[X4U] fellow luddites?

[nk]

Mac Write is a perfect example of an application which, (IMHO) was 
already completely "there" in the sense that it beautifully and 
completely fulfilled its mission (as a word processor).  I wish they'd 
kept MW II around and had a version that ran on OS X, just like the 
MacWrite II of c.1993.

I've had them all, word processors, but never got down to business more 
effectively and with the least amount of tinkering and futzing around 
as with Mac Write II. I remember thinking, 'this is really the only wp 
I'll personally ever need.' To me, perfect the way it WAS.

then, suddenly, word processors started having voice annotations, or 
the ability to play quicktime movies, to draw, or create databases, or 
make chocolate parfaits, or whatever.

they got more expensive, more tricky to use, had stiffer hardware 
requirements and OS requirements, more RAM..remember how people howled 
right around Word 6 or so?

yet, if the basic job was typing, formatting text, using styles, etc., 
none of them really did any better than Mac Write II, and all of them 
required more complexity and expense just to have them.

I have gone from a pair of Dual 2Ghz G5's  stuffed with RAM to a pair 
of Mac Minis stuffed with RAM, and although a bit slower, not really 
less capable. Yeah, the prevailing wisdom is that the Mac Mini isn't a 
"real" computer. My experience says otherwise.

I guess I'll just have to see how things morph over the next 5 years or 
more. Given the life expectancy of Macs, I might have to chime in then 
and let ya know how my films and 3D animations are coming along.

nk

On Nov 17, 2006, at 2:06 AM, Geoffrey Loeffler wrote:

> I wrote a legal brief on a Mac 512 in MacWrite, how could I possibly  
> have done it any faster on the most powerful computer today. I can 
> only type so fast. That was system 6 and it worked just fine.