From: billj@b11.b11.ingr.com (Bill Jones)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Keywords: Mac, Window, Throw 
Organization: Intergraph Corp. Huntsville, AL
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 06:45:46 GMT

"Ken Rawlings" <krawling@banana.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:


>        There are two relatively simple things that I want to do on a Mac that
>I _still_ have no idea how to do, even after reading all of the info-mac
>digests, and using Mac's extensively. 

>        #1: Send a postscript file to the printer. Just shove that baby down
>            the serial connection to the printer. No, I don't want to modify
>            it in a word processor, or anything else. Here's the file, across
>            the room is a postscript printer. Send it. I've talked to
>            _numerous_ people that consider themselves "Mac Gods" and they
>            all agreed, "Can't be done without a special program, and I don't
>            know where you'd find it"

Can be done with a terminal emulator. SendPS is available all over the
Internet, for sending raw PS over network.

>        #2: See this file sitting on the Hard Drive? Execute it. No, I don't
>            care that you think it's a "Document", just trust me and run the
>            damn thing. This is a _real_ problem when you have a bunch of
>            .hqx files, and have a copy of binhex4.bin that you downloaded
>            with a PC(why didn't I download it on the mac? Those beautiful
>            unstandard serial ports that I don't have a cable for and Apple
>            wants an arm and a leg for a converter for, and ComputerLand 
>            can't understand the question in the first place :-( )

So, can you run an Excel data file on a PC without a copy of Excel somewhere.
Of course not. Can you run a korn shell script without setting the permissions
to be executable? No. Do you insist on being able to view a GIF file when
you have no GIF viewer? Why do you expect the Mac to be any different?

The Mac is designed to do everyday tasks in a simple fashion. It's when
techie people like you and me and everybody else in this here want to
do unordinary, techie things like bypass the printer drivers to send a file
to the laser writer that the Mac trips up.

I personally can't bring myself to program much on the Mac; I'd rather
play with all my text-crunchers in Unix. But I also don't put together
presentations or documents on my workstation, 'cause I can do it better
and easier on the Mac.

My father tried twice to use PCs to automate his work and his office. Never
could figure it out without me standing there telling him what to type.
He tried Macs and started getting use out of it inside of a day. He was even
able to teach the idjits that work for him how to use the things to get
real work done.

>        These are two _real_, non contrived problems I have encountered
>_recently_ with Mac's and have caused me no end of consternation. The thing
>that makes me mad is that I _WANT_ to like Mac's, lord knows i'm sick of DOS,
>but there's this big wall that's put up between me and the Machine that
>_purposely_ keeps me from doing what I want to do.

What you want to do is make your Mac be a DOS or Unix box. It ain't.

>        These are also things that a Mac "User" like myself SHOULD be able to
>do. We won't get into the inability to write shell scripts, or other hairly
>issues - these are _TRIVIAL_ things that for me makes the Mac less a real
>computer, and more an expensive Information Appliance(or Word Proccessor).

Once again, the things you want to do are not things a Mac User would do.
To put it another way:

With DOS and Unix boxes, you get close to the hardware for free, the higher-
level user interface is an add-on. With the Mac, it's an add-on to climb
down to where the hardware lives.

>                                        Hoping to be proved wrong(please!),
>                                                        Ken Rawlings

I don't know why I feel compelled to get into religious arguments...:)

>-- 
>: Ken Rawlings      | One Tool to rule them all, one Tool to find them,       
>: Computer Science  | One Tool to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
>: Indiana University|           -J.R.R. Tolkien(referring to Emacs)

Bill Jones
Intergraph Corp.
Huntsville, AL
billj@beowulf.b11.ingr.com

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