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Jobs was right, though that's not what I believed at the time! Eliminating expansion slots from the Apple II spurred development in SCSI, Firewire, and ultimate
by taylodl 5y ago
Jobs was right, though that's not what I believed at the time! Eliminating expansion slots from the Apple II spurred development in SCSI, Firewire, and ultimately USB. Now we're used to taking any kind of device and connecting it to a USB port and it simply working. Jobs obsession with thinness has also eliminated several other wires: wireless networking is universal and most of us are aghast when needing to use an ethernet cable, same for wireless printing, keyboards and mice/trackpads, and more recently we've been accustomed to wireless headphones. I think all of this would have happened eventually but you have to admit Jobs drove this.
- rasz 5y agoYour logic is erm, flawed. Imagine the innovation we could encourage by banning wheels on cars!
- tinus_hn 5y agoThe reason why not every cynic can replace Steve Jobs is that Steve Jobs knew to force things only if they actually could be forced. It didn’t always work out but often enough.
- taylodl 5y agoCorrect. Jobs didn't recommend eliminating expansion slots without having an alternative on hand. The same thing happened when they eliminated the floppy drive from their iMacs in the 90's - they had an alternative on hand, the USB drive. They were new at the time and certainly not widespread but its adoption by the iMac changed all that.
- deelowe 5y agoExactly. Plus, Apple wasn't exactly a market leader when USB became ubiquitous. I'd imagine the camera industry had a much larger impact on usb adoption and associated data rate increases.
- taylodl 5y agoYour counterargument is flawed - nobody banned anything. These were the choices made by a private company to its own product line in order to better serve its customers and boost sales. Apple wasn't even the first company to choose this route. In 1984 when the Mac was released the most successful personal computer of the time was the Commodore 64 - which had no expansion slots, relying instead on a daisy-chained external serial bus for expansion. The computer makers of the time realized simplicity was the key to mass consumer adoption and thus increased sales. I wouldn't be surprised if Jobs pointed to the Commodore 64 when insisting expansion slots not be present in the Mac.
- rasz 5y agoAre you really trying to argue a bottom feeding $199 (price in 1984) computer was the reason for $2800 ones lack of expandability? :D Btw C64 provided full CPU bus on externally accessible edge slot.
- taylodl 5y agoThat was dealer price, not retail price. A C64 system having the monitor and floppy drive retailed for $1,000. It was the highest-selling computer at the time (technically of all time) and yes, Jobs was obsessed with it. Jobs believed taking the C64 with its serial expansion bus, and adding in a mouse and a GUI would make a computer "for the rest of us." Also, that price you quoted is after the release of the Mac, which subdued C64 sales.
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