Re[2]: Platform of choice

[Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- COM]

      Again, technologies pioneered by NeXT, and implemented in other OS's
      loooooong before Windows.

A note for all the non-Windows afficianados out here. Statements like the
above are a waste of electrons. The Wintel bigots are all convinced that
things originate there. Heck, Bill Gates in a recent interview credited the
MS invention of WinSock for making the Internet possible, so I suppose the
blindness is come by legitimately.

I have to admit I was sorely tempted to trot out a long laundry list of
facts about MS "innovations" myself. There was a good story going around a
while back that the reason MS gave ActiveX to a standards group is that
their license on the software patents underlying it -- patents IBM owns --
was about to expire. But as I was typing the list, I realized that it
wouldn't make any difference. Minds are already made up on this issue, and
have been for a long time; remember, heat is considered a waste by-product
in most processes.

It really doesn't matter. I started out with an Intel machine. I've used
DOS since 2.x and along the way used Windows, TopView, and DesqView. I've
used an Atari, an Amiga, a NeXT, a Sun, an HP, and a DEC. "Tools is tools,"
to paraphrase a US commercial. No platform is perfect, period. As I read
someone else's message on why she uses Windows, I realized I use Mac for
the same reasons. All the software I need was either originally developed
for it (Excel is perhaps the biggest example) or brought over to it later.

And that's the bottom line. I use a Mac because it does everything I need
it to do quickly and reliably. It's more comfortable for me to use,
probably because its designers thought like I do. It's more flexible (in
addition to MacOS, I've run DOS, Windows, iRMX, and Linux on it -- I
suspect I could do OS/2 if I tried -- and I'm looking forward to firing up
OpenStep on it as well, to see what NeXt has been up to since the
grey-scale cube) than any other system I've tried. AppleScript and Frontier
make writing quick scripts to automate repetitive functions a breeze to
write. (I've a local web server with a searchable index to support, and I
set up an automatic text archiver on a mac which runs in the background,
every hour, wrapping text files which have been "submitted" to it -- placed
in a networked directory -- in simple HTML code, copying them to the
archive directory so they can be indexed and retrieved, and deleting the
submitted file without interfering with the other duties that mac is
performing. The script took very little time to write, and has worked like
a charm for months.)

I'm sure every one of us has had successes on our various platforms. We use
what we use because it works for us. Isn't that enough?


Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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