I was sitting in one of the hot spots of downtown Bonny Doon, California, where I work and live, when it occurred to me that I might get a fascinating column, or at least a fast one, out of halting the handiest local, or "Doonie," as we call us, and soliciting his or her opinion on -- well, on whatever he or she wanted to opine on, frankly. My column deadline was looming: I had 60 minutes to finish. The result was this minute with a handy Doonie.
"Didja ever notice how practically every major hotel chain was founded by someone whose name starts with the letter 'H'? Hilton, Helmsley, Hyatt, Holiday. Why do you suppose that is? Do these people go into the hotel business because they enjoy the alliteration? Hyatt Hotel, Helmsley hospitality, Honolulu Hilton. Then again, maybe it's some ethnic thing. If so, I hope I'm not offending anyone. God knows I don't want to offend anyone.
"All I know is, it's confusing. On a recent business trip I stayed at a Hilton and a Hyatt. My company paid for the Hyatt, and I was on my own for the Hilton. Or maybe it was the other way around. I had a terrible time keeping my lunch receipts straight when I was filling out my expense report. And the cab driver who took me from the Hyatt to the Hilton was as confused as I was. He took me to another Hyatt. I had to walk 12 blocks.
"Didja ever wonder what it would take to clone a Macintosh? Benjamin Chou thinks he knows. Here's his list. Oh, I took the liberty of simplifying it so I could understand it."
"NuTek was very careful about copyright and patent questions. The NuTek chipset and API were laboriously developed using cleanroom procedures. At least that's what Chou says. And the GUI is Motif from the Open Software Foundation, which Apple hasn't sued yet. So wouldn't you think it would be good news for NuTek that U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker threw out most of Apple's copyright claims in its suit against Microsoft?
"Well, you'd be wrong. The latest word is that Apple is now considering legal action against NuTek. Why, Apple? If you really need to sue somebody, can't you find an easier target? Can't you track down some school children making illegal copies of the calculator desk accessory? But I guess bottom feeders have to eat whatever drifts their way.
"It looks like NuTek is going to need that 9.
"The people at Apple probably won't like that business about bottom feeders. No sense of humor. Isn't it nice when people have a sense of humor about their work? But doesn't it make you a little uneasy that the people who work in the Pentagon call the little park in the center of their building 'ground zero?' I guess it's funny, but I kinda expect the Pentagon to be a more serious place. You know, everyone walking around with their heads down, muttering about 'mutually assured destruction' and that sort of thing. More like Apple."
Next month, I investigate the technical expertise of Sears sales people.
Copyright © 1992, Dr. Dobb's Journal
"Chou is the president of NuTek, the company that showed a functioning Mac clone in Europe this spring. He says that NuTek has the last four items and that OEMs can supply the other five. The magic chips are 1-micron CMOS ASICs. There are three of them and they supply all the logic for DMA, burst-mode memory transfer, sound generation, disk drive control, and for addressing more memory than Macs and talking to the NuBus at up to 33 MHz. That sort of stuff.