From: damiel@netcom.com (Paul Theodoropoulos)
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
X-Spook-Fodder: hero heroin tree shrub bush birth life death FBI CIA NSA
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 09:10:51 GMT

In <C0F5z7.A7A@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:

>   BTW, this is the first mention of a problem with the surface features of
>the Mac OS that I've seen mentioned after wading through 100 messages.  I
>rattled off numerous problems with the Amiga OS right off the tomp of my head
>with no difficulties, but people had to dig to find something wrong with the
>Mac OS in this respect.  (BTW, this is not without fixes.  Several freely
>distributable programs will fix this completely)

gee, i don't suppose this might have something to do with the fact that this
is an AMIGA newsgroup, you know, a place where - generally speaking - people
who own and use AMIGAs tend to hang out, NOT Mac users.

go to a Mac or IBM newsgroup, post a list of deficiencies with those boxes 
compared with Amigas, and see how many people there come back with a list
of Amiga deficiencies.

once again, your method of extrapolating informal observations into paradigms
and syllogisms proves to be intellectually dishonest.

be an adult and admit that you dislike amigas, you like macs, and never the
twain shall meet. this grumbling of yours continues to be a big Yawn.

>   I agree, the Mac 'cleanup' facility has problems.  It also does not take
>into consideration the space for file names.  Score another one.  Still have
>a ratio of about 50:1 of Amiga GUI problems to Mac GUI problems, though.

until you provide a numbered list of fifty distinct deficiencies in the
Amiga GUI, this is pure hyperbole. a little honesty might be refreshing.

>   Automatic snapshotting is something I wish the Amiga had.  I hate having
>to select 'snapshot' EVERY time I arrange the icons in a window, to save
>the arrangement.  

then of course, the complaint would be "i rearranged my icons and didn't like
it, and there was just NO WAY to restore them to the previous arrangement 
without having to move each one by hand! i demand that all .info files 
maintain at least the last three positions in their data, and there should
be a menu item to select how far back to take the arrangement!"

i will  say that the 'snapshot' menu item should have a hot key associated
with it.

>>I've often wished the mac had a "delete" menu item on the desktop.
>>I detest having to find the trashcan after I've covered it up with

>   At least the Mac has a trashcan.  When you delete an item on the Amiga,
>it's gone forever.  You don't have a second chance to retrieve it.

the Amiga has had a trashcan since at least 1.2 . This is a bogus argument.
novices can use the trashcan. experts can use delete. the mac doesn't have
this facility - therefore it's "broken". one demerit mac, one point amiga. 
against the approximately ten or so actual "broken" things you mentioned, 
we're now at about what, 3 to 10? and these have been just casual, "off the 
tomp of the head" problems w the mac. incredible.

>>Of course, there's ARexx, the like of which has been drooled for for
>>a long time on the mac.

>   And something that I've, to date, never used.  I was really excited about
>it when Commodore announced that ARexx was going to be standard with 2.0.
>Then I found that I could not find any uses for it, mostly because none of the
>programs that I want to write ARexx scripts for support ARexx.

marc, i'm beginning to suspect that you've never programmed a line of code
in your life (besides "hello world, amiga sucks"). in the seven years i've
been online, i've never seen a program - PD, freeware, shareware, or 
commercial - that was written by you. i'd guess you've never used arexx 
simply because you could never figure it out.

i challenge you to post some code you've written. any code.

>   Screen-dragging is a cute hack that has no real uses.  Multiple screens
>that can be swapped is far more useful, and the Mac has a software
>approximation of this.

nonsense. its exceedingly useful to pull a screen down so you can compare data
on another screen, without having to swap back and forth. its a useful
feature of the amiga GUI, not a cute hack.

once again, you minimize any good feature of the amiga GUI. this is dishonest.

>>The Amiga has always had a shell of some kind... the Mac?  nada.

>   Check out the Macintosh Programmer's workbench.  This is something that
>I wish the Amiga had.  A nice shell with graphical structures.  Does the
>Amiga shell have any GUI aspects?  Does the Amiga shell even have any menus?
>No to both questions.  The Amiga shell is still heavily entrenched in the
>MS-DOS and CP/M paradigm in this respect.  The programmers at Commodore just
>don't seem to have any idea that a mouse can actually be useful for shell
>operations.

i'll repeat the query: does the mac have a shell of any kind?

don't change the subject midstream. doing so while admonishing others not
to is dishonest.

>>The Amiga has always had an instantaneous response at the mouse... never
>>even moves "choppily".  I've lost count of the times I've clicked
>>on some mac control several times, tried other windows, all while
>>the machine was "busy", but still showing me an "arrow" cursor.
>>Then, when the machine became free, all those clicks came to life.
>>Except now, because of windows popping in fron of other windows, others
>>closing, etc., all my clicks are doing things I didn't want them to do!!!
>>Some user-interface!!! P-U-U-K-K-E-E!

>   Buffering of mouse events is another thing I wish the Amiga had.  Right
>now, the Amiga's Workbench does NOT multitask very well.  Many operations
>will put the 'busy pointer' up for many seconds, and during this time any
>mouse events are lost.

sounds to me like BOTH gui's have a problem here. neither is implemented
ideally. so it is a null data point, imho.

>>Not to mention modal dialogs...  the mac makes real sure you get the
>>message (won't let you do anything else till you close it!!!).  I LOVE
>>the way I'm always able to go do something else on my Amiga... even
>>fix the problem the dialog is compaining about so I can click "Retry".
>>Oh, yeah, the Mac dialogs don't give a retry button, now do they?

>   Both of these are carry-overs from the Mac's lack of real multitasking,
>which in turn is a problem with the internals and not the surface aspects.

pure, intellectually dishonest BULLSHIT. you cannot divorce the surface from
the internals, especially one as egregious as an OS that does not do
real multitasking, "AFTER EIGHT YEARS!" to quote somebody we all know.

the lack of real multitasking on the Mac is enough to make me say "Macintosh?
cute for a newbie, but you couldn't pay me to give up my Amiga for one".

>   Another little problem with the internals peeking through to the surface.
>BTW, Amia format operations seem to take forever and a day, and don't seem
>to have very good error-checking during the format.  I don't know how many
>times I've formatted a disk on an Amiga, only to have write errors to the
>disk not much later.  the Mac seems to have better verification of disks
>during the format.

of the more than three hundred floppies i've accumulated over the years,
i've had fewer than ten bad disks. i have floppies going back to 1985 that
have been used hundreds of times, and are still good. i'm talking disks that
started as OFS, and have since been updated to FFS and the files have been 
converted from arc/zoo/lzh to LHA - all done on the original disk. in fact, 
i'll check one now...ah yes, ArcFiles.One. 51 files. just copied FixHunk.arc 
(now fixhunk.lha) to ram, dearchived it, and ran it. no problem, as always.
this file has been on this disk since 1986.

you might try buying NEW floppies marc, rather than scavenging floppies from
the trashcans at school!  %^)

and again i have to point out - you minimize gui/os problems on the mac,
and minimize gui/os advantages on the amiga. dishonest. i'd suggest you
take a course in ethics in addition to your economics courses.
-- 
paul theodoropoulos     damiel@netcom.com     (hooools@well.sf.ca.us)

"Those who will trade essential liberty for promise of security will have
 neither" - Benjamin Franklin