[RKDinOKC]

Back in the day...

My job was doing graphic layout and design and typesetting for the company literature. When I started doing the job the typesetting process was to type out the text on a typewriter and send it to a typesetter with the font, styles, column widths etc. The cost was $75 a foot for the type. You then had to cut an paste the type up onto a layout pasteboard. If there were columns you manually had to paste them onto the page. The page was then shot with a huge graphic arts camera to make the negatives to burn the printing press plates from. But before you could burn the plates the negatives had to be taped onto another layout sheet and the half-tone photo negatives stripped in also.

The first revolution in the process was with the typesetting. You could "code" your type and send it to the typesetters electronically. There were several advantages to this. The first was cost. It only cost $25 a foot for because the typesetter did not have to type in your copy. It also cost less because you could code your copy to output the type into a layout. No more type cut and paste. It also offered computer spell checking which greatly reduced errors, and again, cut and paste work.

The next revolution was still with typesetters. Apple Macintosh, Adobe Pagemaker, and Adobe Postscript on a Linotype imagesetter made it so you could do WYSIWYG layout on the computer, then simply print to the typesetting printer. And the cost was down to $10 per foot. This was when I made the switch to Macintosh computers. At that time you could do the same thing with a PC but the system cost was $25,000 instead of $3000 for a system Mac including the software. And with the PC type was not WYSIWYG, you would have to re-print pages to fix layout problems caused by a 10pt font not actually being 10pt on the PC and paragraph wrapping not printing like it was on the screen. And that is still true today! Just ask anyone that does true cross-platform web page design.

Well, that's the main reason I am a Mac user. Yes the initial cost for a Mac is higher, but there s a reason for it. For me, it's worth every penny.

Also, by the time my Macs have needed upgrading, yes they stay useable much longer, it is has been much more cost effective to replace the computer instead of trying to make do by upgrading components. Two words "Bus speed."