[WinMac] Re: Floppyless iMac (WinMac Digest #219 - 02/06/99)

Dan Schwartz(expresso[at]snip.net)
Mon, 08 Feb 1999 12:43:54 -0500

        Dear David:

        You see my point precisely... But what happens if you want to use a
utility that is *not* on a bootable CD? With a floppy drive, you can still
run it by booting from the MacOS Installer CD and running the utility from
the copy on the floppy.

 -----------

        Rather than just complain, here is my solution:

        Let's roll back the clock to about 1985 or so... Remember the Tandy x86
machines that had DOS 3.2 (or so) in ROM? The selling feature was that
instead of booting from the floppy slowly, the machine would boot very
quickly from the copy of DOS in ROM.

        Now picture an iMac (or other new G3 Mac) booting directly from ROM: This
way, you could either go to a later version of the MacOS on the hard drive;
or run a program (such as a disk repair or defragger) "as-is" from the
CD-ROM drive.

 ----------

        These are the reasons why I don't favor an iMac for either a first-time
user, nor a user where the iMac is the only machine they have. Yes, the
iMac is a nice machine WHEN IT IS RUNNING. But when it goes haywire -- And
eventually it WILL due to crashes corrupting the file system -- it takes
more experience than previous floppy Macs to get it running again. An
experienced "Mac head," or corporate support technician -- like most all of
us on this list -- can get an iMac running again with dispatch.

        But first-time users are a different story altogether. How many times have
we all helped a friend or neighbor who doesn't even know what Disk First
Aid is, let alone how to use it?!

-> And this is the very market -- The unsophisticated user -- that Apple is
aiming for with those Jeff Goldblum ads...

        And let's not forget Apple's poor quality "Dial-A-Prayer" support... So
bad (and expensive) that Apple was "spanked" by the FTC (Federal Trade
Commission) because of it. And tech support is needed the most when things
go haywire.

        Just my 2 cents...
        Dan

At 07:56 AM 2/8/99 -0800, David replied to my original post:
>DAN:
>
>I've generally had better luck with third party utilities -- and they've
always
>had a minimal system on their disks, even when they were running floppies. I
>have no idea what the cost to license that would be, but I doubt it could be
>much, it's not like you're trying to do a clean install of the OS from
Norton.
>
>Somebody on the list said they thought the Apple utilities were much
improved,
>and if that's the case you could boot from your system CD and run a repair
from
>there. Easy as you put it, Dan, is important -- and because of that I rather
>doubt any utility publisher is going to peddle his software without having a
>minimal system on board.
>
>DAVID
>
>----------
>>From: "The Windows-MacOS cooperation list" <winmac@xerxes.frit.utexas.edu>
>>To: "The Windows-MacOS cooperation list" <winmac@xerxes.frit.utexas.edu>
>>Subject: WinMac Digest #219 - 02/06/99
>>Date: Sat, Feb 6, 1999, 5:00 PM
>>
>
>> That's the problem: Any software house that wants to publish a disk
>> repair, disk defragmenter, or disk editor utility for the MacOS needs to
>> now license the MacOS from Apple... And that drives up the cost.

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