Doren. The market for Apple there is too small to support Apple. As an experienced builder of both Apples and Wintels I can add most things as fast as I can undo the case and insert them. The older Wintels were a nuisance, but I would mentally map the IRQs and com ports etc, and never had any trouble. A greenhorn though will have trouble, as your friends did.
If Apple gets a universal standard clone along the lines if the Wintels, it will soon beat them. In two years it will not, as the Wintel software will be at or past the Mac products automatic plug and play by then.
As it stand you can now use all plug and play items easily and rapidly. The only problem occurs if you run out of resources with many cards with multi functions on each one( IRQ scarcity)
So this fall and next spring is Apples last Hurrah if it fails. If it fails by this time next fall it will be a takeover target for some trophy hunting Japanese/Taiwanese company. The Macs will stay, but the future will be gone. Hard but true, many on the thread think Apple has lots of time, not so, time is scarce, as the Wintels advance inexorably, Apples share shrinks inexorably, the software base erodes as more and more apps never get upgraded. So to blandly say that they will be around for a while is risky thinking if Apples marketing also thinks that way, you are dead now. Only hard work and a dramatic change will work. A bit of tinkering will not work.
Bill |
