Unix not the Only Place for "Vanguard" Applications

[tcmay@sensemedia.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 5:59 PM 7/15/95, Jon Lasser wrote:
>On Sat, 15 Jul 1995 an250888@anon.penet.fi wrote:
>
>> >In addition, now is the time to deploy stego, on a massive scale.
>> >How many stego programs have been released for Unix?
>>
>> Unix?  The masses use DOS, Windows, Mac, and OS/2.  All you Unix gurus
>> with nifty Unix crypto utilities that PC users can only wonder about
>> need to buy PC's and start porting now if you want to get anywhere.
>
>A legitimate point; however, the majority of PC users won't be in the
>vanguard of /anything/ -- it's not the nature of the PC industry.  If all
>the Unix folks do it, then the PC folks might.

I disagree with this, depending on what one's interpretation of "vanguard"
is, and for what products.

For example, I've been a Macintosh user since 1986, despite having worked
for Intel for 12 years prior to that. (Actually, I'm a fan of the Mac OS
and Way of Doing Things and don't care whether the main microprocessor is
Motorola, Intel, or Phlogistonics.)

For many years the most interesting--to me--applications came first on the
Macintosh, then on the PC, and then only occasionally to Unix machines.
Apps like PageMaker, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Fractal Design Painter,
Eudora, MORE, and so forth. Things have changed recently, with Windows
getting the desirable apps a bit earlier than the Mac version. (The Mac
versions of the products above came first becuase of the obvious graphics
and user interface consistencies of the Mac, and the user community in
prepublication, journalism, and art environments. Writing for DOS in those
days was a real lose, because of the lack of a consistent set of standards
and toolbox calls...)

Only one program I use a lot came first on Unix boxes: FrameMaker. And
FrameMaker hit the Mac a few quarters after first appearing on Unix boxes,
around 1988 or so.

I'm not dismissing Unix boxes or Unix tools...they are obviously very
useful for running the Internet and the various tools that access it.
Enough said. (And SGI and Sun are doing pretty well. The "vanguard apps"
that run on these machines, including the well-known imaging apps, are not
things I use.)

But I think the point that PCs (and by extension, Macintoshes, which are a
flavor of PCs) are never in the vanguard is wrong. By my interpretation of
vanguard. (I expect a quibble, this being the Cypherpunks list, about
whether Jon meant "the majority of PC users won't be in the  vanguard of
/anything/ -- it's not the nature of the PC industry" to mean this...)

Frankly, Unix fragmented into a bunch of pieces. Maybe it was because of
the USL-Novell-AT&T-Sun-Unix International-etc. battles (I don't even
recollect who was who in this battle). Maybe it was the News vs. X vs.
OpenLook vs. NeXTStep vs. etc. user interface battles.

In any case, I expect Windows (and Windows NT) will take an ever-increasing
share of the market for at least the next several years. I'm hardly alone
in this expectation.

--Tim May

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