NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/comp/os/msdos/misc/4574

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-31 | 15.4 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!sun-barr!ames!agate!rsoft!mindlink!a3810
From: [e-mail] (Jeremy Reimer)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: PC-MODEM Issue #2 (July 1992--yeah, it's late)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 31 Jul 92 12:10:02 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world
Lines: 259

Note to readers:  This is the second in a series of monthly
columns about the IBM PC world, in the style of the PC
MAGAZINE columnists.  Done on a whim, and totally
freelance, this article should be taken at face value.
Comments, criticisms etc. welcome.

Additional notes: like real columnists, this one was behind schedule.
I had decided to move from monthly to bimonthly to be more like PC-MAGAZINE,
and also because some people had suggested it.  That didn't
work, and I thought I could get this in before the end of the month, but
sorry, no go.  I could list all sorts of excuses, like the fact that I
have other things to do with my life (I do, but I constantly avoid doing
them so that excuse is out the window) but I've settled for the excuse
that I needed inspiration and an idea before my next column.

Additional additional notes:  I noticed that PC Mag changed their
layout, so I decided to do the same, but my changes are less radical.

Additional irrelevant notes:  Nobody asked, but I'll tell you anyway.
Is the ASCII box really a picture of myself?  Well, it's the best I can
do with ASCII.  My head isn't quite as tall, or neck as long, or eyes as
similar to the letter o.  I've gotten better at doing ASCII faces
recently (threw in ones of my friends and co-sysops at a local BBS in an
extremely silly article) so maybe I'll re-do it.  Maybe.  (Actually if
you switch to 50-line mode it is a little more accurate)

Additional notes which seem to be getting longer than the actual
article: Look for a separate article entitled "Why I love the Internet"
to explain why I do this stuff, and whether or not I have a life. :)

Back issues?  Well, there is only one so far, if anyone wants the
original, I'll e-mail you a copy!

==========================================================================
PC-MODEM MAGAZINE Vol 0 Issue 1          July 1992 (Yes I know it's late!)
==========================================================================
 ___________
|   .-=-.   |                    _     Jeremy
|  /=-=-=\  |                   | \  _  . _  _  _  __
| |_-== -_| |                   |_/ /_\ | |\/| /_\ | \
| | o   o | |                   | \ \_  | |  | \_  |
| `|  /  |' |
|  | -_- |  |                   ----------------------
|   -___-   |
|   |   |   |
|_-- \_ _/--|               THE COMING AGE OF PC DOMINANCE
|      \ \  |               ==============================
`-----------'

   (:)  It may seem facetious to talk about the coming age of PC
dominance when PC's dominate the industry already (approximately 90% of
the personal computing market, at latest count) but I have decided to do
it anyway.  Apparently some Mac, Amiga, Atari, Timex-Sinclair, Commodore
64, Cromenco, Coleco Adam and IMSAI 8080 owners still refuse to
recognize this fact, and will have to be told long after it is a moot
point for the rest of us.
        IBM could hardly have imagined in 1981 that its own entry into
the personal computing field, the modest IBM PC, would turn out to have
such an impact on the entire industry.  The design, which we berate
today, was actually above-average (16-bit CPU?? In a _personal_
computer?) for its time.  The main problems with the beast, absurd cost
and lack of good standards (in the sense that CGA _should_ have been EGA
and EGA _should_ have been VGA) were displaced in a manner pleasing to
everyone except IBM: the advent of low-cost (and eventually, even
reliable) clones.  Without them the PC would be merely the first entry
into the 16-bit personal computing sweepstakes.  With them the PC became
at first a universal standard, then the lowest-common-denominator, and
finally to the point we are at today, where despite the best efforts of
the men in charge at IBM, Microsoft and Compaq, the PC is poised to
become not only the most widely-accepted computing standard, but the
best overall platform to use for general computing work.

