122 lines
5.9 KiB
Plaintext
122 lines
5.9 KiB
Plaintext
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
|
||
|
||
From the New Yorker
|
||
July 2, 1984
|
||
|
||
|
||
MAN, BYTES, DOG
|
||
|
||
Many people have asked me about the Cairn Terrier. How about memory, they want
|
||
to know. Is it IBM-compatible? Why didn't I get the IBM itself, or a Kaypro,
|
||
Compaq, or Macintosh? I think the best way to answer these questions is to
|
||
look at th Macintosh and the Cairn head on. I almost did buy the Macintosh.
|
||
It has terrific graphics, good word-processing capabilities, and the mouse.
|
||
But in the end I decided on the Cairn, and I think I made the right decision.
|
||
|
||
Let's start out with the basics:
|
||
|
||
Macintosh:
|
||
Weight (without printer): 20lbs.
|
||
Memory (RAM): 128K
|
||
Price (with printer): $3,090
|
||
|
||
Cairn Terrier:
|
||
Weight (without printer): 14lbs.
|
||
Memory (RAM): Some
|
||
Price (without printer): $250
|
||
|
||
Just on the basis of price and weight, the choice is obvious. Another plus is
|
||
that the Cairn Terrier comes in one unit. No printer is necessary, or useful.
|
||
And--this was a big attraction to me--there is no user's manual.
|
||
|
||
Here are some of the other qualities I found put the Cairn out ahead of the
|
||
Macintosh:
|
||
|
||
PORTABILITY: To give you a better idea of size, Toto in "The Wizard of Oz" was
|
||
a Cairn Terrier. So you can see that if the young Judy Garland was able to
|
||
carry Toto around in that little picnic basket, you will have no trouble at all
|
||
moving your Cairn from place to place. For short trips it will move under its
|
||
own power. The Macintosh will not.
|
||
|
||
RELIABILITY: In five to ten years, I am sure, the Macintosh will be superseded
|
||
by a new model, like the Delicious or the Granny Smith. The Cairn Terrier, on
|
||
the other hand, has held its share of the market with only minor modifications
|
||
for hundreds of years. In the short term, Cairns seldom require servicing,
|
||
apart from shots and the odd worming, and most function without interruption
|
||
during electric storms.
|
||
|
||
COMPATIBILITY: Cairn Terriers get along with everyone. And for communications
|
||
with any other dog, of any breed, within a radius of three miles, no additional
|
||
software is necessary. All dogs share a common operating system.
|
||
|
||
SOFTWARE: The Cairn will run three standard programs, SIT, COME, and NO, and
|
||
whatever else you create. It is true that, being a microcanine, the Cairn is
|
||
limited here, but it does load the programs simultaneously. No disk drives.
|
||
No tapes.
|
||
|
||
Admittedly, these are peripheral advantages. The real comparison has to be on
|
||
the basis of capabilities. What can the Macintosh and the Cairn do? Let's
|
||
start on the Macintosh's turf--income-tax preparation, recipe storage,
|
||
graphics, and astrophysics problems:
|
||
|
||
-------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
| Taxes Recipes Graphics Astrophysics |
|
||
| Macintosh yes yes yes yes |
|
||
| Cairn no no no no |
|
||
-------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
At first glance it looks bad for the Cairn. But it's important to look beneath
|
||
the surface with this kind of chart. If you yourself are leaning toward the
|
||
Macintosh, ask yourself these questions: Do you want to do your own income
|
||
taxes? Do you want to type all your recipes into a computer? In your graph,
|
||
what would you put on the $x$ axis? The $y$ axis? Do you have any
|
||
astrophysics problems you want solved?
|
||
|
||
Then consider the Cairn's specialties: playing fetch and tug-of-war, licking
|
||
your face, and chasing foxes out of rock cairns (eponymously). Note that no
|
||
software is necessary. All these functions are part of the operating system.
|
||
|
||
----------------------------------------------------
|
||
| Fetch Tug-of-War Face Foxes |
|
||
| Cairn yes yes yes yes |
|
||
| Macintosh no no no no |
|
||
----------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
Another point to keep in mind is that computers, even the Macintosh, only do
|
||
what you tell them to do. Cairns perform their functions all on their own.
|
||
Here are some of the additional capabilities that I discovered once I got
|
||
the Cairn home and house-broken:
|
||
|
||
WORD PROCESSING: Remarkably, the Cairn seems to understand every word I say.
|
||
He has a nice way of pricking up his ears at words like "out" and "ball." He
|
||
also has highly tuned voice-recognition.
|
||
|
||
EDUCATION: The Cairn provides children with hands-on experience at an early
|
||
age, contribution to social interaction, crawling ability, and language skills.
|
||
At age one, my daughter could say "Sit," "Come," and "No."
|
||
|
||
CLEANING: This function was a pleasant surprise. But of course cleaning up
|
||
around the cave is one of the reasons dogs were developed in the first place.
|
||
Users with young (below age two) children will still find this function useful.
|
||
The Cairn Terrier cleans the floor, spoons, bib, and baby, and has the unerring
|
||
ability to distinguish strained peas from ears, nose, and fingers.
|
||
|
||
PSYCHOTHERAPY: Hear the Cairn really shines. And remember, therapy is
|
||
something that computers have tried. There is a program that makes the
|
||
computer ask you questions when you tell it your problems. You say "I'm afraid
|
||
of foxes." The computer says, "You're afraid of foxes?"
|
||
|
||
The Cairn won't give you that kind of echo. Like Freudian analysts, Cairns are
|
||
mercifully silent; unlike Freudians, they are infinitely sympathetic. I've
|
||
found that the Cairn will share, in a nonjudgmental fashion, disappointments,
|
||
joys, and frustrations. And you don't have to know BASIC.
|
||
|
||
This last capability is related to the Cairn's strongest point, which was the
|
||
final deciding factor in my decision against the Macintosh--user-friendliness.
|
||
On this criterion, there is simply no comparison. The Cairn Terrier is the
|
||
essence of user-friendliness. It has fur, it doesn't flicker when you look at
|
||
it, and it wags its tail.
|
||
|
||
-- James Gorman
|
||
Call The Works BBS - 1600+ Textfiles! - [914]/238-8195 - 300/1200 - Always Open
|
||
|