Horsefeathers. There were a lot of very good WP programs under DOS that
anyone with the patience to learn could figure out quite quickly and
make fine documents.

the fact that someone needed patience to learn makes it a non-starter
for most people. not everyone is a geek. people need to get work done,
not figure out cryptic apps.

They were not cryptic. They had good manuals. Lots of people with no
computer experience at all used them (and spreadsheets too...) w/o too
much trouble. Otherwise there was a local high school or college
teaching it.



--
She hummed to herself because she was an unrivaled botcher of lyrics.
-Nick (Gone Girl), Gillian Flynn.

On 2016-05-10 18:10, nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

It changed history so much...they adopted a "P.C." processor from Intel
after using Motorola's for years.

Your ignorance is so deep that you don't realize that being able to
switch processors easily is a sign of good, competent OS engineering.

not just once, but twice, which went so smoothly that it was almost
impossible to tell.

OS X was running on intel from its first version (in secret).

os x has been running on intel since the early 1990s when it was
nextstep/openstep, which is platform agnostic.

apple ported that *to* powerpc (and dramatically upgraded it) while
keeping the intel version running, 'just in case'.

And Apple
converted their entire line in far less than the time they allotted to
the task. (IIRC they allotted 3 years and did it in a little over one
year).

apple claimed around 2 years and it ended up being about 8-10 months
for all but one product (the mac pro, which had a complete redesign).

their estimate was more of a cya just in case something unforeseen
happened than anything else.

As to why, PPC consumed too much power and ran to hot for the mobile
plans that Apple had.

nope.

powerpc chips had a lower tdp than similar intel chips.

for instance, the 15" powerbook came with a 65 watt power adapter,
while the 15" macbook pro came with an 85 watt adapter and also had a
larger battery. when apple demoed them at macworld (before they were
shipping), they refused to give a battery runtime estimate.

one of the biggest motivators for the intel transition was when steve
announced the powermac g5 and said "3 ghz in a year", then a year
later, not only did ibm fail to deliver on that, but they also said
"not anytime soon."

steve did not like it when people don't deliver, especially if it
embarrasses him in public.

apple then announced the intel transition a year later at wwdc.

With the famous chart about performance per watt. That's really what
counted. The PPC path forward had no increase in performance plotted
out that did not include more power and heat.




And don't be surprised in a few years if intel is abandoned for ARM
processors (Apple's Ax line) in Apple's Mac series.

likely sooner than that.

the writing has been on the wall for quite some time.

Yes, I keep writing it on the wall too.



--
She hummed to herself because she was an unrivaled botcher of lyrics.
-Nick (Gone Girl), Gillian Flynn.

On 2016-05-10 18:09, Me wrote:
On 11/05/2016 08:47, Alan Browne wrote:
On 2016-05-09 18:21, Me wrote:
On 10/05/2016 02:36, M-M wrote:

GPS devices should be there somewhere

TomTom is on the list.

TomTom is not GPS. TomTom (utter ****) is a navigation system that uses
a GPS sensor, road database and navigation computer.

Why they put TomTom when GPS alone should have been there is quite
incredible.

GPS is three components
-Ground (Control) segment
-Space segment
-User segment (the receivers that we use).

All of it, as a whole system, should have been #1 on the list IMO. GPS'
contribution to the world economy outshines the iPhone by a huge margin.

At that, it is absolutely free of charge.

M-M comments that GPS /devices/ should be on the list, not GPS "system".

Except the devices that count are certainly not from TomTom and GPS is a
utility that most people take for granted w/o realizing how it underpins
a wide swath of their lives even if they don't own a GPS receiver. The
system is what is amazing from the receiver back to space back to the
control segment.


The entire list is (IMO) little more than clickbait.

Not too bad. A few things in the wrong order and a few things of very
dubious inclusion.


--
She hummed to herself because she was an unrivaled botcher of lyrics.
-Nick (Gone Girl), Gillian Flynn.

