[WinMac] Re: iMac

Jeff Johnson(jjohnson[at]wi.net)
Thu, 04 Feb 1999 11:11:37 -0600

Making a floppy drive optional _is_ innovative, especially when you consider
schools which have to deal with corrupt disks, defective drives, viruses and
illegal programs on a daily basis. As a HS tech coordinator, I used to spend
lots of time dealing with students and teachers that had problems with
floppy disks and drives.

It's a major paradigm shift for educators but the increasing availability of
file servers on networks and email do allow for efficient transfer of small
files. For those that still want to use floppies, they can get an external
SuperDisk or floppy-only drive, both of which connect to the iMac or new G3
via USB (another step forward).

It is cost effective to eliminate these devices from the base package too.
And that's a major point for Apple in competing against sub-$1K PCs.

Jeff Johnson
K-12 Account Manager for SE Wisconsin
Bell Industries Education Division
jjohnson@wi.net

> You also must think of the reason(s) Apple would want to nix the floppy
> drive. Is it because it is an innovative idea? Possibly, but quite
> frankly, I don't see how removing a floppy drive from a computer is
> innovative, if I unscrewed mine from my computer would I suddenly be called
> innovative? I doubt it. Probably the most important reason for Apple was
> cost. The Mac disk drives don't have a little price tag due to their
> electric motor. If they wanted an inexpensive computer, they figured they
> could nix the disk drive, hey, people will also call it innovative.
>
> Look at those new G3s. Ok, so they have the same basic design as the iMac
> as far as case goes etc right? Who are these aimed at? Most likely the
> higher end people, perhaps even more specifically the graphics departments.
> Since when do you see graphics departments using disks more than home users?
> If one of those categories were to use disks, it would be the home users as
> those G3s will probably be on a network, yet they have a floppy drive (I
> checked to make sure it wasn't a zip or anything, doesn't seem to be). If
> Apple wanted to be innovative and remove the floppy drive, wouldn't you
> think they would have put in a superdisk or zip drive? Probably, but they
> didn't, more ammo for the reason it was removed is due to cost.
>
> As far as using floppies, I still do. In fact I used some yesterday. I
> needed immediate access to a scanner and there was not one currently
> available on the network, so I used one on a computer off of the network.
> With a modem is it just not feasible to transfer the files via phone line to
> a computer, so I used disks, and they worked great, I got what I wanted in
> the time allotted. If a disk drive can save me once, I am all for the extra
> $10 it probably would cost to have one. (this is a PC drive)

>> Actually, going to no floppy was the best move anyone has made in the
>> computer industry in recent years. This archaic, buggy,
>> data-destroying
>> disk ought to be completely obsolete. It already is for many
>> people. The
>> only times I ever use them are for the executives, who seem
>> to be unaware
>> of "progress". I haven't used a floppy disk since last fall.
>> I use Zip
>> drives for small data transfer if email or the network is not a good
>> choice.

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Thu Feb 04 1999 - 09:17:18 PST