AAUI

Most of the time, but not always, Apple's deviation from standards was done in the attempt to build a better mouse trap, not just to ignore standards. Sometimes they were right, sometimes wrong. Often, they were early adopters who helped get a market going, such as with both USB and Firewire. Even Intel has recently announced that they were moving to the IEEE-1394 standard, which Apple has been using, vice the one they had been pushing. Current Mac's are full of standard parts and ports though and oftentimes can even use PC PCI boards with the appropriate drivers. Certainly they stick to standards more than say, Microsoft, who tossed out every known data format standard in it's Office products, not because they came up with something better but because it was proprietary to them? How else can you explain the fact that Access can't open dBase files directly while Excel can? And to me, that's the whole name of the game...options and choices. Anyone that tries to stronghold me into using only their products will quickly find that I will use none of their products. Jeff -- Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems: Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757