Oooah :D. Back in my day... (sounding old for a bit!) lotsa amiga peoples asked the same, when it was dying. I think for a blunt direct answer, it's the whole machine, OS and all - and that combination (which usually works well together) changes over time. A Macintosh in 1984 (128k), 1987(II), 91(Quadra), 95 (Powermac) 2000 (iMac) are all very different beasts. The hardware is ENTIRELY different, the OS changed remarkably (but less so, at least until OSX) and we end up with different computers totally. There are some things that haven't changed much either, some core parts of the OS, and the ideals of REAL plug n play hardware - but even that doesn't apply across every mac - like adding memory to a plus and physically needing to cut a resistor on the motherboard. It's a fuzzy thing, like a big blob of wet black paint dropped on white paper, with some coloured speckles embedded in it. It's thoughtful gui, innovation, easier hardware, build quality, good design, good looks - not always with all of those features in every machine - and the occasional messup where it all goes wrong like 4400's, 6200's, original LC's and Classics :D.

But aside from my blathering on with romanticisms about macs, they're just a progression of products produced by a company who wants to keep in business - usually with the 'we're a little bit better' attitude.

I think anything that uses full mac hardware is a mac, even if its running Linux for example - it just gets a bit towards the greyer areas :D

dana

Sounds a Jackson Pollack work, maybe...?

666th poster and 666th thread-creator
Mod of the Mac II series Forums
Total 68K Macs liberated: 7
Regular Disappear!

I can see you point...okay, how about saying the Mac is like a Chuck Close painting?

666th poster and 666th thread-creator
Mod of the Mac II series Forums
Total 68K Macs liberated: 7
Regular Disappear!

and thanks, comrade,
jt

georgia o'keeffe!

jt

an associate from the old days was fond of saying:
"a CPU is a terrible thing to waste!"

as far as i am concerned 90% of people could do 90% of any computing the would ever NEED to do, with clarisworks on a 68000 or MSWorks for DOS on an 80286. granted, not nearly that high a percentage could do everything they needed to do and the www has made the resource requirements for the web ludicrous in the extreme, but that's not the point! there was a letter to the editor in macaddict from a woman who spent an obscene percentage of her monthly income on that publication and rode a bus much longer than any nyc commute just to get to a mac for e-mail correspondence. in setting up our toys and learning about how things were in the old days (or how some of us wished we we had had the resources to do them back then) we might be able to get some of those 90/90 and better systems into hands where they could do some real good. it's not very much in the estimation of anyone hanging here, but a 90/90 level computer in the hands of a kid with no prospects whatsoever for anything better, it's a window into a different world. my memories of the mac kids club are kickin' in here, so i apologize for the length and sappiness of the post, but i really think that with a little teamwork and effort, we could make a difference!

jt

I'm pulling this quote out of your post, cos it does sum up my feelings on the wastefulness of software. Pick a Mac running system 6 - say an SE/30 or so - or an Amiga 3000 (about the same) or a 386/486 with win 3.11 - about the same again. They browse in a basic sense, and like you said - 90% of 90% is doable with what they have. hell, even photoshop 3 works ok on a 68030. Take now, a PIII and G3 - say about 500Mhz. Just the CPU's alone are around 20 times faster in clock speed, they're FAR more efficient, memory is faster, hundreds of times larger, graphics cards immeasurably quicker, and HD space almost free. All of that power and all I seem to be able to do extra in photoshop is see it in a bit higher resolution, and run some features faster. The old stuff I used to do seems to clunk along the same speed as an older machine!. and wordprocessing - even less new features, but the same clunkiness in half the WP's. Imagine a brand new G4 with an OS and apps written specifically for the cpu, no "cpu speed will take care of this", with a set number of tasks and how it would fly. A graphic design workstation may need no more than mild networking abilities, and about 5 apps.

hrm. it's a bit too harsh, as continually rewriting the os/apps for the specific machine does get unwieldy, and many of the features which slow things some are those that speed up development and give the machine such a universal ability - my iMac (like all boxies) will be doing more than it was ever designed for, in 5 years.

No, there wasn't really any structure to this post people - just ranting :)

dana

The hardware never changes - but the OS and what runs on it can go through a dozen changes. a Q605 when new was a mac, but it didn't run 8.1 - an OS that wasn't dreamed of. And markymark does mpegdec, and adobe release PS4, and ... so on. Whats the commonality? Hardware!

(with feet, too)

dana