10 Apr
2000
10 Apr
'00
3:23 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Tony Duell once stated:
That's the point, actually. They gave you enough information about the
software, but not the hardware. Reasoning behind that is so the programmer
only programs to the given API, not the hardware, so that Apple can change
the hardware.
That's a major problem with the PC and one of the reasons why we were
stuck with legacy PC hardware for so long---programmers hit the hardware for
nearly every program written prior to Windows 3.0 coming out.
It really depends upon what you want for information. Inside Macintosh is
a programmers manual, not an engineers manual.
-spc (Which is probably why you don't like it)
"Charles P. Hobbs (SoCalTip)" <transit(a)lerctr.org> wrote:
Admittedly I'm a hardware person, but IMHO the information that was
printed in 'Inside Macintosh' is totally inadequate. At least compared to
the information in the IBM Technical Reference manuals, and the
information in DEC's manuals and ... Or, in the early days of the Macintosh, the
difficulty in getting technical manuals for the machine (indeed, at first,
to find *any* books much more technical than "How to hold the mouse")...
I strongly disagree. Apple did everything they could to court
developers for the Macintosh. If there wasn't a cheap book on
programming the Macintosh in the stores then, it was only because there
was such a large amount of technical information needed, and it wasn't
yet edited into a book suited for mass-market publication. It was *NOT*
because Apple was trying to restrict software development to an
annointed few; they'd tried that route on the Apple /// and failed
horribly.