THE WORLD OF COMPUTING
                        written by Reuven M. Lerner
                              FidoMail 107/33

       Welcome  to another edition of The World of Computing!  As the title
    in the Table of Contents suggests, this time, I'll be mainly discussing
    the  new  "Super Macintosh," and some Israeli magazines that I recently
    had a chance to read.

       As you probably noticed, there has been a little  time  between  the
    last  column and this one.  I'm kind of new to deadlines, but hopefully
    that was the last time I'll miss them.

       If you're a careful reader, you may have  noticed  that  I  promised
    last  week  to  discuss  "the  words  we use." I had a little something
    prepared, but as the  magazines  seemed  to  fit  that  description,  I
    decided to hold off on computer words until another week.

       The  big  news in January was the announcement of the Macintosh Plus
    by Apple.  Everyone knew about it, right down to  how  it  looked,  but
    John  Sculley  acted as though he didn't realize that, and announced it
    as if the new machine was a surprise to us all.

       When Apple first brought out the Mac, they intended for it to be  in
    the  office  where IBM PC's had taken hold.  Unfortunately, that failed
    miserably.  Apple was forced to change  their  strategy,  and  publicly
    said that they would not compete with IBM any more.

       Now  that  they've  come  out  with the Mac Plus, what can they say?
    It's the machine that they should have come out with in the first place
    (but  then,  improvements and updates always are).  Every reviewer said
    that it needed more memory, a better keyboard, expansion slots,  larger
    capacity drives, and at least two drives.

       Well,  they  finally got what they were waiting for.  Almost exactly
    two years later, the Macintosh Plus has 1 Megabyte of memory (that's  a
    thousand K for those who don't know;  one Gigabyte is 1,000 Megabytes),
    like it should have been given.  I'm sure someone out there is  saying,
    "Hold  on!  Didn't Apple listen to the reviewers and add memory to give
    it 512K?" Well, they did, but why didn't they add more?   People  would
    have gladly paid for it (they paid other companies for memory upgrades,
    why not Apple?).

       Computer users are a strange breed.  We  always  want  more  memory,
    whether  or  not  our  computers can use it or not.  We want to have as
    much memory as is possible, plus another few hundred K.   Apple  should
    have  realized  this when they originally brought out the Mac, and made
    their basic model with 512K, and their  advanced  model  with  1  or  2
    Megabytes.

       Anyway, the next complaint was the keyboard.  As Jerry Pournelle put
    it in  BYTE,  if  anyone  else  had  designed  a  small  keyboard  with
    nonstandard keys and no special-function keys (i.e.  ESC), no one would
    have bought it!  But since it's Apple,  they  must  know  what  they're
    doing,  and thus it's okay.  WRONG!!  Just because the Mac is a special
    machine doesn't mean that it needs a strange  keyboard!   Users  should
    feel  as  comfortable  on a PC as they do on a Mac, especially with the
    keyboard.  I've used many machines which could have been improved a lot
    either by the layout or by the feel of the keyboards.  Making keys with
    oddball names and taking others out is a real no-no.  As far as I know,
    the  ESCape  and  other  keys  like it are on the new Mac Plus, as is a
    numeric keypad and cursor keys.

       Lots of people also complained about the disk drives.  First of all,
    they  held  too  little.   For  a graphics-oriented machine, where each
    pixel is more than one byte (like on other computers), 400K drives  are
    not  nearly  enough.   800K drives are good, but only if they're faster
    than the old ones.  Any Mac user can tell you what a pain it is to wait
    for the machine to boot a disk.

       The  last  important  thing about the Mac Plus is the SCSI, or Small
    Computer Standard Interface.  John Dvorak of InfoWorld says  that  it's
    pronounced  "scuzzy."  Besides the pronunciation, there are a few other
    drawbacks to the SCSI.

       First of all, who  says  that  it's  going  to  be  standard?   It's
    supposed  to  be  for  hard  drives.   Hyperdrive  connects  inside the
    machine, and therefore has no use for the interface.   Others  use  the
    serial port, and would require an upgrade.

       Secondly, it's too little, too late.  If they  wanted  to  make  any
    real  impact,  they  would have done it last year, when they introduced
    AppleTalk, the LaserWriter, and the Mac XL (aka Lisa).  Now,  no  one's
    going to use it except for Apple (even their drive doesn't use it yet).
    And besides, there's only one.  Apple and IBM users have  a  hard  time
    squeezing  the  most out of their five to eight slots...what can you do
    with  just  one?   -  The  Macintosh  Plus  is  a  great   idea,   but,
    unfortunately for Apple, it's a little late.

