The interaction between Jobs (Michael Fassbender) and Woz (Seth Rogen) pretty much sums up the Apple ][ era.
RickRussell_CA
was RickRussellTX @ reddit
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023
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So, I lived through that time, and I supported computers professionally during that time. I started working at a university help desk in 1989.
It’s easy to go back and look at Apple products and white-box PCs of the era (or quasi-legit clones like Compaq, HP, Gateway, etc) and say, “oh, on specs, the Apples were MASSIVELY overpriced – you can get a much better deal with the PC”.
The problem was that PCs were nowhere near on par, functionally, with Macintosh.
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Networking. We were running building-wide Appletalk networks – with TCP/IP gateways – over existing phone wires YEARS before anybody figured out how to get coax or 10base-T installed. We were playing NETWORK GAMES (Bolo, anyone) on Mac in the late 80s.
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And when they did… what do you do with networking in DOS? Unless you ran a completely canned network OS (remember Banyan, Novell, etc. ad infinitum?) and canned apps specifically designed to work with it, you were SOL. Windows 3.0 and 3.1 were a joke compared to System 7.
I configured PCs and Macs for the freshman class in 1995. For the Mac? You plug the ethernet port in and the OS does the rest. For the PC… find a DOS-compatible packet driver that works with your network card, get it running, then run Trumpet Winsock in Windows 3.1, then… then… it was a goddamned nightmare. We had to have special clinics just to get people’s PCs up and running with a web browser, and even then, there were about 10% of machines we just had to say “nope”. Can’t find a working driver, can’t get anything working right. Your IRQs are busted? Who fuckin’ knows. I ran the “Ethernet Clinic” until the late 90s, when Windows 98 finally properly integrated the TCP/IP layer in the OS.
- Useful software on the Mac had a pretty consistent look & feel. On the PC? Even in Windows 3.1, it was all over the map. You might have a Windows native program, you might have a DOS program that launches in a console window, you might have a completely different graphical interface embedded in the software (Delphi apps, anyone?). Games were using DOS into the mid 90s because getting anything working right in Windows 3.1 was a total fuckin crap shoot.
Windows 95 started to fix things, finally. And Windows XP would finally bring an OS with stability comparable to Mac (arguably WIndows 2000 as well, but it was never really offered on non-corporate PCs).
The short version is: that $3000 Mac could do a lot more than that $1800 PC, even if the specs said that the CPU was faster on the PC.
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Well, that button probably dates from the late 80s or early 90s, when Apple was comparing Macs to branded IBM PS/2s and such that were sold to schools and enterprises.
And they weren’t wrong, at the time. Those PS/2s were fuckin’ expensive.
17·8 months agoWhat do you do when you have the monopoly?
Turn the consumer into the commodity!
I also have the Humble Bundle version :-)
I don’t really do Android gaming any more, the Shield K1 is long gone and my cheap-ass Chinese tablet is mostly for Newpipe and other Android-only media consumption.
Harebrained Schemes’ critically acclaimed Shadowrun games disappeared from the Play store years ago – I played them back in the day on my Shield K1. The apps supported modding, and changes to the Google Play TOS meant they would require significant updates to make them compliant with new policies.
Harebrained worked on it halfheartedly for a year or two, but eventually decided not to bother updating them, so they were gone forever.
And, presumably other brands that come from Daihatsu plants. Assuming the safety issues are only within Daihatsu facilities, that’s the key information. “Daihatsu, a Toyota subsidiary” or similar conveys the useful information. “Toyota-owned automaker” does not.
As it stands, it sounds like CNN is trying to vaugely imply that the problem applies to Toyota generally, which obvs will get a lot of clicks from people who own Toyotas. That’s sloppy clickbait.
Odd that they put “Toyota-owned automaker” in the headline instead of Daihatsu. Or something like, :“Daihatsu, owned by Toyota”.
Whether the problems go “up the chain” to the parent company is TBD, I guess.
No idea how the compensation structure works on Medium. But I also have no idea what their content moderation policies are either.
I’d love to say that, but unfortunately journalists I respect, who are doing very excellent content that repudiates fascism, don’t really have anywhere else to go. Radley Balko, for example, is a preeminent journalist on the topics of police brutality, law enforcement misdeeds, and failures of the criminal justice system. But WaPo didn’t want to publish him any more, so where does he go?
I hope they find alternatives, but I’m not going to stop paying for journalism from people like Balko. I don’t want to let white supremacists force any more epistemic closure.
1·9 months agoAnything that complements your career as a Cheese Greeter
Do what you enjoy. Half-ass all the things.
FYI, the new official Office default is Aptos. I’ve been making work docs with it for a few weeks and I have to admit, it looks really clean and technical.
5·9 months agoCapri Sun and PBJs oh yeeeeah
I’m familiar with that thought exercise, but I find it to be fearmongering. AI isn’t going to be some creative god that hacks and breaks stuff on its own. A paperclip maximizer AI isn’t going to manipulate world steel markets or take over steel mills unless that capability is specifically built into its operating parameters.
The much greater risk in the near term is that bad actors exploit AI to accomplish very specific immoral, illegal, or exploitative tasks by building those tasks into AI. Such as deepfakes, or using drones to track and murder people, etc. Nation-state actors will probably start using this stuff for truly horrible reasons long before criminals do.
I want to live on Playground Island.
That, in my mind, is a non-threat. AIs have no motivation; there’s no reason for an AI to do any of that.
Unless it’s being manipulated by a bad actor who wants to do those things. THAT is the real threat. And we know those bad actors exist and will use any tool at their disposal.
Hmm. I just moved into a new house in SoCal, and I’m not having any of the problems he describes. In fact I’d describe the installation of my symmetric 2gbps fiber connection as very clean, and WiFi propagation has been excellent.
I’m not ecstatic that the router they provided is an Amazon eero, but I could replace that myself if I wanted.
a mandate that stands to require all new vehicles to have AI-driven technology that can disable your vehicle if the technology determines you’ve had one beer too many
This, too, is a false conclusion. The bill specifies that a monitor-and-disable technology exist to prevent impaired driving, not that it should be based on AI, nor does the bill require the detection of alcohol.
Does anyone believe that in 2027, if the NHTSA requested that system manufacturers turn over the information they collect, it would be told no? Don’t bet on it.
And there is nothing in the legislation mandating data collection or storage.
Certainly, but Apple was comparing itself to other computer companies with international reach, not to the white box PCs coming out of the Floppy Wizard store in the strip center.