xyJava revisited [was Re: A couple of issues]

[m LESLIE319@xxxxxxxx]

On 18-APR-1996 17:04:46.6 xywrite said to LESLIE319
  >"As I read it, the jury still is out on Java" --me
  >"The arch-skeptic of P.C. Mag, John Dvorak, is indeed skeptical of the
  >usefulness of Java." --Leslie
  >Quite so, Leslie. I wanted to avoid mentioning ZD mags since I happen to
  >share Harmon's sentiment that they are de facto MS house organs.

  Well, look: Any magazine whose ads are targeted toward people who do
the purchasing for their organzations is bound to go with the "installed
base" majority, and will _never_ do anything to offend the big advertisers.
(Has ZD _ever_ evaluated the speed of the latest software upgrade vs. the
previous version? Of course not: the idea is to get you to buy the latest
version of whatever, the ad for
whatever appearing, of course, on the adjacent
page.) Dvorak, however, seems to be given free rein. He has often been
skeptical of Gatesland in his pieces and is clearly _not_ on their payroll.


  >But who
  >wins and who loses with Java is less straightforward than Harmon
  >implies. Big Bad Bill has described the win95 competition as win3 (not
  >System 7; Warp is below the sight line).

Exactly. And that, BTW, was the real thrust of Dvorak's article. He was
talking about the arrogance of the Mac people who have rigidly stuck with
the same interface for 12 years while plunderer Gates, who steals from
everybody, has constantly sought to upgrade his software, by whatever means
necessary. Gates knew from the gitgo that while new machines would be
installed with Win 95 that the installed basians, especially in corporate
land, would be slow to move up. He could not have been surprised that most
of the sales of Win 95 would be on new machines and to compulsives who just
have to have the latest and greatest of everything. Doubtless he hoped that
word of mouth would convert the Win 3 holdouts sooner or later. I just have
to say that I personally have Win 95 on my Gateway P75 at home, and have had
little trouble with it. It certainly crashes less frequently than 3.1 did,
and it gets me into my apps and let me run them, which is all I want of an
operating system.

  >MS of course wants to
  >supplant Java, but has licensed it.

That's Gates all the way. If you can't supplant it, co-opt it.

  >Java serves MS's purposes by
  >encouraging upgrades to win95 since multithreading is a Java
  >prerequisite and win3 of course can't do it.

Fisher from way downtown for the three-pointer. Yessss!  And the foul!!!
Fisher goes to the line for the rare four-point play!!!

  >That presumably accounts
  >for the noises The Megacorp That Sized Up the Computing Public and
  >Gave Us the PCJr and Warp is making about writing a vaporware win3
  >JDK--to discourage win3 users from upgrading. Said megacorp has
  >apparently never reassessed its estimate of the computing public's
  >intelligence. ... Ciao. --Annie

And that's the difference between Small Blue and Microsoft. The latter
knows what business it's in and who its customers are.

--Leslie--
`[1;36;41mRainbow V 1.19.1 for Delphi - Registered