From: jw63+@andrew.cmu.edu (James W Walden)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: More BS from -DB-
Date: 4 Jan 93 16:45:25 GMT
Article-I.D.: andrew.0fGDN5S00WB4IfiFhL
Organization: Doctoral student, Physics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Excerpts from netnews.comp.sys.amiga.advocacy: 4-Jan-93 More BS from
-DB- by Marc N. Barrett@iastate. 
> In article <58226@dime.cs.umass.edu> barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu
(Daniel Barrett)
>  writes:
> >In article <C0BJCq.MK9@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N.
Barrett) 
> writes:
> >>The Mac OS is not very pretty under the surface, but is VERY elegant on the
> >>surface.  The Mac OS on the surface has lots and lots of niceties, big and
> >>small. AmigaOS is more elegant under the surface, but is almost completely
> >>devoid of niceties on the surface.
> >
> >       Certainly the Amiga user interface needs some work.  I've never seen
> >a GUI that couldn't be improved, including the Mac's. 
> >       First, let's talk about the joke Apple calls "multitasking."
>  
>    Yes, the Macintosh's multitasking is almost completely broken.  But
that is
> a problem with what's "under the hood".  This is not a problem with a surface
> detail.  My message was about the many, many problems with the surface
details
> of AmigaOS.  I expected that someone would come right back by mentioning a
> problem with the innards of the MacOS as a surface, cosmetic problem, and you
> did.  Congratuations!

Wasn't your message also about the `under-the-hood' problems of the Mac
OS or what am I quoting just above?  Or am I supposed to remember that
you're Marc Barrett and hence your messages are *only* about problems
with the Amiga and nothing else should be addressed.
  
> > On the Amiga, you
> >simply run whatever programs you want, as many copies as you want, unless
> >the programs were specifically written to prevent this.
>  
>    This has problems as well as benefits.  Yes, its very nice for a
power user
> to be able to launch more than one copy of PageStream, for instance. 
But this
> has many problems for the novice user.  On the Macintosh, if you have 
> WordPerfect running an double-click a WordPerfect document from the Finder, 
> the existing WP task is told to load the document.  On the Amiga, another
> WordPerfect or PageStream task is launched.  This can confuse novice users 
> quite a lot.  For instance, one time my mom was using the computer and ran
> out of memory.  I looked things over, and noticed there with NINE PageStream
> tasks running at the same time.  This is a testimony to the power of the
> Amiga that the Amiga could run nine PageStream tasks, but it was also VERY
> confusing to my mom.  She finds the Macintosh environment much easier to
> work with.

How much time is someone a novice user?  Perhaps if one uses a Mac, one
is always a novice user, but I haven't been a novice user for a long
time and I don't think I'm going to suddenly become one again so why
would someone who isn't a novice user want all of the supposedly
"user-friendly" aspects of the Mac, especially since they can be
incredibly annoying?  Is it that difficult
to learn?  How about an analogy with vector calculus - sure, all the
upside down triangles look weird the first time you look at it, but it
doesn't take very long to learn and then you actually have the power and
freedom to do things without the drudgery of writing out three partial
derivatives for each simple del and horrible complications fraught with
error for each del^2.  A little initial investment can pay off
tremendously so why not be willing to make it?  I'm not arguing against
all user friendliness - user friendly software and OS's are great but
only when they're not a terrible burden to the more advanced user.
  
>    Those are more problems with the engine, and not with a surface detail.  
> Don't change the subject.

He wasn't.  Everyone knows how you whine about the Amiga, but we had the
shocking idea that all that you typed was what you were discussing.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy