Roadblocks on the Information Highway
By Charles E. Gardner
SECTION TWO:
Understanding the HardwareI can never figure out why IM departments get so hung-up about everyone having the same hardware and software; the first unit is out of date by the time the last one is installed, so they just need to start all over again with the next model. It's never all the same and two-thirds of it is always out of date.
Hardware is really boring stuff, so this next section is full of jokes to keep the reader awake. IM's hardware choices over the past fifteen years are no joke so you better stay awake and read carefully; it might save your department or agency some money and you might actually enjoy using your next computer. There's a test at the end too.
Computer makers with that "Vision" Thing
An Wang--a technical genius and innovator
In the mid 1970's a company emerged from obscurity with a vision of what a modern office should be. WANG Laboratories philosophy was "Here use this, it's exactly what you need." About ten years later Apple would echo this marketing strategy to sell a completely different vision of computing. WANG's computers turned out to be a big hit with IM departments; Apple's didn't.The big difference between the WANG and Apple vision of computing is probably due to the fact that An Wang built his first computer at IBM instead of in his garage. An Wang was the guy who invented magnetic "core" memory; which looked like a bunch of donuts on a chain-link fence. About the time the little donuts were made obsolete by semi-conductor memory chips, Wang cashed his in at IBM and left to form his own company, WANG Laboratories. Soon WANG's sophisticated calculators were on the desks of every bank and brokerage house in the country--they were the best around for calculating bond yields and other complex financial calculations. In the mid-1970s WANG introduced an 8-bit micro-processor computer with a screen and keyboard; the WANG 2200.
Like all micros of that era the 2200 lacked a hard disk or operating system; the BASIC programming language was burned into its read-only memory chips and everything was stored on eight inch floppy disks. Other micros of that era were made of plastic and looked like they were patched together in someones basement with a TV, an old typewriter and lots of telephone wire. In contrast the 2200 had solid one-piece metal construction with the screen and keyboard in the same console--like a mainframe terminal--and it had the same muted green and beige color scheme still seen today on WANG VS terminals. It looked like it belonged in an office and the banks and brokerages which had been using WANG bond calculators were some of the first customers.
WANG's next model was the multi-user WANG MVP, revolutionary for its time because it was designed to serve up to eight users from a single micro-processor. Its micro "brain" with mainframe ambitions allocated a 29K partition of memory to each of the eight user which the micro-processor serviced in rapid "time share" fashion.4 Like a mainframe, the MVP used inexpensive "dumb" terminals which transmitted each keystroke back to a central micro-processing unit (CPU). The MVP was one of the first micros with a "high capacity" 5 MB (5 Million characters) hard disk--which looked like a 14" pizza stored inside a two-drawer filing cabinet and only held . Nowadays you can put a 200 MB disk drive in your hip pocket. The WANG OIS and VS systems evolved from the MVP, but in quite different ways.
The WANG OIS was probably the first computer designed by a marketing department. It had shared the innovative hardware design and architecture of the MVP, but the enhanced BASIC programing capablitiy was replaced with a turn-key word processing (WP) system. Removing BASIC eliminated the user's ability to create their own applications. If you purchased a WANG OIS system you were buying its vision of how your office should be automated.
WANG tightened the propritary leash on its customers by making unnecessary cable and interface alterations to industry standard printers and disks it purchased from other vendors to make it impossible for WANG owners to purchase and connect other brands of equipment to a WANG system. Everything, including the "canned" WP application, was proprietary and at least 20% more expensive than the competition. Keeping equipment interfaces and software proprietary was a page from the IBM corporate play book and something else WANG had in common with Apple. Although most other manufacturers "opened" their systems after the introduction of the IBM PC, WANG remained steadfastly proprietary until the 1990s when it entered bankruptcy.
After the huge success of its turn-key OIS ssytem in the government market, WANG followed suit in 1980 with a turn-key mini-computer system. The VS was versatile and powerful. It could run COBOL and BASIC programs as well as word processing, but it too was a completely proprietary. Most IM departments never bothered to purchase the BASIC compliers needed by users to write their own programs and WANG offered only a limited range of applications beyond word processing (WP). Thus, early VS installation usually were all WP or a combination of WP and large-scale programs developed by contractors.
