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Of Apples and Windows
Windows sucks. A Windows box isn't just a rip off of a Mac, it's a rip-off
of a rip-off of a Mac.
Quick History Lesson
The Operating System
Most mainframes run an operating System called UNIX. One of the first cut
down versions of UNIX came from a company called Digital; it was called CP/M
(Computer Processor / Management). In the early 80's, seeing Apple, BBC Micro,
Atari, and Commodore desktop computers being adopted by businesses, the leader
in mainframes (IBM) decided to build their own desktop. The problem is that,
at the rate these computers were being adopted, IBM wouldn't have time to
design a computer from scratch. Instead, they decided to use off - the - shelf
components and secure it with a BIOS.
IBM decided to invite representatives of 3 companies to try to sell them
their OS. One was the Chief Executive of Digital. The 3rd was a young Bill
Gates, who got invited because mommy knew some people inside IBM and she asked
really, really nicely that her son be invited. Well, the other 2 no-showed
(the Digital representative apparently went sky-diving instead of meeting
the world's largest computer company), and so Bill won the contract by default;
even though he didn't even have anything to sell IBM.
Luckily, Bill was able to come across a hobbyist who had one. This guy had,
for fun (each to their own) bought an old CP/M manual. Guessing at how it
all worked, he had been able to reverse engineer (come up with) something
that *sort of* looked, and worked, like CP/M. For about $10,000 - $20,000,
Bill was apparently able to buy the rights to what was basically a cheap knock-off
of a knock-off of UNIX. This project was known as QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating
System), and upon buying the rights Bill renamed it DOS (Disk Operating System;
Quick and Dirty was a better description, IMHO). DOS lives on deep in the
core of every copy of Windows, to this day.
The User Interface
The modern computer interface, as we know it, was originally developed by
Xerox. During the early '80s, IBM weren't the only company feeling threatened
by the new breed of Desktop Computer; Xerox saw the paperless office (that
never happend) as a legitimate threat to its printing business, and went about
developing the Xerox PARC (Paulo-Alto Research Computer). The interface for
this machine was truely revolutionary: First off, it was graphical. instead
of entering all your commands by keyboard (like QDOS / DOS, UNIX, or CP/M),
commands were given by a mouse controlled interface. Your work was done in
windows, and you could drag and drop between windows. You could also network
these computers, and they featured Object Orientated programming. A young
Steve Jobs was apparently very impressed by all this.
Of course, Xerox saw no money in the new machine and gave up the project.
Their staff ended up at Digital, Apple, and Atari. After the abysmal failure
of the Apple Lisa computer, Apple released the Macintosh in 1984. The Mac
set in motion everything found in the Xerox PARC and pulled it together into
a commercially available, and viable, computer. A year later, Commodore-Amiga
released the Amiga 1000, while Digital released the GEM interface for DOS,
CPM, and Atari-TOS computers. Apple sued the living crap out of Digital for
GEM, after which Microsoft created Windows, their immitation of GEM on DOS.
When Apple challenged Windows, unfortunately they got defeated. But still,
Windows is a cheap knockoff of GEM.
Just an aside here, the Amiga 1000 was a truely amazing computer for its
time. It featured a colour, pre-emptive 32 bit multi-tasking operating system.
Instead of 1 CPU, it featured several: one dedicated to graphics, one to video,
one to sound, and one to maths; leaving the main CPU to worry about I/O's
and stuff. Amiga is still in business selling a follow up, the Amiga 4000T,
with a fast accelerator (which still matches many modern computers in performance).
The CPU
TRUE STORY
Once upon a time, computers used to use CISC (Complete Instruction
Set Computing) chips. One day, an Australian scientist was looking at an ant
rummaging for food. Everything the ant did was ruled by 3 simple rules:
1) Walk randomly across the land
2) If you come across food, return to nest, leaving a trail
3) If you come across a trail, follow it
These ants, with 3 simple rules, were doing what would take a computer chip
hundreds of instructions to do. If computer chips were designed like ants,
computers could be much faster and more efficient; and thus RISC (Reduced
Instruction Set Computing) was born.
The chips that powered Windows computers were Intel's CISC chips were the
80x86 series (286, 386, 486). The 80x86 chips were just layered around the
core, designed for pocket calculators! Meanwhile, Motorolla's CISC 68k (aka
680x0; 68010, 68020, etc.) powered Atari, Apple, and Amiga computers. Ripping
off Acorn, Apple, Motorolla and IBM came up with the Power PC series of chips.
Apple dropped backward compatibility allowing for a robust and powerful chip
design.
