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To: Marc Newman who wrote (24198)	4/20/1999 6:46:00 PM
From: BillHoo	Respond to of 213177

<<Physicians have traditionally had a very cozy relationship with the Mac. >> Yes, because in the past pharmaceutical companies have been big Mac users. However, MSFT and CPQ have been targeting pharm industry specifically. I don't think the Mac has that much of a lead any more. When I was at Merck, I saw a lot of pharmaceutical analysis tools that looked like they were strung together in a garage using old 486s. I asked how much the things cost and got prices of $10,000 to $20,000. For what? A 486/66 with a couple sensors (heat, light, chemo-electrical - that could be purchsed in a tech supply house for a couple bucks) and some custom DOS-based software. I saw the same for the Mac, but much more elegantly executed using the ADB ports. There's the key for this kind of development. It's cheap and easy to wire up stuff for the serial ports. Serial connectors with bare pins are easy to buy and wire up. Those tiny ADB ports on the Mac (though elegant) are not as easy. Programming on the Mac? DOS is really simple. Anyone can do it. My guess is that these guys who are making this specialized equipment are people in the medical field who saw a need for a piece of equipment and had the innovation to build the hardware to what they needed and only marketed as an afterthought. Anyway, back to keeping the Mac in the Med field. These have to be done: -Hardware that can be tinkered with -Easy programming interface that allows one to access ports for input and to analyze data. -Heavy promotion in Medical colleges. Macs were recommended as needed by pharm researchers cause that's what they used in school. -I also saw a lack of support by software vendors to upgrade their products to the latest Mac OS's. Whose fault is that? Someone is not envoouraging them to do so quick enough. -Bill_H