From: mbk@lyapunov.ucsd.edu (Matt Kennel)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windows == OS (NOT!)
Date: 30 Sep 92 22:22:54 GMT
Organization: Institute For Nonlinear Science, UCSD
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MBT3@psuvm.psu.edu (Mike Tierney) writes:
: In article <jbone.717778010@splat>, jbone@splat.dell.com (Jeff Bone) says:
: >925wardell@gw.wmich.edu writes:
: >> ...[Windows] certainly has great usefulness and has done more to
: >> speed up the PC revolution than anything yet...
: >I'll take that flame bait...  ;)
: >Windows is nothing but a low-grade rip-off of the Mac GUI, which is
: >what *truly* revolutionized PCs and the way we use them.  Windows is
: 
:      The only thing MacOS truly revolutionized was a whole new way to
: usurp other's ideas (aka Xerox PARC), and call them your own.

Apple took ideas from a research lab and made them into a real product.
(No I don't believe in look'n'feel patents)  Xerox's work showed that
"a solution exists".  Apple solved it.

I think they came up with a few ideas on their own, too.

Consider:  1) 1 button mouse  2) 3.5 inch floppy disk  3) unified
graphics interface 4) Postscript laser printer 5) integrated sound modules
6) international language support 7) built in inexpensive networking
hardware and software. 8) Easy system administration

No, they didn't *invent* these things (then again most anything useful
was proposed in some paper 10 years ago anyway), but who was doing them
for real before Apple?

:  Probably
: the only favorable quality about the Macintosh is that the hardware is
: all one standard (thanks to Apple's closely-guarded monopoly), and
: therefore, programs could have been written since 1984 without worrying
: too much about hardware variances.  If Intel PC's had that kind of
: single architecture guiding it since the beginning, you'd find PC
: software surpassing anything the Mac could offer in ease of use (instead
: of the simply better performance, which equivalent DOS machines have always
: had over Macs, Windows or not.)

Oh I don't know.  It think the variation in hardware among macintosh models
is as large among PC clones. 


Microsoft, on the other hand, took an already existing *commercialized*
product, whose value was proven in the marketplace, and made a substantially
inferior substitute for a few hundred million bucks.  I'm sure there's alot
of innovation in the internals, but most of that is probably to get around
the braindamage in the 8086 architecture and in the CP/M emulator.  (that's
DOS for most people).

But of course, there's still more innovation that can be done.  For
example, take NeXT.  (Jobs did this one too, you know.).   Much superior
to either the Mac or certainly windows. Display postscript & 
interface builder >> X windows  >> quickdraw
or windows.  NeXT OS > average unix > WindowsNT >> Macintosh OS >> DOS.

Programming a NeXT is certainly superior to either a mac or DOS.

:                                    -Mike

--
-Matt Kennel  		mbk@inls1.ucsd.edu
-Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California, San Diego
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Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy