[OT] Re: old Mac SCIS (was: Once upon a time, I loved SCSI.)

[Ben Scott]

On 11/28/05, Bill McGonigle <bill at bfccomputing.com> wrote:
> On Nov 27, 2005, at 23:32, Benjamin Scott wrote:
> Ah, yes, good point.  The disk formatting utility that came with the OS
> insisted on seeing an "APPLE" string in the firmware tag.

  Ahhhh!  That sounds like it.  I knew it was something lame like that.

  The oft-touted ability for the Mac to "just work" is largely due to
the fact that Apple's general policy is to simply lock out anything
they don't control.  That's a valid way to engineer things, of course.
 It does yield very smooth operation in the short term.  However, it
tends to cause stagnation in the long run.  And it prevents tinkering,
which is no fun at all.

  I always found it interesting that in most computer cultures (e.g.,
Windows, Linux), the inability to support something is considered a
bug.  In Macland, for some reason, it is considered a feature.  I
sometimes wonder if Apple doesn't have some way of building a Reality
Distortion Field Repeater into their hardware.  ;-)

-- Ben "If it's mine, I should be able to do what I want with it,
including break it" Scott