From: don@chopin.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd)
Subject: Re: More BM from -MB-
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 20:11:31 GMT

barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) ejaculates:

> Dan (No Relation) says:
>>	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!

     However, when you're discussing the relative merits of each OS, the
Amiga's multitasking _has_ to be a part of it.  If I wrote an alternate
Workbench that behaved exactly like Finder but disable multitasking, would
you run it instead of WB?  (At least, until Apple's lawyers got to me...?)

>   That is true, but I get around it by using a third-party package called
>PowerPrint that comes with a VERY nice print spooler.  

     It would be nice to have a prefs print spooler on the Amiga simply to
let you continue working on a project without having to wait for it to 
print, but other than that there's not as much of a need for it as there
is on the Mac.  On the Amiga you can switch to other apps even when one
is printing, so no specially-written background spooler is needed.

>> 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.

     You mean you allowed your mother to get an Amiga?

     First: the above paragraph violates your own restriction that this 
discussion be limited to cosmetic features.
     Second: quite a few applications on the Amiga will detect if you have one
running already and ask if you really want to start a new one.

     I regularly see Windows users at work with 5 or 6 copies of e-mail
running because, no matter how many times we explain it to them, they just
can't seem to understand that those little icons at the bottom of the screen
represent programs that are already running and can be accessed again by 
double-clicking them.  (These same people then try to simultaneously run
Word, Excel, and a >1 meg custom database app on a 4 meg machine and complain
that "the system is slow"....)

[Dan's remarks about the Mac mouse pointer deleted]
>   Those are more problems with the engine, and not with a surface detail.  

     Umm, the mouse pointer _is_ a surface detail.
     While we're at it, does anyone else despise having to use the Mac's
single-button mice?

>Don't change the subject.

     Funny thing about subjects, they tend to evolve as the discussion
progresses. 

     As I mentioned, your comment above about the multiple tasks is not
related to GUI cosmetics and functions.


     Don't change the subject.



-- 
Don Lloyd                / "No, I just think that a computer grafted on top of \
don@chopin.udel.edu      | another computer is a kludge.  It has nothing to do |
GeNIE: D.LLOYD7          \ with the Intel CPU"  - Jerry Shekhel                /
BIX: DRL  
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy