🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <danpop.824477998@rscernix>, Dan Pop <danpop@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>In <4g00uj$gaq@nuke.csu.net> ghansen@isc.sjsu.edu (Gregory L Hansen) writes:
...
>>had started this earlier, they probably wouldn't have finished before 
>>they switched to the PowerPC line and would have had to start over again 
>>anyway.  And if they had finished, what's the point of putting out new 
>>software technology for a line of hardware they're about to drop?  And if 
>>Copland was going to run on the PPCP, they sort of needed to finalize 
>>that standard before they could finish the new OS.
>
>You mean that Apple programmers are so incompetent that they're not able
>to write code which can be easily migrated from one hardware platform
>to another?  Linux was ported to a bunch of platforms and Apple is porting
>it now to the PMac (they don't even seem to wait for the PPCP).  If this
>was possible (so easily) with Linux (or *BSD), why do you think it would
>be so difficult with software written by Apple's professional programmers.

This is just a guess, of course.  But I would think that, originally, the 
Apple programmers didn't expect MacOS to run on anything but 680x0 series 
Motorola chips and Apple hardware.  Linux, and UNIXes in general, were 
very much designed with portability in mind.  So was Windows NT, being 
designed to compete with UNIX and all.  It doesn't mean 
Apple programmers were incompetent, just that ten years ago they were 
programming for a much smaller world.  Heck, they didn't even expect Mac 
clones, much less novel new hardware!  It's no fair insulting a hammer 
because it's not very good at sawing wood.
     Perhaps you've noticed that Copland, the first major redesign of 
MacOS for new hardware, is rather more portable.

>>I'm not saying that makes it all right, just that I'm not really 
>>surprised it took that long to get PMT on a Mac.  But I do wonder why 
>>Windows users haven't been able to enjoy PMT until the hybrid form of 
>>Win95 came out.  Microsoft doesn't exactly have to deal with radically 
>>changing hardware, you know.

>Windows users had the choice between at least a dozen of OS's with PMT.
>They could even run their Windows apps in a PMT environment, at least on
>OS/2 and SCO.  The PMac users had MacOS as their only option.  Can you see
>the difference?

OS/2 users aren't Windows users, are they?  They're OS/2 users.  Neither are 
SCO users.  They're SCO users.  And neither OS is controlled by Microsoft.
I was talking specifically about Microsoft OSes for average home users.
And Windows users don't have the choice between at least a dozen of OSes 
with PMT.  Nowadays they have a choice between Windows 3.1 and Windows95, 
one is CMT and one is hybrid.  Can you see the difference?