🚀 go-pugleaf

In <403nll$ijj@seminole.gate.net> cirby@news.gate.net (Chad Irby) writes:

>Dan Pop (Dan.Pop@mail.cern.ch) wrote:
>: Who cares?  Today, there are orders of magnitude more typewriter users
>: than Mac users. 
>
>Well, no.  To have "orders of magnitude" more typewriter users than Mac 
>users, you'd have to have 100 times as many typewriter users than Mac 
>users.  There are about 20 million Mac users (at least- assuming *only* 
>one user per Mac). 

I've no idea whether Apple sold 20 million Mac's or not, but you're making a
couple of bad assumptions:

1.  ALL the Mac's sold are still in use.  I have some troubles imagining
    someone using an 128K Mac today.

2.  Every Mac user has only one Mac.  Many Mac fans/bigots have two
    (one 68k and one PPC) or more (add one portable to the above) Mac's.

>That would mean 2 *billion* typewriter users.  Or one
>out of three people in the world using typewriters.  Don't bet on it.

What's wrong assuming 1 in 3 people live in a civilised country and not
having a computer at home or even at office?
>
>: And more typewriters are sold every day than Mac's.
>
>Not any more. 

Any hard data?

>There's not that many companies even *making* them any 
>more- they've all switched over to making printers for computers.  

Care to provide the names of some of "all" those companies who have
switched to printers for computers?

>All of the typewriters I see in offices nowadays are "legacy systems," 
>and aren't being replaced when they wear out.  The only places that still 
>use typewriters as a major office tool are decripit companies and 
>government bureaucracies.

You forgot the home users (and I've seen _many_ homes with a typewriter
_and_ a computer) and those who have to fill preprinted forms.
>
>: They're one order of magnitude cheaper and don't become obsolete with the
>: same speed as the Mac's do.
>
>A cheap, professional quality typewriter costs anywhere from three to 
>five hundred dollars.  They'd have to cost under a hundred to be "one 
>order of magnitude cheaper."  

Right.  A new, cheap, typewriter costs about $100 here and the cheapest
Mac (something you wouldn't want to use) is more than $1000.  Looks
like an order of magnitude to me.

>And they're completely obsolete.

So are Windows and MacOS.  They're still best sellers, nevertheless.
>
>By the way- do you know what "order of magnitude" means?  Ask one of the 
>scientists at CERN- they should know.

See above.  Apparently, I know what's an order of magnitude.  Does a
physicist count as a scientist?
>
>:  A 30 years old typewriter is still perfectly
>: usable.  Can you say the same about a 10 years old Mac?
>
>A 10 year old Mac would be a Plus. 

Are you sure?  10 years old means made in 1985.

>And I have a lot of clients who use 
>them every day for lots of tasks.  

They must be masochists.

>And a 30 year old typewriter probably 
>*isn't* usable, due to the lack of companies making replacement parts for 
>them.  

Tell this to the people using 50 years old typewriters.  If it ain't
broken, why fix it?  Not all countries are as rich as the USA or Western
Europe, to afford throwing away working equipment simply because it's
obsolete.

>It's hard enough even finding ribbons for most of the typewriters 
>in the world.

Not so difficult.  Until recently, all typewriters (except the high end
ones) used exactly the same ribbon.
>
>If it weren't for Apple (and the resot of them, you'd be seeing MS-DOS 5 
>instead of Windows 95.  Maybe.

I don't think so.  My PC is Microsoft free and I don't think that Apple
had _any_ contribution to the Linux project (some people even claim the
opposite :-)  As far as I'm concerned, the current MSDOS version could
be still 3.0, with or without Apple.  I couldn't care less.  

And nobody has seen Windows 95, as far as I know.  Only "demo", "beta"
and "preview" releases.  Not the real thing.

Dan
--
Dan Pop
CERN, CN Division
Email: Dan.Pop@mail.cern.ch 
Mail:  CERN - PPE, Bat. 31 R-004, CH-1211 Geneve 23, Switzerland