OT: why I don't use a Mac at home much (was Re: [OS X TeX] Nobody knows)

[William F. Adams]

On Tuesday, March 23, 2004, at 10:58  AM, Maarten Sneep wrote:

> Jérôme Laurens added:
>> "Why does not everyone use Mac?"
>
> Inertia, ignorance, masochism. That and the odd application that is 
> not available, but if everyone uses a Mac, that would solve itself.

In my case, although my sister was giving me a PowerBook (I passed it 
on to my wife), Apple simply doesn't make a machine I'm interested in 
purchasing.

I've had clam shell laptops since 1985 when I bought a GRiDCase III 
plus, before that I had a 128KB ``Classic'' Macintosh (and one of 
everything in the store....) and since then I've gotten a NeXT Cube as 
my desktop, but I also got an NCR-3125 and a Newton and a Wacom ArtZ 
graphics tablet and fell in love w/ the idea of pen computing.

The closest Apple comes to a pen computer these days would be a 
PowerMac G5 w/ a Wacom Cintiq attached. Pricey, runs Mac OS X (not 
NeXTstep), w/ only a nodding, begrudging capability for pen input 
(InkWell, not trainable, print only), and tethers one to a wall / desk.

Take a look at http://www.ambientdesign.com and look up the (free!) 
program ArtRage.

Consider that CIC Handwriter directly supports using traditional 
proofreading marks as editing gestures.

Consider that I just dropped a 20GB HD into my pen slate and _all_ of 
my data and preferred software tools (including nifty things like 
Fractal Design Expression, FutureWave SmartSketch and Macromedia 
FreeHand) come w/ me and I've got room to burn (gotta drop in some 
games and alla my CDs).

And I prefer to write / doodle while thinking, and begrudge the time 
which I used to spend transcribing / scanning such.

William

(who would give his interest in Hell for Apple do make an iMac G4 w/ a 
detachable display which functioned as a pen slate and had nifty ink 
handling, and a drawing program like SmartSketch)

-- 
William Adams, publishing specialist
voice - 717-731-6707 | Fax - 717-731-6708
www.atlis.com

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