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To: drmorgan who wrote (14258)	11/18/1997 8:46:00 PM
From: Charles Hughes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

>>>I guess that the IBM PC was so entrenched already in the business community that engineering on the Mac really didn't have a chance. But I have always wondered if Apple blew it early on by promoting Mac's in education more than business? <<< I really think you could ascribe this somewhat to the intelligent pursuit of the engineering marketplace by Unix workstation vendors like HP, Sun, Apollo, SGI, and IBM, rather than to the PC/DOS takeover. Actually, a lot of design and database tools for DOS were dropped in the 80's when memory constraints became more important. The mac architecture might have been able to handle it, but there were a ton of dedicated engineering applications on Unix, so most people bought workstations, as they had lots of bucks. Also, all the cheap boxes in those days, including Macs, had a tendency to crash a lot. Not the kind of thing you want in the middle of a 3 day sim. And the disk drives then didn't even withdraw their heads on power out on the cheap boxes, so more expensive Unix boxes were the way to go if you had any money. I saw some mac design aids, like for circuit design. I did write and port some engineering apps for DOS in the 80's. In one case, a 'SAGS' program to calculate power line cable types, pole spacing and ground clearances, line heat etc, for Pacific Power. In another, a occilloscope interface program for Tektronics. Neither of these had the memory/performance requirements that would have kept me from using overlays and such. I think the Apple problem was arrogance, which it had from the top from the earliest days. They thought that their manipulation of the religious faithful would allow them to charge a $1000 premium over PCs ad infinitum, without ever substantially improving the OS. They got addicted to fat unit margins, and couldn't survive without them. Nor were the boxes ever super fast. They coasted for a long time on the reputation garnered from the popularization of the GUI. But people do catch on eventually. Another problem was their reliance on Postscript, which Adobe always charged an arm and a leg for. Finally, their R department was filled with great dreamers who came up with great ideas, but they had no clue how to productize. No D. And when D did come through, as with VR movies, the marketing people would then go the old price gouging route for the tools before the standards had a chance to take hold. No R&D or standards promotion savvy, in other words, but lots of brains. Too bad, typical story. Chaz