On 5/10/2016 6:48 PM, Tony Cooper wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2016 18:10:14 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Alan Browne
wrote:


No it was usig a graphical interface that chneged things for teh
average computer user as before then you prettyy much had to klnow
about computers just to type a CV or anything. Even in the early 80s
our studetns were taking their written work to secratraies for typing
up because they couldn't do it themselves. This didn't happen in
DOS. WYSIWYG was what did it.

Horsefeathers. There were a lot of very good WP programs under DOS that
anyone with the patience to learn could figure out quite quickly and
make fine documents.

the fact that someone needed patience to learn makes it a non-starter
for most people. not everyone is a geek. people need to get work done,
not figure out cryptic apps.

what changed the industry was when pretty much anyone could use a
computer.

Even had a very good WP on a fricken Commodore 64
that I used for school and preparing manuals for students.

times were different then.

WYSIWYG certainly made things a lot easier from a visualization
standpoint, but it wasn't a necessity.

it made things a *lot* easier so that normal people could do it, which
makes it a necessity. not everyone wants to learn cryptic wordstar
codes.

"cryptic wordstar codes"? I used WordStar for several years and never
found anything "cryptic" about the codes. My first desktop was an
Archives CP/M unit. I thought it was simple to use.

I later switched to WordPerfect on an IBM PS/2. WordPerfect was
better than what I use now - OpenOffice - but my demands are less.


We have different needs now, and certainly had different needs then. I
paid a lot of money for my first WP program, Lanier, and it was worth
every penny. After I saw the WordPerfect was here to stay, I switched to
a and never looked back.
I was able to compete with the larger firms on document output.

--
PeterN

In article , Tony Cooper
wrote:

WYSIWYG certainly made things a lot easier from a visualization
standpoint, but it wasn't a necessity.

it made things a *lot* easier so that normal people could do it, which
makes it a necessity. not everyone wants to learn cryptic wordstar
codes.

"cryptic wordstar codes"? I used WordStar for several years and never
found anything "cryptic" about the codes. My first desktop was an
Archives CP/M unit. I thought it was simple to use.

only because you memorized them.

try teaching wordstar to a computer newbie.

what an utter mess:
http://www.classiccmp.org/cpmarchive...ors/WordStar/M
anuals/WordStar%20Command%20Reference.htm

and then if you wanted to use a different app, none of that applied.

nobody thought about ui/ux at *all*.

what changed the industry was the gui and wysiwyg, where computers
worked the way people do rather than making people work the way
computers do.

In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

As to why, PPC consumed too much power and ran to hot for the mobile
plans that Apple had.

nope.

powerpc chips had a lower tdp than similar intel chips.

for instance, the 15" powerbook came with a 65 watt power adapter,
while the 15" macbook pro came with an 85 watt adapter and also had a
larger battery. when apple demoed them at macworld (before they were
shipping), they refused to give a battery runtime estimate.

one of the biggest motivators for the intel transition was when steve
announced the powermac g5 and said "3 ghz in a year", then a year
later, not only did ibm fail to deliver on that, but they also said
"not anytime soon."

steve did not like it when people don't deliver, especially if it
embarrasses him in public.

apple then announced the intel transition a year later at wwdc.

With the famous chart about performance per watt. That's really what
counted. The PPC path forward had no increase in performance plotted
out that did not include more power and heat.

that was marking spin and soundbites to avoid coming right out and
saying motorola and ibm screwed them over.

powerpc had a lower tdp and better performance, something that is
easily measured, the latter of which was done with phil's 'bake-offs'.

the problem was that motorola and ibm weren't interested in advancing
their platform. intel was. powerpc stagnated, with concentration on
embedded devices.

put simply, low tdp doesn't matter much when the path going forward was
mostly a dead end.

In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

No it was usig a graphical interface that chneged things for teh
average computer user as before then you prettyy much had to klnow
about computers just to type a CV or anything. Even in the early 80s
our studetns were taking their written work to secratraies for typing
up because they couldn't do it themselves. This didn't happen in
DOS. WYSIWYG was what did it.

Horsefeathers. There were a lot of very good WP programs under DOS that
anyone with the patience to learn could figure out quite quickly and
make fine documents.

the fact that someone needed patience to learn makes it a non-starter
for most people. not everyone is a geek. people need to get work done,
not figure out cryptic apps.

