Vote for the worst PC invention...

[speedy]

Another tidbit from history on how the two "Steves" stole the whole concept for the Apple computer.

In the early 1980s, the two Steves who had founded Apple Computer - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak - drove over to a computer research center run by Xerox in Palo Alto, Calif. At "Xerox PARC," as the laboratory was called, a friend who worked at Xerox took them on a fateful tour.

The two Steves spotted an odd computer at PARC called the Star. Practically nobody remembers the Star these days, but the guys from Apple gave it a place in history. It made such an impression on them that they decided they had to make a computer of their own that worked the same way.

They "borrowed" the ideas of putting boxes on the screen, called windows, from the Star, and they also copied the way the Star showed little drawings of things on the screen. The little drawings, called "icons," did various operations when you moved a pointer over them.

The key to everything was a mouse - a device the size of a bar of soap that you rolled around on the desk beside the computer. Wherever the mouse went on the desk, the pointer went on the screen. When you clicked the button on the mouse, the computer went into action.

So the GUI, the concept of "windows", the main stream introduction of a mouse to replace just a keyboard and icons on the "desktop" alwere invented by Xerox, not Apple, not Microsoft. Like I said before the board of directors at Xerox didn't know what they had, said it had no practial purpose and the rest is history...

Next time some Mac fanantic crows about how "original" they are show them this. LOL!

Of course Billy G stone the concept from Apple proving for ever that Gates is a far better marketing guru that Jobs could ever dream to me.

To be totally honest Xerox really didn't come up the mouse concept on their own either. They just married it to computers for general use.

Before that Douglas Engelbart and William English at Stanford Research Institute back in the 1960s, came up with the concept for better interaction between humans and fire control systems for military use.

ROTFLAMO!

[snowmoon]

The story is not quite right....

There was one VERY important thing to rember. Apple made a very generous donation to Xerox PARC research facilities to the tune of 1 million dollars to get access to the full facilities. Xerox never pursued many of the novel and possibly lucrative ideas that came out of PARC.

The part about bill stealing it from apple is true. Apple was dumb enough to loan M$ computers to write software on and they stole the OS concepts while they were at it.

[speedy]

A token one million dollar donation is chicken feed. That's like having a wedding reception with a 1,000 guests and they leave a $10 tip.

I find it most amusing that the Xerox board of directors were so damn stupid to let Apple steal their invention. Remember XEROX wasn't a mom and pop operation, it was a major Fortune 500 corporation unlike Apple that was strictly a nickel and dime outfit. In fact today Apple is still small potatoes, and was recently kept afloat with an influx of cash from rivals Microsoft. Strange.

Besides Apple never had more than a 10% market share and if they didn't flood school systems in the states, would have never went anywhere. In fact where have they gone? If Macs are so damn hot, how come hardly nobody buys them? What kind of market share they have now? Somewhere between 3-6%.

Strangest of all is why would big blue (IBM) with all the talent they have ask a then nobody named Bill Gates to develop DOS?

Of course as some of you know DOS is loosely based on UNIX and old Billy didn't really write DOS he bought it from some down and out programmer for a song, then made a few changes.

[tigerwolf]

what about the superdisk? I'm not really sure if that
falls into a bad invention as much as bad timing. They come up with the concept of a 100mb floppy disk after iomega already has the market and cdr and cdrw drives are dropping in cost. So I think it more of bad timing, which sometimes means bad invention. Hey I'm happy to see the mini-cdr coming onto the market at lower prices, they hold about 180mb of info, which makes it wonderful to give a buddy some stuff without wasting a whole cdr. The cost doesn't bother me as far as wasting a whole cdr for a few meg of info, but it just disheartens me to burn about 100mb on 650 mb disk, especially if my friend doesn't have a burner so I know the other 550 mb won't be used. sniff sniff.

anyway,
TW

have an excellent day.

[Topy44]

USB KEYBOARDS!!
why should i pay a forgain for a keyboard that uses up a usb connection, leaving me a unused keyboard connector that cant be used for anything else?
besides, it requires to activate usb, what uses a IRQ (i dont have any left really...had to deactivate my com ports for my new ide controller allready...)
actually, USB itself could be a nomination to
nice idea - but so terribly bad realisation......

cya
Topy44

[shochan]

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On 2001-10-19 16:36:28, d4n13l wrote:
Tigerwolf (Your profile:"Jack of all trades"... master of none - LOL)
you just shot yourself in the foot!
A Mac is not a PC... same as an Amiga 500 wasnt a PC, same as the PS/2 isnt a PC, same as a PowerPC isnt a PC, same as a Sparc system isnt a PC, same as an Alpha system isnt a PC. Any computer is not automatically a PC, PCs are just one type of computer.
By saying that a Mac wont run Windoze etc. Is like trying to get a petrol car to take diesel - they are incompatible.
A PC is a computer based on the original IBM PC standards.
Ie. IBM-PC compatible. This standard is a bit lax these days - but an Apple Mac is no way a PC. PC is x86 architecture - Athlon, Duron, Celeron, P3/4', Xeon, Cyrix etc. Macs have a different architecure to PCs, they have their own processors and their own hardware standards. In fact, a standard PC compared to a Power Mac is lame.

