[Ti] Re: what "Think different" means

[Timothy Luoma]

On Jun 9, 2005, at 7:55 PM, Steve Wozniak wrote:

> In the current case, I'll buy what Apple says about the future  
> being better with Intel, but it does bite into the idea of going  
> against the grain.

Well, SCSI and ADB were "different" and maybe "better" in their time,  
but then their time passed.

At the end of the day, I'm much more interested in how Apple thinks  
about making it so dang easy to sort through my pictures and my music  
and hell, my whole hard drive now.  I'm fascinated by how easy they  
have made video editing, how they've made Unix for Everybody, how  
things really "just work" in OS X compared to XP.

I've written about this on my website, but here's just one example:

My Powerbook has 2 USB ports.  If I plug an inkjet printer into one,  
it will probably "just work".  And if it doesn't, and I configure it,  
and then plug the printer into the other USB port, it will just work.

My Dell laptop has 2 USB ports.  If I plug an inkjet printer into  
one, it might just work.  I'll probably have to download a new  
driver.  And if I plug it into the other USB port... I'll have to do  
it all over again.

That's different and better.

Here's another... I plug in an Ethernet cable in XP, and go to  
Control Panel > Network and run a wizard that maybe, hopefully, will  
work.

I plugged in an Ethernet cable to my Powerbook and spent 5 minutes  
trying to figure out how to tell it that it was on the network before  
thinking to myself "You don't suppose... that it knew that I plugged  
in a network cable and... just worked?"  It did (network was running  
a generic Linksys router with DHCP enabled).

That's different and better.

One more?  Sure!

Setting up my Powerbook, it found my local WiFi network, and asked if  
I wanted to join it.  I said "Yes"

Setting up my Dell laptop (not some generic piece of junk, but a  
Dell) with a Linksys WiFi card and a Linksys router.  It found my  
network and said it was 'insecure' and asked if wanted to join it.  I  
said yes..... then it told me the network was insecure and asked if I  
wanted to join it... and I said yes.... then it told me that the  
network was insecure and asked if I wanted to join it...

This went on and on and on.  I downloaded the latest drivers and  
firmware for the router and the WiFi card.  I tried plugging the WiFi  
card into the 2nd PC-card slot ("Oh, you want to start all over  
again?"  NOOOO!!  I want to use the same bloody configuration I just  
put in 12 seconds ago when I had the card plugged into the same  
computer trying to access the same network!!!)

This happened repeatedly.  I'd reboot.  I'd power cycle.  And  
suddenly it would work.  No reason why.  It just would.  For awhile.

OS X has plenty of "Think Different" in it, but other than the "just  
working" part of it, I've never really thought that the hardware was  
the crucial element of Think Different.  One part?  Sure.  But the OS  
is really the main part.

TjL

NSFIP = "NeXTSTEP For Intel Processors".... back in "the day" as it  
were...