Another IBM drop-out strikes it rich
Many people wonder how Ross Perot got so darn smart. Even those who don't think he's all that smart wonder how he got so stinking rich! Well, first by being the most successful salesman of mainframe computers in the history of IBM. Then because IBM couldn't build computers as fast as he could sell them Ross quit and started his own company Electronic Data Systems. Perot had sold more mainframes than any other salesman because he convinced his potential customers not that the hardware was great, but rather that the new technology of computing could solve problems in their workplace.In the process of selling IBM mainframes Ross realized the biggest shortcoming was the lack of software applications to run on them. Perot's new company filled that void by developing large scale computer applications such as corporate accounting and airline reservation systems. Its biggest customer was the federal government. Perot sold EDS to General Motors for a gazillion dollars and ran for President where he talked a lot about electronic town meetings. EDS probably already has the software in the shrinkwrap.
Macintosh--A brief glimmer of hope fades quickly
A bright, user-friendly a star appeared briefly in the West In 1984 as the Macintosh and the workgroup concept was born. The Steves -- Jobs and Wozniak -- launched the Mac with a multi-million dollar IM-bashing Super Bowl media blitz. IM managers sharpened their swords in anticipation of an end-user uprising, but they needn't bother; Macintosh zealots showed an amazing propensity to fall on their own swords, a tradition that Mac techno-weenies continue to this day. Apple helped hold their swords by maintaining obscenely high profit margins--making Macs much more expensive than better equipped PCs--and by failing to provide the type of software everyone wanted: the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet.The first Apple Macintosh was marketed as an upscale Etch-A-Sketch; its most touted features were a tiny black on white screen, its MacDraw software, and its mouse. The first Mac had no hard disk its new style 3.5" diskettes (the ones which look like drink coasters) popped-out of the computer automatically like a bread from a toaster when a new one was needed, which was about every 15 seconds if you only had one diskette drive. The cute little mouse seemed to say, "Let's play," but the game of hide the coaster got tiring pretty.
Apart from the silly way it was marketed, IM managers perceived the first Macintosh as an expensive child's toy because its hardware was woefully underpowered for its ambitious software, and because it lacked a decent spreadsheet program. The fact that the company was started by a couple of guys in their garage didn't help much either. IM managers were the guys still selling the tractors, not men of vision, so didn't see the potential of the Mac's design which made it the first affordable computer that was both intuitive, user friendly and included built-in networking capability. By the late 80s the Mac's hardware finally caught-up its ambitious software and with PCs in terms of price, few IM managers bothered to give them a serious look. Probably the second costliest mistake that Management made was believing WANGs vision of computing in the late 1970s, but not Apple's in the late 1980s when the made the move to LANs and workgroup computing.
The real story about Macs and Windows--How the copier King got copied
Nearly all the features that make the Macintosh and Windows user friendly come from research done by the Xerox Corporation at its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the early 1970's. Xerox studied how people learn new tasks and then built a computer system around what it discovered.They learned that if you ask a child what he wants, he will usually point and say, "That." This was translated into an arrow moving freely across a computer's screen pointing at objects, controlled by a hand moving across the desk in a natural pointing motion. As it turned out it the device used looked like a small rodent. Xerox also discovered people related intuitively to familiar images; if they saw icons for a file folder and file cabinet on the screen they immediately knew their function and relationship to each other. They found that a white screen with black type was most effective because it duplicated the printed page, and being able to create different sizes and styles of type on the screen having the same result appear on the printed page--What You See Is What You Get or WYSIWYG--improved both productivity and the effectiveness of the text. Xerox finally incorporated all of this research into a computer but since it cost about $45,000 to build it was never marketed widely. Several years--and micro-processor generations later--a guy named Jobs toured Xerox and saw the prototype and the rest as they say is history...
Unfortunately it never occurred to Apple to look around to see what people were actually doing on their Apple II computers before designing the Lisa (the less said about that turkey the better) and the Macintosh.Sales of Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets and IBM PCs and a myriad of IBM clones were booming in the business community. If Apple had responded to what most wanted the first Macintosh would have come equipped with a good spreadsheet, arm garters and a green eyeshade.
