[Leica] Win 95 to 98 my final word

[Frank Dernie <FrankDernie@compuserve.com>]

Kotsinadelis, Peter wrote 

>Alexey,
>
>You academes get so touchy when people trash your beloved Apples......

>Fact is MAC's safest bastion was academia, they gave away the Apples.
>Problem was in the business world they use PCs.  Hence the reason MS won
the
>war.  I have not met one professor or academe that likes MS.  All are in
>love with MACs and Netscape.  They forever chose the underdog...

>Peter K


I am not in "acedeme" I use both a mac and a PC. I have written loads of
software, starting before the PC was introduced and finishing about10 years
ago.

It is very true that industry uses PCs. I remember the choice process
myself at the time. The company chose the cheapest machine that sort of
worked. IT was part of the accounts department, who used a IBM mainframe
and were on friendly terms with the local IBM marketing dept. The choice
was made on this basis, not fitness for purpose. I do not know one
programmer or engineer who was not furious and disappointed at the time.
With the arrival of cheap clones and industry having adopted PCs most cheap
software has been written for PCs. Of course, PCs are much better than they
were but they are still so strangled by the legacy of MS DOS that you need
a Porsche style power plant to get VW speed. Of the old systems that were
superior to PCs at their introduction, sadly only the Mac survives. I
personally regret the passing of the early Hewlwett Packard technical
machines. Who knows what that great innovator would have achieved by now if
they had not eventually  adopted the comatibility route and made a PC!

I think it is one of the saddest shortcomings of our open market system. It
is not what is actually the best which succeeds, but that which the
majority of Joe Public can be convinced is best which succeeds. This is
increasingly the case includinc politics, sport etc.

On the cost side there is a parallel with Leica. People for whom quality is
the most important factor did not choose the PC. For those for whom only
the short term bottom line counted (and could not measure the indirect
effects thereon) PCs were chosen, hence industry and computer illiterates
dictated the future of computers. Bill Gates jumped onto the right
bandwagon and did a superb marketing job. PCs are pretty good nowadays. In
the beginning they were DIRE.

For those where quality comes first I think a Mac or Leica are mandatory.
Where budget is a limitation, and pretty good is good enough, a PC , Canon,
Nikon, Olympus, minolta etc will get you most of the way there most of the
time.

just MHO of course, based on experience with all the above except Minolta:)

Cheers
Frank