They were not cryptic. They had good manuals.

the fact that it required manuals means they were cryptic.

who wants to memorize all this?
http://www.classiccmp.org/cpmarchive...ors/WordStar/M
anuals/WordStar%20Command%20Reference.htm

Lots of people with no
computer experience at all used them (and spreadsheets too...) w/o too
much trouble. Otherwise there was a local high school or college
teaching it.

some did, but once the gui & wysiwyg became common, *far* more people
used word processing and spreadsheets and quite a bit more. it's what
changed the industry.

"the computer for the rest of us"

On Tue, 10 May 2016 19:11:01 -0400, Tony Cooper
wrote:

On Tue, 10 May 2016 18:44:20 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2016-05-10 18:10, nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne
wrote:


No it was usig a graphical interface that chneged things for teh
average computer user as before then you prettyy much had to klnow
about computers just to type a CV or anything. Even in the early 80s
our studetns were taking their written work to secratraies for typing
up because they couldn't do it themselves. This didn't happen in
DOS. WYSIWYG was what did it.

Horsefeathers. There were a lot of very good WP programs under DOS that
anyone with the patience to learn could figure out quite quickly and
make fine documents.

the fact that someone needed patience to learn makes it a non-starter
for most people. not everyone is a geek. people need to get work done,
not figure out cryptic apps.

They were not cryptic. They had good manuals. Lots of people with no
computer experience at all used them (and spreadsheets too...) w/o too
much trouble. Otherwise there was a local high school or college
teaching it.

If I remember right, it came with a large, well-written manual, but it
was intuitive enough to use that the manual wasn't often consulted..

The only time I needed to take a class is when I started on Lotus
1-2-3, and the only reason I needed to do that was because I had a
deadline on coming up with a very involved spreadsheet program for a
business line of credit with the bank. I had just bought the program.
It was a five-day, three-hour a day class, but needed only the first
two days.

From a time-saving perspective, Lotus paid for itself in just that one
project. But, I continued to use it for several years.

Those were the days when software came with thick notebook manuals.
No need to buy books on the subject.

I launched into micros with Cromemco. They had text editing and
separate formatting software which together made a pretty good word
processor. This was before the IBM PC and even Apple Writer for the
Apple ][. It is not correct to say that useful and useable word
processing started only with the Mac.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

I launched into micros with Cromemco. They had text editing and
separate formatting software which together made a pretty good word
processor. This was before the IBM PC and even Apple Writer for the
Apple ][. It is not correct to say that useful and useable word
processing started only with the Mac.

it's correct for non-geeks.

the gui is what changed the industry.

On 2016-05-10 19:31, nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

As to why, PPC consumed too much power and ran to hot for the mobile
plans that Apple had.

nope.

powerpc chips had a lower tdp than similar intel chips.

for instance, the 15" powerbook came with a 65 watt power adapter,
while the 15" macbook pro came with an 85 watt adapter and also had a
larger battery. when apple demoed them at macworld (before they were
shipping), they refused to give a battery runtime estimate.

one of the biggest motivators for the intel transition was when steve
announced the powermac g5 and said "3 ghz in a year", then a year
later, not only did ibm fail to deliver on that, but they also said
"not anytime soon."

steve did not like it when people don't deliver, especially if it
embarrasses him in public.

apple then announced the intel transition a year later at wwdc.

With the famous chart about performance per watt. That's really what
counted. The PPC path forward had no increase in performance plotted
out that did not include more power and heat.

that was marking spin and soundbites to avoid coming right out and
saying motorola and ibm screwed them over.

Wrong and right. Performance (work achieved) over power (efficiency) is
what counted and what Apple needed going forward. Freescale and IBM
certainly kept Apple on the string though until the 3 GHz fiasco. But
Steve Jobs was never beholden to engineering fears and Apple had been
ready for years for the jump to intel.

--
She hummed to herself because she was an unrivaled botcher of lyrics.
-Nick (Gone Girl), Gillian Flynn.