       Israeli Magazines

       This past week (right now, it's March 5th), one of the members of my
    family  as  well  as  several  of my friends went to Israel for a 5-day
    conference.  When he came back, he gave  me  three  computer  magazines
    from Israel.  Two of them were called "Anashim Umichashvim", or "People
    and Computers", and the other was just plain "Michashvim", "Computers".

       As Israel was occupied by Britain until its  independence  in  1948,
    there's  still  a  lot  of  English  used  in  publishing.  However, it
    surprised me to see how much English was really used in  the  magazine.
    Names of computers were frequently given in English, as were words like
    "JUYSTICKS" [sic].  At one point, values  were  hand-written  onto  the
    magazine.

       People  and  Computers  is  put  out  by CW Communications, the same
    people who do InfoWorld (an excellent magazine, by the way).  Thus,  it
    didn't surprise me when the cover was very much like my magazine-format
    InfoWorlds at home.

       There are two versions of P&C put out in Israel -- one is a  monthly
    that  looks  like  the  old  InfoWorld  magazines (from October 1984 to
    August 1985), and another is a weekly that is mainly a  trade  journal,
    telling business people when shows are.

       One of the articles caught my attention (I guess the headline-makers
    are doing their job) when I saw it in the Table of  Contents.   It  was
    entitled "1986:  The Death of the Personal Computer." Incidentally, the
    word for computer in Hebrew is Michashev, from the word "thought", even
    though they don't actually think (yet).

       The  article  outlines  the  computer  used  in Israel and what will
    happen with them.  It's interesting to note that Israel  uses  many  of
    the  same  types  of  computers  available in Europe, for instance, the
    Commodore PC10 and PC20, their IBM-compatibles.  I also saw the IBM  PC
    G  and  the  IBM  PC DD, neither of which I know anything about (except
    from the specs list on one of the pages), except that the PC G has been
    discontinued because there are no more.

       The  author  of  the article predicts success with the Amiga and 520
    ST, and the death of CP/M.  I have  to  differ  on  two  of  the  three
    points.   I don't think that the Amiga will really make it to the point
    that the 520, and certainly not the 1040 ST will.  Both  of  the  Atari
    machines  have more base memory than the Amiga for much less money, and
    these days, that really makes a machine.

       As to the death of CP/M, I doubt that highly.  Many people use  CP/M
    and  continue  to use it every day.  I, for one, use it more than I use
    my other computers, since I'm so used  to  its  feel  (although  MS-DOS
    comes  kind of close).  As reported in InfoWorld, a company is thriving
    selling old CP/M software that no one else thinks is worth  the  effort
    any more.

       That  about  wraps  up  my section on computers in Israel.  In a few
    weeks, I hope to  compare  their  review  of  Excel  with  an  American
    magazine's.

       Corrections

       Every columnist everywhere I read makes mistakes, so why should I be
    any different?  I've received some mail, and although  I  responded  in
    person to them, I'll explain in a little more detail what I did.

       First  of  all,  I  have a message from Mike Harrington, of the Blue
    Telegraph in Seattle.  He wanted to know if I could drop the  copyright
    notice at the bottom of the column, to keep in the spirit of the public
    domain.

       After receiving his letter, I realized that he was absolutely  right
    in  what he said.  If you look at the bottom of this week's (and future
    week's) column, you'll see that I now give full copying rights, so long
    as  there  is  not profit made.  However, there is still a copyright on
    it,  much  like  many  public-domain  utilities.   If  anyone  has  any
    comments, just write to me.

       I  also  received  a  letter from Bob Spivack, of Spiv's Fido in San
    Jose, California.  Bob gave the real reasons why IBM  chose  the  8088,
    and I'll condense it here.

       Intel  created  the 8086 before the 8088, but since companies didn't
    need the extra 16-bit hardware for their products and peripherals, they
    weren't  buying  it  as  fast  as Intel thought they would.  Intel then
    designed a chip that was identical to the 8086, but utilizes  an  8-bit
    data  and  I/O  bus  instead of 16-bit.  IBM chose the 8088 instead for
    most of the same reasons:  the speed and expandability of the 8086, but
    with the ease of interfacing with 8-bit memory and peripherals.

       If  any  of  you spot mistakes, don't hesitate to write me and point
    them out!  I try to be as accurate as possible, but I am still human.

       Well, I'm really out of space for this week, so let me  just  remind
    you  how  open  I am to suggestions and comments.  Just send mail to me
    either through FidoMail at Fido 107/33, or at 21 Old Westbury Road, Old
    Westbury, NY, 11568.  Until next time, happy computing!


       (c)1986  Reuven  M.   Lerner.   All  Rights Reserved.  Permission is
    given to copy this column so long as it is for non-profit use.  If  you
    wish to use it for other than non-profit use, write to the author at 21
    Old Westbury Road, Old Westbury, NY 11568, or at FidoMail 107/33.