But this is about Jobs not Apple. Apple's next gen OS quest whilst Jobs wasn't there is irrelevant. Jobs selected Unix as the underpinning for NeXTStep. But had Unix not been around something else would be.

If you want to play the what-if game, Apple would probably have used BeOS. Which was better in many ways than Unix. And to an end user system based on Unix and one based on BeOS needn't look any different. Only the BeOS one would be smoother.

I admire Jobs because he made design, quality and user experience the overriding factors in creating products. And he had the confidence to know that approach would win out in the end. And the taste to be able to personally ensure the company kept on track.

The people who hate jobs are invariably people who don't appreciate design, and think it's just decoration.

The Knuth story is obviously apocryphal. The selection of Knuth for the story and the use of the word "all" is exactly what you would do if writing a gag. The fact that Knuth has denied it has laid it to rest for anyone who's rationality isn't blinded by hatred.

Absolutely. If Woz wasn't at the Homebrew Computer Club, Jobs would have recruited someone else, with similar results. There were plenty of other engineers who were capable of single-handedly putting together a microprocessor based computer board at the time.

Well that was a stupid thing to say. The C-language and Unix were just one language and one OS amongst many. If they hadn't been around Apple (and NeXT) would have used something else.

The Greek people didn't take out the loans. And the failed austerity programme was forced upon them by the ECB and the IMF.

Now the only sticking point to a deal is that the Greek Government want the rich to pay the debt and ECB and the IMF want the poor to pay. This has now reached a point where the ECB and IMF are attempting regime change by economic bullying, just as the World Ban and the IMF have done in Africa for decades.

If the banks can be bailed out because they are "too big to fail" so can Greece. And if it was a right wing government, it would be.

This is neoliberal warfare.

Linux? There's not much call for it. Not round here, sir.

I quite fancy the idea of programming a game for the BBC micro. I've learned so much since those days, it'd be fun to see what could be done with such a limited machine.

However, I'd want a modern text editor and git. I wouldn't want to go back to using cassette tapes or even 80KB or whatever they were disks.

I guess that probably means using an emulator, at least for the development part. With the odd check that it does work on a real machine.

There's probably a web site about this...

This is the UK, where they'll find more engineers with experience fixing BBC Micros than C64s.

They'll certainly get some education support people that maintained BBC Micros for Local Education Authorities. And they may well even get some ex-Acorn engineers - some of them will be retired now, and would be happy to help a museum out preserving something they love.

BTW, one of the neat things about the BBC Micro is that they shipped with a complete circuit diagram for the main board in the back of the manual.

Bit of both with the BBC micro. The main board is double sided with vias. But the PSU board is single sided. And we appear do appear to be talking about the PSU.

Still, the other poster made a worthwhile cautionary note for the general case. All be it in an unnecessarily obnoxious way.

Some info on replacing the caps here:
http://www.retro-kit.co.uk/pag...

So you're saying it's OK to abuse the rights of workers because: business!

What a simple minded sheep you are.

What you don't appreciate is that there is always a cost to adding UI. If the phone has windowing then there has to be some means of activating it. And that's extra UI. And if that extra UI has to work with the iPhone, then that has implications for how it's implemented on the iPad.

The windowing system on the iPad is really sweet. It uses the dimensions of the screen really well. Why potentially fuck it up for no gain by implementing windowing on iPhone?

What people miss about the essence of good design is it's as much about what you leave out as what you add.

When you can't tell the difference between literal rul-of-thumb finger pattern on a capacitative screen and strain gauges, it just makes you look stupid.

It says nothing about Apple.

Yeah, right, those right button clicks on a mouse are so pointless aren't they. There can't possibly be two different purposes for tapping a point can there.