🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <HARKCOM.90Nov29084150@potato.pa.Yokogawa.Co.jp> harkcom@potato.pa.Yokogawa.Co.jp (Alton Harkcom) writes:

   About the FSF and their boycott on Apple:

      I personally love the Macintosh. I have been able to get a lot of
   people who previously had no interest in computers to use one because
   of its VERY friendly interface. However, I DETEST APPLE because they
   (along with the other lawyer heavy companies) are helping to ruin one
   of the few industries that is still alive in the US. Now that there
   are a lot of other countries targeting the US software industry it is
   even more likely that it will go the way of auto and electronics
   manufacturers. When this happens, it will be those companies complaining
   to congress (and begging subsidies) about unfair conditions in the other
   countries. The only way to remain competitive is to stop this ridiculous
   bickering and lawyer fests. The FSF is the only organization with the
   gumption to attempt to put pressure on the biggies (proncounced 'piggies')
   to stop. I support their boycott on supplying support for FSF software
   to such companies as Apple...

I shouldn't use newsgroups to do anything like "voting", but I can't help
shouting HALLELUJAH to the above.  That is one of the best expressions of
my feelings on this matter.

There are lots of wonderful things I'd like to build for computers once I
finish my current project (at least they seem wonderful to me right now :-),
but sadly I can't put them on the machines on which they'd be ideal today,
the Macintosh.  To reach low-end computer users ("personal" computers), I
will have to plan to port these things to 386 machines and other low-end
machines that can do virtual memory and such.

I'm still using my Mac SE/30 when at home, and I hope someday to replace that
with a non-Apple UNIX machine when I can afford it, but my wife uses our
older SE and there's no way we can replace that for some time without simply
losing my wife's ability to use computers effectively at all -- she's too
busy with work and other things to keep up on how to use machines less
user-friendly than a Mac, even though she's eminently qualified to do so if
she had the time -- until and unless someone creates a Mac-equivalent-or-
better user-friendly environment (OS, utilities, applications, the whole
enchilada) that runs on a non-Apple machine we can afford.  That's not on
the horizon, and it is very sad.

Maybe when there are a whole bunch of really good apps and utilities
that use Windows and Windows is even better than at 3.0, we can switch her
to that (sigh, moan).  Who knows, though, maybe it'll be easier to create
a complete environment like the Mac on another low-end machine in the next
few years, allowing us to do it ourselves.  In any case, we're going to try
and sell off our Macintoshes as soon as we can do so without shooting
ourselves in the feet, all because of Apple's insane foray into the lawsuit
business.  A pity they choose lawsuits to preserve market share instead of
using R&D to continue their past tendency of increasing market size.  (Would
you rather have 50% of a flat $1B market or 1% of a growing $100B market?
Think about it, Apple!)
--

James Craig Burley, Software Craftsperson    burley@ai.mit.edu