From: root@iguwnext.tuwien.ac.at (Peter Purgathofer)
Subject: Re: Dear Mr. Sculley (READ: Apple Shareholders Meeting)
Reply-To: purgi@iguwnext.tuwien.ac.at (Peter Purgathofer)
Organization: Technical University of Vienna
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 11:23:14 GMT

My first, though not most important problem are the prices in Austria  
(Mountains, no Kangaroos).

Macintoshs are *really* overpriced in Austria. An IIsi 5/80 costs about $4500  
without screen, so this is way tooooo much. Please get all your dealers to sell  
at compareable prices, all around the world, at least in countries with  
compareable currencies. 

Why, for example, are Macs _so_ much cheaper in Swizerland???

Secound, and most important, I would like to see Austria having its own country  
code in all the country-dependent resources. No, we are not Germany, we dont  
pay in DM but in Schilling, and we say Jaenner instead of Januar (for january).  
If you need all country-dependent data for austria, email me and ill send you a  
list.

Im not very patriotic (even more critical), but i cant see, why Switzerland has  
got its own resources, but Austria hasnt. And I dont want to see all Prices in  
DM in a Spreadsheet, because my computer company thinks, Austria still is a  
part of Germany. Is this kind of a revenge for (I didnt vote for him!) voting  
Mr. Waldheim as president???

And third, I`d like to see more of the old quality in production. I owned a  
PowerBook 140, and it had some flaws from the beginning on (screen flickering,  
disk drive...), then I switched to a 170 (with problems), which were fixed,  
just to have troubles again (broken spare parts). Now finally, after more than  
half a year, i work without problems. 

Quality semms to have dropped for sake of faster product developement cycles. I  
dont like this.

4) Please go back to the (approximately-)72dpi-paradigm. Leaving it wasnt a  
good job, and especially the LC color monitor hasnt done a good job to the  
apple philosophy. 

By the way, I still think Apple has done a mostly marvelous job during the past  
few years, so take my critics as a positively inspired one. I kinda love my  
PowerBook 170 and all the stuff we have here at the institute.

5) Stick to HyperCard, or its decenders. Its wonderful software, and it fits  
most perfectly to most of the things i do. Keep it bundled for free with every  
mac, and, please, bundle the full version again.

6) Work on the help manager. If i got the rumours right, then baloon help is  
only a first step. It should have been the last refinement. Its great, but what  
i would need first is a "how-do-I.." help and a "where-is..." help.

7) I liked the following points from other postings:
Make system 7 less memory intensive
UK/France prices (of course...)
dictonary manager (dreamed of this since i have the powerbook...)
a better developement system


I left out all the things that are said to be in system 7.1

There are some details, especially Finder UI-Stuff, which i would like to  
see...

* I want the "View by" command in finder to be extended to work on selection of  
files, e.g. having some files shown as a list, and some other as icons. This  
could work just like in ClarisWork, where you can show multiple-lined text in  
the spreadsheed by just dragging a frame.

* I want information of the size of the current selection. This is great for  
getting the size of one file by clicking at it, but also for checking, whether  
all the files I selected will fill on on disk. 

* I want a way of memorizing a seletion of files, like on the NeXT. This is a  
great interface feature in NeXTstep (in the browser view).

The following stuff relates to the point above about the quality control. The  
PowerBooks have come out with some flaws, that wouldnt show up after more user  
testing. And obviously there were no special powerbook utilities developed,  
because all the stuff seems to be from the portable (see below)

* I want an init for my PowerBook to change the caps lock key to, eg,  
command-caps lock. I dont use it often but switching it by accident.

* I want a cdev (or utility) for more accurate control of the power saving  
features of my powerbook, eg. spinning down the disk by hand without sleeping  
the mac. I have powersleep, but sometimes i just want to sleep the hard drive.  
The program I have (Portable) seems to be suited for the protable, it says to  
switch off the backlight, but it doesnt. Get a real PB-utility!

* I want to be able to wake my powerbook from software. As far as i understod,  
Apple removed the appropriate chipo to save power. Too bad, i would love that.

* Come up with some protective cases for the mac, especially for transporting  
them, eg. with bicycles <- this is not really important, but I would love it.

I see my wishes getting less and less important, so maybe i should stop. So  
this is all for today, maybe i think of more aspects...

Peter Purgathofer
------------------------------------------------
Institut for design and assessment of technology
Dep. Computer Science / Techn. Universitaet Wien
Moellwaldplatz 5/187                 A-1040 Wien
------------------------------------------------
"ROMANES EUNT DOMUS"  (Brian)

PS: It is funny to see that some people are able/willing to make a Mac vs. PC  
discussion up from virtually every topic in this newsgroup.