From: johnsd2@jec325.its.rpi.edu (Daniel Norman Johnson)
Subject: Re: Why Macs are better (and the others aren't)
Reply-To: johnsd2@rpi.edu
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 16:38:43 GMT

In article <strobl.717604304@gmd.de>, strobl@gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) writes:
|> In <1992Sep25.064430.27111@ugle.unit.no> terjer@ifi.unit.no (Terje Rydland) writes:
[deletia- tons of it, about user interfaces]
|> >> 
|> >> Question: did Apple succeed?
|> 
|> >Yes. Very much so. There are a few companies that insist on breaking those
|> >rules.
|> >One of the main offenders is Microsoft. 
|> 
|> Perhaps because Microsoft has had to keep a standard look and 
|> feel for its applications on a bigger scale, which dosn't just 
|> include the Mac platform, only?

Oh, c'mon.. Windows and the Mac aren't that different. Would it have
hurt THAT much to have Excel do real Cut+paste, for instance?

If you are saying the MS SHOULD make the Windows and MacOS versions
as close as possible, I disagree. This is annoying to people who
are using them and other apps on one machine. Id rather have it annoy
people who use just the one app, but do so on various machines.

In any case, they are very similar anyway, so I doubt it would be
much of a problem.

[deletia- about switching GUIs]
|> 
|> >The point being that it is the data (document) that is important, not the
|> >applications
|> >that are used for creating those data.
|> 
|> I don't unterstand that. Neither the document nor the application make
|> any sense without the other. Quick: what is more important: your
|> laserprinter, or the paper it prints on?

The paper, once the paper has been printed on. :) After all,
that's what you were trying to get. And that makes perfect
since without any laserprinter. [good analogy, btw :)]

[deletia- a desktop corruption example]
|> 
|> >No. It is not a setup problem. Have you ever used a Mac? 
|> 
|> Yes, obviously. :-)
|> 
|> Joking aside, yes, I have. It heavily used one about six or seven
|> years ago, but very seldom afterwards.
|>

There have been some changes since then. :)

[deletia- explaination of desktop database, advice to rebuild it]
|> >Your friends desktop file (or database) was obviously corrupted, and all
|> >you 
|> >needed to do was to force a rebuild of the desktopfile/database.
|> 
|> It wasn't obvious to him (or me) how to do that. After you explaination,
|> it still isn't obvious to me. 

That's cuz he didn't say how to do it. It isn't obvious.
what you do is hold down the command and option keys while
the hard drive (or whatever) is being mounted. It then throws up
a dialog asking if you want to rebuild its desktop.. click okay
and its off.

|> Application to file association isn't fully automatic under Windows
|> (in comparison to the way the Macintosh seems to handle that), but
|> it isn't a big problem: you can do it manually, by using the the
|> filemanagers "associate" menue entry, but usually the setup 
|> programm of an app makes all the necessary changes. And the
|> automatical method has its own problems, imho.

Such as? [assuming nothing is corrupted.. I doubt windows would work
too well if it was corrupted, either...]

[deletia- system file drag&drap, using the font tool to add fonts in windows]
|> 
|> >Why a font tool? In system 7 you just drop the font on the system folder
|> >and that's it.
|> 
|> Why a font tool? For example in order to show you details of the
|> font to be installed or removed, including a sample of how it looks.

To get this, you double click the fonts icon. A window comes
up displaying a sample. You can tell if a font is truetype or not
by its icon, and also because you get samples at various sizes
if its a truetype font. If its a bitmap font, you just get the
one size that the font is bitmapped in.

|> Why a control panel at all? It is quite possible to encode each
|> and every parameter change in the system into some kind of file
|> movement ("Move the 'Green' file to the 'BackgroundColor' folder"),
|> but I doubt that this is the way to go.

This is why the Macintosh has a control panel also. Actually,
it has a control panels folder, and there are control panels inside
of it. You can move htem, rename them, etc like files (they are files);
You can add new ones that do c00l things. Its a very use-friendly
way to extend your system.

I dont know if that is possible in Windows. Care to enlighten me?

|> > 
|> >> There aren't such things as desk accessories in Windows.This is
|> >> an outdated concept.  
|> 
|> >Nor are there in System 7 - this is indeed an outdated concept.
|> 
|> Fine, finally we can agree on something. :-). Nice that the
|> Macintosh OS has finally caught up to Windows, after six or seven
|> years. (Sorry, couldn't resist - in fact I don't like that sort 
|> of remark much; I just hear it all to often).

<grrrr>

Anyway, I dont know when Multifinder came out, but we didn't need
DAs after that... although the apple menu didn't support non-DA-thing
until System 7. However, Windows did (and still doesn't) have an
Apple menu equivalent. Ya still gotta use teh program manager.

So I dont think its 6 or 7 years.

-- 
			- Dan Johnson
And God said "Jeeze, this is dull"... and it *WAS* dull. Genesis 0:0

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