
Diagnostic Port (2004) - duncan_bayne
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Diagnostic_Port.txt
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djaychela
Certainly seems somewhat prophetic of the situation I've always thought was
the case at Apple - the "you don't need to see this" mentality, that users
should just accept that it works and that's that. I appreciate that suits some
people (and indeed most of the kids I teach at one of the schools have Macs
and love them), but I'm not sure it's good, long term; the level of knowledge
of how computers work at even the most simplistic level seems to be
disappearing amongst the majority of those I teach, and I don't think that's
an empowering situation.

I wonder how this was all squared with the introduction of USB on the iMac? It
appeared to me that the wider adoption of USB happened in part because of it
being included on the original iMac series (it may just have taken that long
to get traction as most technologies seem to need a while, particularly if
there is an alternative as there was on PCs with parallel and PS/2 ports), and
USB has been a huge boon in terms of connectivity for most people. I wonder if
there was any similar push for no USB, or a proprietary Apple connection (a la
ADB) - anyone know?

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rz2k
The comment section is probably even more interesting. Specifically, that Jef
Raskin was talking about there being a complete product, where for instance
you plug in a printer rather than buying a printer _and_ an interface for the
printer, rather than opposing expandability.

Other words that might get at the same point: the "Design Considerations for
an Anthropophilic Computer" document [1] describes a structuring of components
that does not favor people who enjoy tinkering over those who don't.

[1]
[http://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/primary/docs/bom/...](http://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/primary/docs/bom/anthrophilic.html)

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duncan_bayne
The problem is that "tinkering" is what computers are _for_. They are only
peripherally useful for entertainment or drone work, the latter of which they
wind up being used to automate away anyway.

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yuhong
Ah, the era where 64K and 256K DRAM prices fell ten fold in a year (from 1984
to 1985). Micron suffered years of losses until just before the DRAM shortage
in 1988.

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OJFord
My first thought was that this was about swigging fortified wine to possibly
aid (and therefore diagnose) ailing health...