Instead Apple decided to thumb its nose at the business and government markets and Macintosh users drew pictures (and fell on their swords) for almost three years before for Excel, a Lotus-like spreadsheet, was available for the Mac and most businesses outside of the graphics arts industry even considered them. Who made Excel? Microsoft of course.
Bill Gates should have named his company SoftMicro
Anyone who has ever set-up their own MS-DOS PC has probably come to the conclusion that it should have been called SM-DOS because it takes a sadomasochist to like it. Even after reading the 400 page MS-DOS manual most people still don't have a clue what it's all about and why it is needed on their computer. If an IM manager says MS-DOS is easy to use it's a clue they have never set-up a PC themselves.There's an attempt at a non-technical explaination of MS-DOS: MS-DOS is a machine-level program which server as the nterpreter between the PC microprocessor chip, the software programs, and the user. When a word processor or a spreadsheet is running, MS-DOS acts as a conduit to the processor for the application's program commands. In otherwords the user interacts with the program via the keyboard and the application program interacts with MS-DOs to control the disk, screen and printer.
There are times hen a user must interact durectly with the computer processor to copy a file or make a listing of the file directory. In these instances MS-DOS interprets keystrokes and coverts them into actions. (e.g., translating "DIR" into the machine commands necessary to send a listing of the files on the computer's disk to the screen). It possible to write simple BASIC-like programs with DOS commands.
MS-DOS was no big deal innovation-wise considering it was built around the Intel chip using a mainframe operating system model that had been used for years and several existing micro-computer operating systems. In fact, Gates who had been selling software for Altair microcomputers, bought the code that would bacame MS-DOS from another developer for a pitance. He then turned right around and sold it to IBM for 50 grand.
Thus the real geniu$ and vi$ion of Bill Gates was not the technology but $eeing technology, and the market for it, in a way nobody else had $een before; except maybe Ross Perot. While others had visions of where computers could take the user, young Bill had dreams about how the user could take him to the bank; by selling same MS-DOS program to the same people 15 times in 12 years by adding a couple new features and incrementing the decimal point each year, usually to fix bugs in the previous release.
I'd wager that if An Wang had not made his hardware proprietary and turned its R&D inward, we probably would all be using WANG-DOS 1.5 now. It would run on both the Intel and Motorola (Macintosh) chips and have a 15 page manual that you really didn't have to read.
IBM PC Historical Footnote: Most people who think the PC was the first small computer made by IBM are incorrect. IBM marketed an interpretive BASIC 4-bit microprocessor based desk top computer called the Model 5110 in the mid 1970s. The author used one; It was a real dog--twice the cost of a WANG 2200 and half its speed. The IBM executive who approved the PC project despite the terrible sales record of the 5110 deserves the lion's share of the credit for the personal computer revolution, not Bill Gates. Hint: You can win a lot of free drinks from PC know-it-alls with this info.
More hardware background information
Remedial reading for WANG VS users who have never seen a Mac or Windows
(Just about everyone at the Dapartment State in 1992 when this was written)Macintosh and Windows PC have a similar graphic user interfaces (GUI) which create several screen "windows". The windows can contain many documents from the same program, or documents from several different programs all at the same time. The window the user clicks on with the mouse becomes the active one. This window approach allows the user to use several applications at the same time and "cut" and "paste" between them--a big time saver.
What about the Windows vs. Mac debate?