P.S. Linux can run on Macs - Linux/PPC.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: d4n13l on 2001-10-19 17:18:25 ]</font>
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The ymake windoz 2k for macs, I saw 12 of them at my job. Its pretty neat and fast as hell.

A PC is A personal computer So anything that is a computer and is ment for a consumer technicaly is a PC

[marsmayhem]

Well, in the Golden Age of Computing, sure - PC stood for Personal Computer. But today, PC means different things to different people:

"Will this Windows thing work on my PC?"
The average consumer overheard in stores throughout the country - circa early 90's...

"My PC took a dump when I installed Linux/Warp/etc."
Someone crackhead OS junkie with more OS's than common sense (I had a friend like this).

"Mr Jones, what you said to Miss Pussy Galore was not quite PC"

"Will this Windows thing work on my PC?"
Bill Gates to his research team, circa early 90's.

[tigerwolf]

I love the bill gates one. LOL.

I wonder how you can be pc with a woman named pussy galore?



"Will this Windows thing work on my PC?"
Bill Gates to his research team, circa early 90's.





[/quote]

[vitualis]

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On 2001-10-19 17:02:46, d4n13l wrote:
...and your browser would still be called Lynx.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Have you ever used Lynx? Damn fine browser IMHO! Stable as rock, and twice as fast as IE or NN could ever be.

Regards.

[DiViNeLeFT]

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On 2001-10-19 22:13:59, speedy wrote:

ROTFLAMO!

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Rolling On The Floor Laughing Ass My Off??

all your base are belong to us!

[d4n13l]

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On 2001-10-23 12:08:25, vitualis wrote:
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On 2001-10-19 17:02:46, d4n13l wrote:
...and your browser would still be called Lynx.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Have you ever used Lynx? Damn fine browser IMHO! Stable as rock, and twice as fast as IE or NN could ever be.

Regards.

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Damn right, Lynx rules! I have a version for each OS that hve as well. It certainly is fast, the only problem with using it these days is "new" things like frames and mass multimedia etc... cluttering up my much cherished text browsing... pah.

Speedy,
"If Macs are so damn hot, how come hardly nobody buys them?"

Because they are so damn expensive . Besides, you cant really say that Macs are no good because they have a small market share... I mean look at BeOS, that was WAY better than 98 but the power of marketing is not to be under estimated. Microcrap + Integrated Electronics = Wintel... Apple dont stand a chance.

shocan & /\/\ars/\/\ayhem-dude
being a computer science nerd, a PC is a PC is a PC. Not any old computer... but a PC. hehe. Its like the new term for crackers - hackers. I still live in the "golden age"... I know what a PC really is, LOL.

shocan, do you know if Apple were working on a PC port of MacOS until recently? Until they quit... and then said "Why would we want to do that?"

[Xolo]

I'ld have to say, anything USB.

USB totally sucks. The transfer rate sucks, the price for cables suck. Why would anyone want crappy USB?

Anyone wanna back me up?


I am a Meat Popsicle!

[d4n13l]

Ive got a USB optical mouse which I love, but when bought it, it was like early Fords "You can have any colour you want... as long as it is black". In other words: it was USB... or USB.

[thxkid]

in a word "XP" what a waste. and Mac who else was stupid enough to stick everything into a 15 inch monitor case, Colored blue and clear and call it cool, then charge $1200(paper weights).

[Vidbox]

The 640k conventional memory ram barrier.

Need I say more

[d4n13l]

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On 2001-10-23 16:31:42, thxkid wrote:
in a word "XP" what a waste. and Mac who else was stupid enough to stick everything into a 15 inch monitor case, Colored blue and clear and call it cool, then charge $1200(paper weights).
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hey! I also call Macs Paper weights! LOL
Or "over-priced-fashionable-desktop-furniture". Not that they arent good at what they do.... they are good at that... its just that they are way too ££££ and way too "fashiony". PCs do the job cheaper, are far more flexible and have monopoly on nearly all software ever written. I must admit though... I would far rather be looking at a Mac screen than this peice of bland beige crap.

[Feslmogh]

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On 2001-10-23 16:31:42, thxkid wrote:
in a word "XP" what a waste. and Mac who else was stupid enough to stick everything into a 15 inch monitor case, Colored blue and clear and call it cool, then charge $1200(paper weights).
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

... and no floppy drive?!?

[RaleighNC]

Remember Microsoft BOB.