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RE: mr on Apple web site
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From: Robert C. Leif <rleif@rleif.com>
Date: Thu Aug 26 2004 - 21:46:30 EST
  Howard is correct about working directly with the hardware.    We have
come
a long way since Tiny BASIC.  Unfortunately during this development,
we lost
Peak and Poke and their equivalents.  In the case of Windows XP, one
can no
longer write directly to the registers on a board.  It seems that this
restriction also extends to the Microsoft operating system, Windows XP
Embedded, that is supposed to be appropriate for systems such as flow
cytometers and digital microscopes.
  Bob Leif
  -----Original Message-----
From: Howard Shapiro [mailto:hms@shapirolab.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 4:16 PM
To: cyto-inbox
Subject: Re: mr on Apple web site
  Robin Barclay wrote:
  >Well .... some of us PC afficianados hate Macs just as much -
personally
I
  >have hated them since they first made it difficult to access their
DOS
and
  >write programs in any language (especially for accessing/
controlling lab
  >apparatus) - back in the '7

0's when there were several different options
-
  >not just PC's.  I am glad that the "PC" became a standard (there
were
too
  >many diferent systems) and that IBM did not hang on to it the way
Apple
kept
  >the Mac in house (you get more for your money with a PC because
many
  >different people make them).  You don't often get PC people
knocking
Macs
  >the way that the Mac people knock PCs - there seems to be a lot of
Microsoft
  >paranoia.  In my opinion PCs are much more common and versatile in
labs
than
  >Macs - especially outside the USA - and will eventually become the
standard
  >for interfacing with lab equipment..... and they can "look cool"
if you
shop
  >around for the right case if that's important to you.
  I can't pass up the opportunity to get into the PC/Mac battle - I
hate
them
  both, but there aren't really alternatives (yes, I know, there's
Linux,
but
  it's probably even harder to hook up a Linux system to hardware
than it
is
  to hook a Mac up to hardware).
  Of course, what started this thread was the assertion in the piece
about
  Mario on Apple's web site that there were 15,000 to 20,000 Mac-
based flow

  cytometers out there. The best estimates I had from industry people
in
  early 2003 when I was finishing up the 4th Edition of PFC was that
the
  total number of systems from all manufacturers in use was under
20,000.
If
  that's correct, BD would need a 75% market share to account for the
low
end
  estimate of 15,000 Mac-based machines. I'd be interested to know
where
the
  15,000 to 20,000 figure came from.
  The old (68000 series and possibly early PowerPC) Macs were
difficult,
but
  not impossible to connect to hardware; it was easier to work with
the
PC's
  ISA bus, which, while slow, was perfectly adequate to do most flow
  cytometric data acquisition and analysis. There were decent
versions of
  Forth, which was one of the first and best languages designed for
  controlling hardware from mini- and microcomputers, for both PC
(DOS) and

  the Mac (Forth was the first Mac programming language made
commercially
  available, at a time when the only other option was buying the
very
  expensive Lisa from Apple on which to develop Mac software). I
found
  MacForth easier to program with than the Windows Forths (or other
Windows

  languages, e.g., Delphi), but my old Macs used to crash all the
time.
  So what makes me unhappy with both Windows [and Windows machines]
and the

  Mac in their current incarnations? It is now significantly harder
for
mere
  mortals to write software to get hardware to communicate with
either PCs
or
  Macs; the gain in complexity associated with the PCI bus, USB/
USB2,
  FireWire(IEEE 1394), etc. is greater than the gain in speed and
  convenience. Also, in making the operating systems more stable (and
Win
XP,
  despite its security issues, is almost as stable as Mac's Unix-
based OS
X),
  both Microsoft and Apple elected to eliminate the ability of their
computer
  hardware to respond rapidly to interrupts (latencies are now in the
tens
of
  thousands of instruction cycles), meaning that any really fast
hardware
  attachment for either a PC or a Mac now needs to have a DSP in it,
whereas
  if the fast interrupt response had been preserved, the hardware
attachments
  could have been made much simpler and cheaper. Linux also takes
fast
  interrupt response off the table, so it doesn't represent a viable
  alternative. If you go to Apple's web site and look at what data
  acquisition hardware is available for Macs, particularly for Macs
running

  OS X, there isn't much, and many of the companies that supported
the Mac
in
  that area have dropped Mac support for their newer products. That
is
  undoubtedly one big reason why BD's newer digital pulse processing
  cytometers are running on the PC platform.
  That doesn't stop anybody from analyzing FCS files on Macs. FlowJo
is
  well-conceived flow cytometry software; one reason it is as good as
it is

  is that it was written by people who do a lot of flow cytometry,
and
  cutting edge flow cytometry at that. But there are other people who
do a
  lot of good flow cytometry who have written good software, for PCs
as
well
  as for Macs.
  For the record, I have a G4 PowerBook, which I use mostly for the
iLife
  applications, which are slick. It doesn't crash more than once
every
couple
  of months, but the same is true of my Windows 2000 and XP systems.
OS X
can
  be as infuriating as Windows when one or another aspect of it goes
counter
  to your intuition or to what you have gotten used to. Macs, while
somewhat
  more expensive, are much better made than many PCs, and they are
certainly
  aesthetically pleasing. If there were a reasonable alternative to
  Microsoft's Office applications for the Mac, I might consider
switching.
  The 12.1" PowerBook is a nice portable, but it's over a pound
heavier
than
  the Fujitsu laptop I now use, which has pretty much the same speed,
memory,
  and drive capabilities (OK, not DVD-R, but I don't burn a lot of
DVDs).
  However, I really wish Apple had stuck with the plan they had a few
years

  back of writing a Mac operating system for Intel hardware. I think
that
  died when Microsoft bailed Apple out with a few hundred mil. If it
were
  possible to run OS X and XP mano a mano on the same hardware,
there'd be
a
  more rational basis for comparison. But, as may be the case for
the
  November election, minds, once made up, are not easily changed.
  -Howard
Received on Fri Aug 27 17:40:09 2004
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