        There will always be uses for new, high-powered "super"
computers like the Iris Indigo and Crimson series, and even today there
are a few uses for an expensive, high-powered Macintosh and definitely a
high-powered Amiga.  For people with limitless income, such choices may
still be necessary for doing specialized work.  The graphics for
Terminator 2 were not done on a PC, nor could they have been.  The
cruicial point is that at some unspecified future date, probably sooner
than anyone expects, the same feat WILL be possible on the next
generation of better, faster PCs, and Mac and Amiga owners may be left
in the cold.
        The main problem in getting a computer to do what you want is
not the hardware, it is the software.  Well-written software can
overcome virtually any hardware deficiencies (SEE LAST MONTH'S COLUMN)
but only if people are willing to dedicate the time and money to write
this software.  This becomes an issue of costs, which becomes an issue
of market size, and there is no larger market than the PC software
world.  This can be illustrated with clarity by the unexpected rise of
the 386 PC as the best gaming machine in the industry, bar none.  A
quotes from an interview: (courtesy of Game Bytes magazine):

    [Richard Garriot interview] He points out "Ogre" which has
    been translated to work on 7 different kinds of computers,
    then he points to their latest release, Ultima VII.  There's
    only one, and it's for IBM compatibles.  "We have no plans
    to port it to different platforms.  It requires a fast 386."

        Why?  Is the 386 machine fundamentally a better game platform
than anything else?  No, the Amiga or Sega Genesis are better from a
hardware point of view.  But these are both fantastically tiny markets.
Breakthrough games like the Wing Commander series are not available on
either platform.  They require the dedication of teams of programmers
and an incredible amount of money (the Ultima VII project cost an
estimated $1 million, which was more than recovered on the first day of
shipping).  Hardware limitations don't faze these people, they find
elegant software workarounds like the deceptively simple method of
getting the 3D bitmapped graphics to fit the different spaceship
cockpits in Wing Commander.  The point is not that people are supposed
to buy $2000 machines in order to play the latest games (although they
do-- a store owner once commented to me that someone spent that much
merely to upgrade his machine to play Wing II better) but that the
average office workhorse has suddenly become much more interesting than
the latest and greatest spreadsheet.  You no longer need an Amiga at
home to have fun, and life at the office need not be a bore (unless you
have one of those unenlightened bosses who hasn't realized that the
occasional video game break actually increases worker productivity,
particularly in fields that require creativity and actual thought.)

        In the more mundane field of operating environments, software
solutions come to the rescue again.  For lower powered systems, Geoworks
is an amazing, life-saving product.  On a low-powered 286, it runs like
Windows on a 486.  The only drawback is the lack of applications, but
have you ever looked into the average business office lately?  It is
full of secretaries who do nothing but type up one-page letters.  The
tiny (58k) yet powerful GeoWrite is probably the best program ever for
this sort of task, it is graphically exciting, simple to use and yet
didn't even blink when I loaded a 100k document into it.  Personally, I
think anything would be better than listening to people talk about the
latest CTRL-ALT-F9 "hot hint" in WordPerfect, especially when most
people don't even need a tiny fraction of the features they talk about
but never use.
        On the high end, we have OS/2 2.0, a fantastic product that
manages the impossible, running all sorts of DOS and Windows and OS/2
applications, including games, all at once.  People who complain about
OS/2 2.0 have usually never tried it, or could not be bothered to
install or set it up properly.
        Finally, we have Windows, which runs equally awfully on all
types of systems, although it is fun to hear digitized voices come up
whenever you move a window, open, exit, etc.  That is about the only
redeeming feature of this product.
        The main point of this is that so many diverse and interesting
ways of working exist all for one type of machine.  On the Macintosh,
you are limited to Apple's idea of the perfect GUI, which is far from
perfect.  On the Amiga, you can escape to a command-line interface, but
only because you can't do all the tasks you need to from the graphical
one.  Set up Geoworks, Windows, and OS/2 on a single machine (with a
large hard drive, of course!) and try to tell me you can't make this
machine work the way you want it to.  In fact, OS/2 can be run with one
of two graphical interfaces, as well as a command-line one which can be
run at the same time!  This type of freedom does not exist on any other
platform.

        Now we return to what was supposed to be the main focus of this
column-- the coming dominance of the PC.  Multiple operating platforms
and great games are akin to the spark that sets alight the blaze.  They
create a demand for better, faster and cheaper PCs.  This in turn sparks
companies like Intel to lower the prices of their power processors in
order to make room for even newer, faster processors like the P5 (586)
which will let the PC encroach dangerously into realms of speed
previously limited to expensive workstations.   This entices software
developers to create greater, more powerful (and of course larger)
applications which in turn makes people upgrade their PCs... and so on.
        Along the way, crucial performance problems of the PC are being
addressed.  The ISA bus gave way to the EISA bus, but only now do people
care enough about EISA machines to actually buy them, and the end result
is the prices of EISA boxes will continue to drop until they are
indistinguishable from ISA ones.  Video card performance issues inspired
manufacturers to create the 32-bit CPU-speed local bus, which hopefully
will be standardized soon.  Storage considerations are temporarily
alleviated by large, cheap hard drives and the coming age of the CD-ROM
(a subject for another column, but isn't it interesting that CD-ROM only
became popular on the PC, despite the fact that companies like Apple
insist that only THEIR machines are multimedia-capable?)