Sure enough, Intel followed with the Pentium chips. The thing is, instead
of cutting backwards compatibility, good 'ole Uncle Bill decided to leave
it in.
Just about all DOS did was load programs. Most DOS Commands were basically
small programs stored in C:\DOS. Based on these, other 'command' programs
were written. And more based on these. After a decade and a half, DOS/Windows
ended up a jungle of sub-programs and files that no-one wanted to cut, because
no-one was sure what was based on what. To replace Windows 3.11, two versions
of Windows were created: Windows NT (which cut all these old sub-programs
out and started from scratch), and Windows 95, which added to the junk.
To run the old, outdated DOS programs and the old CISC commands, the new
RISC Pentium chip needed an 'emmulation layer' to convert all the RISC commands
to CISC commands. CISC commands originally designed to power pocket caluculators!
Thus a 1 Ghz Power PC chip will always be much faster and more powerful
than a 1 Ghz Pentium chip.
Even at the core, the CPU, a Windows / Intel machine
has layers of junk, and is a cheap ripoff of OS-X on Power PC.
The BIOS
Having your computer load instructions from memory is a lot faster than
loading it directly off a DVD, hard disk, or CD ROM. When these instructions
are strung together, they form programs. Now computers generally have
two types of memory: the first of these is called RAM (Random Access Memory),
where instructions taken from disks or other inputs (eg a mouse, keyboard,
etc) can be stored awaiting calculation by the CPU or other chips; and the
rsults fo these caluclations can be stored for future instruction. the other
type being ROM (Read only memory), which stores permanent instructions. Most
video game cartridges, for instance, are ROM. When you're going to use the
same program over and over (and it doesn't change much), it makes a lot of
sense just to keep it on a ROM chip rather than load it off disk onto RAM.
For instance, a computer Operating System. Smart computer companies like
Amiga, Apple, and Atari build their computers with key parts of the Operating
System on a ROM chip.
Using off the shelf components, IBM made the smart move of protecting their
system with a ROM chip, called BIOS. BIOS was patented by IBM. Unfortunately,
engineers at various companies worked out what BIOS did, and through lawyers
handed the specifications to engineers who reverse engineered chips that did
the exact same thing.
Just about all of Windows is stored on the hard disk, and not in ROM. This
makes it more suseptable to viruses or hacking than an operating system stored
on a ROM chip would be. You can delete the contents of a hard disk, but destroying
a ROM chip takes some nice effort.
Again, we see BIOS as a cheap imitation of IBM's original, and vastly inferior
to the Amiga Kickstart ROM, or the Mac ROM.
So what about OS-X?
GEM on CPM using an IBM BIOS is effectively what a Windows
clone is trying to be. The Aqua interface is a much enhanced version of Apple's
original interface. Darwin is an Enhanced version of BSD (Berkley Standard
Distribution) Unix; one of the most powerful desktop Unix Operating Systems.
Aqua + Darwin = OSX.
Conclusion
Windows is nothing but a cheap immitation of GEM on CPM,
which in itself is a very pale immitation of Mac OS-X.
[Aren't you kinda pissed off your computer gives you Illegal
Opperations?]
"It's supposed to do that!" *BANG*
When it comes to Windows Vs. Mac OS-X debates, there
are 2 flavours of moron who take the Windows side. One is the ignorant hardcore
geek, and the other one is the
Level 3 moral moron
who chooses Windows because... well... everyone else does (and they don't
know any better). As I've illustrated above, no Bill Gates did not invent
computers, the Opertaing System, windows - based user interfaces, or a lot
of other stuff people (wrongly) give him credit for.
"Oh no! My computer just did an ILLEGAL OPPERATION!
Am I going to jail?" *BANG*
Macintoshes rule!
"But what about other programs?" *BANG*
I can run Unix programs on Darwin and OSX. You can't run them natively on
Windows.
"But what about games?" *BANG*
Buy a Playstation! I want a WORK computer that WORKS for me to do my WORK
on!
"But what would a girl know about computers?" *BANG*
I own, have owned or used computers running the following the systems: BBC
Micro B, Commodore 64, Apple IIgs, Amiga (500 / 1200), Mac Classic (68k),
Mac Power PC, Red Hat Linux, Windows 3.1, DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows
NT, Acorn RISC OS3, and OS X.
"You obviously work for Apple!" *BANG*
No. I'm sticking up for OS-X because it is the best OS on the market.
"Have you even tried Windows?!" *BANG*
I used various flavours of it from 1993 to 2002, including 2000, 3.1, 95,
95a, and 98.
"Internet Explorer isn't working!"
[Tried using Netscape?]
"You can see the Internet on Netscape?!" *BANG*
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