WINDOWS 95 MANIA : Macintosh, OS / 2 Users Unimpressed by Hoopla : Technology: Loyalists say their systems already offer what Microsoft’s software has--and more.
As the media storm surrounding the introduction of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 95 raged on Thursday, the Los Angeles law office of Kamine Steiner & Ungerer was an island of calm, where the hum of 20 Apple Macintosh computers easily drowned out the hoopla.
“I got nothing against Microsoft--I use a lot of Microsoft applications right here on my Mac,” said partner Matt Steiner, who bought the firm’s first Macintosh nine years ago. But “a lot of the stuff they are bragging about . . . that’s all stuff we have been doing for years.”
Far from feeling left out of the Windows 95 party, devotees of the Macintosh and IBM’s OS/2 operating system have for weeks been smugly pointing out that their preferred technologies already offer everything Windows 95 has--and more.
On a computer bulletin board devoted to OS/2, subscribers “flamed” a peer who dared to defend Windows 95. “I think the whole flame war comes down to this: OS/2 did it first, OS/2 did it better,” wrote one computer user.
Another wrote: “Sorry to waste the bandwidth folks, but Win 95 has nothing to offer OS/2 users. OS/2 works for me, it’s not the end all and it’s not perfect, but it fits my needs better than anything else.”
IBM and Apple also tried to make themselves heard over the din of Microsoft’s massive promotional campaign. Apple has been sending out a steady stream of news releases and advertisements pointing out the superiority of the Mac. An IBM ad jibes about the operating system “EVERYONE has been waiting for,” and then, on the next page, “Well, maybe not everyone,” amid a list of OS/2 customers.
In a dig at one of the most annoying aspects of DOS and earlier versions of Windows--the “eight-plus-three” limit on the length of file name, Apple ran two-page newspaper ads that simply read: “C:/ONGRTLNS.W95” in large type.
For many Mac users, Microsoft’s Windows 95 amounts to little more than conceding the superiority of the Mac.
“I don’t know what all the hype is all about,” said Ann Lee, a 26-year-old psychology student who lives in Alhambra and works on an Apple PowerBook. “People are going to get it [Windows 95] and they are going to be disappointed. They’re going to find that they could have gotten a Mac way before ’95.”
Another Macintosh owner, Mylan Hart, computer information systems student at Cal Poly Pomona, said he has seen some Windows demonstration and has come away unimpressed.
“It’s just a shell to make it work like a Macintosh, which I already have,” said Hart, who owns two Macs.
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Times researcher Jennifer Oldham contributed to this report.