        Now, no one can predict the future, least of all the futurists.
But some trends are too big to stop.  No matter what grand new machines
emerge in the next generation of computing technology (although given
the current status of the Apple/IBM alliance, these may not come any
time soon) the issue will always remain: "Can we transplant this onto
PCs, because that's what everyone has?"  Innovation can always come from
somewhere else.  The NeXT machine is a prime example of this.  Even
Windows now exceeds it in terms of digitized noises, and its other nifty
features are already finding their way into DOS/Windows/OS/2 programs.
As if this wasn't enough, the NeXT system software, NeXTstep, will soon
be out for the 486.
        Don't expect to see NeXTstep/Mac, or even a Mac GUI that
actually makes sense.  Most new Mac software, in fact, is making it to
the PC in record time, and stuff like Fractal Design Painter has even
reported to (gasp) run quite well, thank-you, under Windows 3.1!  This
of course, explains why Motorola chose to compare PC and Mac performance
using the old Windows 3.0 and an unaccelerated graphics card.  With a
few inexpensive goodies, the stock 486/50 _will_ run rings around a
Quadra, despite Motorola's claims.  And even if it didn't, who cares?
After all, wasn't it Apple who said (in the days of mollasses-speed
Macintoshes) that speed and power were trivial compared to actual use?
Even John Sculley admits that the useful lifetime of the Macintosh may
well be drawing to a close.  No-one is saying that about the PC.  There
are simply too many of the little buggers around.
        Let's sum up.  (Try to emit a slightly less audible sigh of
relief)
        PC:   Here to stay, today and tomorrow.  586, 686, it will
              never end!  Colour laptops, palmtops, price wars, why not
              join the PC bandwagon?
        Mac:  Will be the last to die, but when Aldus admits that 70% of
              Pagemaker code is the same on both the Mac and PC, and that
              new features will appear in the PC version first, you know
              it's almost over.  Don't even try to play one of the new
              games on a Mac, because you will never be able to.  If Mac
              users are the creative, wonderful, fun people they say they
              are, why do none of them play any games?
       Amiga: If it weren't for the Toaster, this thing would be gone
              already.  As it is, the Amiga isn't much use now except
              a passable game machine and a cheap video editor.  Yes,
              it's better-designed than a PC, what isn't?  Doesn't help
              much without new software.
    Atari ST: Unless you live in Europe, this is gone NOW.  Doesn't
              even have the design features of the Amiga.  Its software
              is just GEM gone mad.  Why bother?
        NeXT: I love NeXTstep, but hate the NeXT itself for being too
              monochrome-oriented (STILL!) and too expensive.  Glad to
              see all those wonderful innovations coming to PC's though!
Workstations: Fun if your boss can afford one, but how come you guys
              seem to spend all day reading netnews?
Everything:   You get the picture.  A single company, no matter how
else          talented, cannot compete with the industry standard.
              Don't think of this as some 1984-ish conspiracy, just
              realize that the talent is merely moving to a new
              platform!  You can now blast enemy 3D space ships, explore
              vivid artificial worlds, create your own fractal
              landscapes and paintings, multitask beautifully, and
              use the latest in design and publishing software on a PC.
              It's about time, because not all of us can afford a
              separate, incompatible, proprietary computer to do each
              of these things with.  And nor should we have to.

Reading over my summary, I freely admit to a little evangelism.  Why
not, after our ears and eyes have been accosted for years by owners of
those "other" machines about how much better they were?  After we
suffered for years with crummy CGA games and slow machines and idiotic
versions of DOS?  Those days are over, and the time for PCs to step in
the limelight has begun.  Don't say I didn't warn you.             []

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PC-MODEM MAGAZINE                                             July 1992
-----------------------------------------------------------------------






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