From: trevore@vast.unsw.edu.au (Trevor Elbourne (Supr. Hell) BE)
Subject: Re: More BS from -DB-
Organization: University of New South Wales
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 23:49:44 GMT

barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
: 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!
: 

You talk about "under the hood" features, but these features you refer
to are really the ONLY features the OS need provide. Take a look at
unix for instance, it provides none of the "surface details" you talk
of. If the "under the hood" features are broken all you are left with
is crap, but hey it looks good!

: > 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
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

Of course! Clicking its icon means run the thing. I've not seen a
novice that cannot grasp this concept of having multiple copies of an
application running, its a definate advantage and in no way a
disadvantage.

: 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.

I think you`ve found the real point here. The Mac is definately easier
for the novice to use, but thats the thing I hate most about it. But
the novice can certainly find his or her way around an amiga without
too much difficulty, the workbench is quite a simple interface and
quite easy to use and understand. My sister (totally computer
illiterate) is able to use my A2000 for word processing ..etc (which
is what most novices use macs for) without any difficulty.

: 
: >	Now let's talk about performance.  These were 68030 machine with a
: >minimum of 8MB RAM.  And yet, when I did any printing, the stupid mouse
: >pointer became extremely sluggish and jerky.  And this was just printing...
: >nothing computationally intensive!  The Amiga mouse pointer never gets
: >slowed down by other work like this... certainly not on a 68030!!!
: 
:    Those are more problems with the engine, and not with a surface detail.  
: Don't change the subject.
: 
: ---
: | Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
: --------------------------------------------------

--
"Let me be the first to offer you my sincerest contrafibularities."
	- E. Blackadder

Trevor Elbourne 			VLSI and Systems Tecnology (VaST) lab
trevore@vast.unsw.edu.au                Dept of Computer Science & Engineering
trevore@cs.unsw.oz.au                   University of New South Wales
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy