From: barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett)
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 06:28:18 GMT

In article <C0Et7p.GwA@starnine.com> mikeh@starnine.com (Mike Haas) writes:
>In article <C0CJnH.4DL@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>>In article <C0CHqr.EEB@news.udel.edu> don@chopin.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd) writes:
>>>     First of all, "doesn't do it the Mac way"  !=  "completely broken".
>>>I have yet to accidentally drop something where I didn't want it.  Besides,
>>>if Commodore duplicated too many finder features, they'd get into a 
>>>Look and Feel battle.
>>
>>   Commodore has already ripped box selecting and the 3.0 palette tool from
>>the Apple Macintosh.  Why stop there?
>>
>>>>   Another feature that is totally broken on the Amiga is launching of 
>>>>applications by double-clicking a project.  On the Macintosh, when you
>>>
>>>     Funny, it works for me.  Must only be broken on your system.
>>
>>   What happens if you give a text file a project icon, enter "c:more" in
>>the tooltypes for the icon, and "more" is not in the "c:" directory?  Do
>>you get an "Unanble to open your tool 'c:more'" requester?  This does not
>>happen on the Macintosh.
>
>It happens on mine... to be specific, when I create an alias for an
>application and move it to the desktop, double-clicking will (about
>half the time) bring up a dialog box saying it can't find the
>application!  I have to find the folder holding that app and open it!

   True, but we are talking about a problem with aliases here, not with project
or document files.  Aliases are easily possible on the Amiga, but there are
no automatic facilities for creating them available, even in freeware or
shareware.  

>THEN double-clicking on it works.  Is THIS the great UI you're talking About
>Marc?

   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)


>Load a graphic into Teachtext, THEN try to enter some text.
>
>Sorry.  Won't do it.  Graphics OR text.

   TeachText is mainly a document viewer.  If you want to compose a document
with graphics, use a word processor.

>I've often wished the mac had the "Open Parent" capability on it's desktop
>that WB 2.0 added.

   I've been using 2.0 for a LONG time (since right after it became available),
and I noticed that feature only just now.  Shows how often I use it.

>Open a mac window that has one icon way off screen.  You have to scroll
>the window over there and drag it, scroll the window, drag it, scroll
>the window... to get it to be next to the others.   That's cause the
>"Cleanup Window" menu item only moves icons to the next "grid" spot,
>unlike the WB "CleanUp", which re-arranges all icons to be as visible
>as possible.

   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.

>You can temporarily move icons around on WB, without the OS forcing that
>position permanently, as does the mac.  Same with windows and window
>dimensions.

   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.  

>Amigas have always had some kind of depth arrangement capability on
>their windows... unlike the Mac which forces that brain-dead "click on
>it and it obscures everything else" approach.  (I can even get my Amiga
>to work that way, if I want... try getting the Mac to be as versatile).

   I don't know what you mean.  I've never had any problems with the way
windows are arranged and manipulated on the Mac.

>Mac icons are not only limited in size, they are fixed!  Can't be any other
>size.

   Have you tried loading an icon larger than 80x40 into IconEdit?  The icon
gets truncated.  Commodore is trying to enforce size limits, too.  Good idea,
because the Amiga's rather large icons are the reasons that things like 
automatic feedback during drag&drop can't work very well.  

>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
>windows.

   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.

>I LOVE how the Amiga lets me shift-select files on different volumes,
>in different drawers, etc.  On the mac, they all have to be in the same
>location :(

   Not a problem I've ever noticed before.

>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.
 
>Then we can talk about user-interface features that the AMiga has always
>has that the mac never will... like draggable screens. 

   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.

> More
>recently, public screens.

   
>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.

>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.

>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.

>And I really wish I could "snapshot" my mac hard disks and floopies
>so they would appear on the Mac desktop where I want them to appear!

   This feature is more necessary on the Amiga than on the Mac.  On the
Amiga, icons (even the system default icons, viewed on a 724x482 screen)
tend to be HUGE.  This necessitates giving the user a way to snapshot the
volume icons.  On the Mac, the icons are small enough that the default 
positions are never a problem.

>Then we should mention the little user-interface things like
>how formatting mac floppies prevent you from doing anything else (while,
>as you know, an Amiga can format a floppy in every floppy drive
>attached and at the same time... and you're free to do other work
>at the same time!  (That's a phrase Amigans use alot: "...at the
>same time"! :-)  (A favorite phrase of mac users is" "Where can I
>get a cup of coffee... maybe even a hotel room?".)

   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.

>Yeah, I could go on all day about how much better the Amiga user-interface
>is than the Mac's.
>
>All of this deals with "surface features", Marc.  Too bad we're not
>talking "under the hood", cause that's where the mac is a real
>abortion (probably even bloody, too).  Just one example is the
>"GetNewDialog()" system call which doesn't tell you if it failed or
>not!  If the right DLOG, DITL or other required resource isn't there
>or is corrupted, the calling program will never know and guess what???
>THE COMPUTER CRASHES!!!  (Nothing new to the Mac, so I guess that's
>not really a big deal, huh?)  Technically, the machine is so inferior, that
>instead of fixing it, Apple released tech note #14 which lamely tries
>to justify why it's OK for GetNewDialog() to NOT return an error
>code!  (Basically sez if the user has mucked with a programs resources,
>he DESERVES TO CRASH!)

   Well, at least the user CAN muck with a program's resources.  Amiga programs
have things similar to resources, but there is nothing available for the
Amiga to allow a person to change these aspects of Amiga executable files.

---
| Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"No, I just think that a computer grafted on top of another computer
is a kludge.  It has nothing to do with the AGA chipset." -- me