Back in 1984 the Mac's mouse and trash can had the PC crowd rolling in the aisles howling, "I'll never use one of those!" If the author had a dollar for every time a MS-DOS PC user said that, he'd be as rich as Bill Gates is today. But since one would need to be brain dead not think the Xerox-invented Graphic User Interface was a great idea, Microsoft designed Windows (which requires a mouse) along the same lines. Apple, outraged, promptly sued Microsoft, claiming it stole the idea. Of course they did, but not from Apple. Oscar the Grouch should have sued both of them for infringing on his trademark trashcan. Xerox is still trying to figure out who mugged them and how to make a decent copier for under $100,000.Its true that more people use MS-DOS and Windows PCs than Macintoshes. PCs arrived on the scene three years earlier, were cheaper than Macs for years, and had a wider selection of software available. IM departments purchased PCs and many people bought one for home so the could run the same programs. After the techno-garble of MS-DOS, Windows seemed like a blessing for PC users. But Windows, while a huge improvement over MS-DOS, still has many of MS-DOS's worst features including a complicated text oriented file structure which limits file names to eight character and requires many different "FILENAME.XYZ" extensions.
By the time Windows was introduced IM departments had a great deal of money tied-up in PC hardware and software, so it seemed logical and cost effective to add Windows to MS-DOS. It would ownly cost a couple of hundred bucks per user, right?
Not exactly. For many PC users it was necessary to ship their 286s to the third-world and buy the 386 PC and VGA monitor that was necessary to run Windows 2.0. Since there isn't much point in running MS-DOS software under Windows, everyone purchased new "Windows" versions of their favorite software. Once they got it all running they soon discovered that Bill Gates had put the trash can on their screens because running Windows on 386 PC was about as fast as walking behind a garbage truck, or using a Mac SE.
Fortunately for those who had abandoned MS-DOS and jumped on the Windows 2.0 bandwagon the release of Windows 3.0 coincided with introduction of new, faster 486 chip and the fall of the Berlin wall. The latter opened-up new markets in Eastern Europe for obsolete technology just in time for Windows 2.0 users to dump their 386 machines at a good price. But -- this is the good part--after buying two versions of Windows everone not only still had to use MS-DOS, they had to upgrade it too!!!! How does Bill do it? My guess is that MS-DOS must have some sort of electronic subliminal message embedded in it creating sub-sonic signals that whisper, "you need MS-DOS 6.2, you need MS-DOS 6.2É"
Macintosh users have gone through about the same CPU replacement cycle as PC owners; Apple has changed Macintosh processor chips three times. But offices with Macs have come out ahead, at least temporarilly, due to the peer-to-peer networking capability which was added in System 7.0 in 1991. Like the DOS to Windows conversion the switch for System 6 to 7 the system software software required new versions of nearly all software package used on the Mac, but it gave Mac users full peer-to-peer network file sharing capability in 1991 that Windows users will not have until they convert to the next generation of Windows (Windows 95 and NT).
Which is better?
The primary difference between the Mac and Windows is the ease of adding new software, deleting files, etc.. Such tasks are commonly refered to as "housekeeping." Taking out the trash and cleaning windows are not really high on anyone's list of favorite household activities, so it follows that the less time you spend doing similar tasks on your computer the easier it is to use and the more productive you will be. The same is true for installing the computer and learning how to use it.
My observation is that people who have no previous computer experience usually learn the housekeeping chores quicker on the Macintosh because its object-based, click and drag operation (use of icons rather than typed commands) is less complicated than Windows and more intuative. Most who use Macs for their homes and PCs at work say the Macs were simpler to set-up and easier to use than a MS-DOS PC. Others chose Mac because they liked the black on white white screen and the ability to do illustrations. From the beginning Apple has focused on the education market so many by an Apple because their kids were using one at school.
People who have PCs at home usually use one at work, because they are familiar with the software and user interface and the computer it was several hundred dollars cheaper than a Mac, or there is more software available for it. More than likely they made the choice based on the recommendation of others commputer owners they know and can lean on for help. Odds are that person will be a Windows user.
Buy what makes users most productive
Nowadays most popular brands of software come in nearly identical Mac and PC versions and the hardware costs about the same. Although both camps will argue otherwise, there is really little functional difference between a Windows PC and a Macintosh once the user opens a wordprocessing or spreadsheet application.
It's foolish to make a person less function by imposing rigid hardware or software standards. As more and more people become computer literate and move from job to job they will bring application specific skills with them.
IM departments should support a wide range of hardware and software tools and let them decide which will make them the most productive.
Now for the test
I was just kidding about the test. If you don't believe that last paragraph you would have failed it anyway.
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