From: mmunson@animal.es.com (Mark Munson)
Subject: Re: Trepidations of a potential mac-user
Reply-To: mmunson@animal.es.com (Mark Munson)
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp., Salt Lake City, UT
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 20:42:53 GMT

In article <TOMSTER.92Sep28211146@bigwpi.WPI.EDU> tomster@bigwpi.WPI.EDU 
 (Thomas Richard Dibble) writes:

> Most of the complaints I have seen regarding DOS (not hardware itself) can
> be repaired by utilizing a different command shell.


Shouldn't you consider that DOS is only one part of the overall system?  Improving
the command line interface doesn't really change any of the glaring omissions with
the standard PC architecture.  You still have all of the configureation and file
system limmitations that you've always had.  True, a new CLI will improve the 
situation, but now you don't have the consistency that a Mac does.


> Which brings up an interesting point.  What is the benifit in having to eject
> the disk on the screen with a mouse rather than with your hand.  I have often
> been told that it is so you don't take the disk out while the drive is reading
> or writing from it, but this is an extremely lame reason.  We Cloners can
> figure out that when the light is on, the drive is busy.  I normally wouldn't
> really care about this, but I have so far, in my limited Mac usage, had three
> seperate disks gotten stuck in three seperate Macs (one of which was brand new)
> here at school.  I can think of nothing more inconvenient than the stupid
> little drill-hole provided beside the drive bay.

> BTW, when I need to eject a floppy disk, my hand is going to travel to the
> drive bay anyways, whether the computer popped the disk out or I have to press
> a button (oh, such labor!).  I don't see any time or energy savings here.

It is possible for a disk to get stuck in a Mac if the power is turned off before
the system is shut down.  But just turn the power back on, and the drives will
all automatically eject any media that are still mounted.  If a disk still won't
eject, then you probably have a hardware problem that needs fixing.  I certainly
wouldn't call it stupid for a manual backup hold to be present in case of a
hardware failure.

On a Mac you can eject the disk using either the keyboard or the mouse.  The reason
for auto-ejecting isn't to save you the trouble of pressing a button (although
it does have this additional benefit).  When a Mac ejects a disk, the system 
software "knows" that the volume is no longer mounted.  If a request is made for
resources that reside on an ejected volume, a dialog window will appear that
requests you to place the volume on-line.  Any available drive will suffice.
If there is only one available drive and it is currently occupied, then the
volume will automatically be ejected, providing you with a place for the desired
volume to be mounted.

Many PC owners have ejected media too soon, or placed a required volume into the
wrong drive, only to be met with the dreaded message:

Drive not ready:
Abort, Retry, Ignore? _

This would never occur on the Mac, and you wouldn't have to write your own
interrupt handler to take care of the situation within applications.  You wouldn't
have to insure that the media was placed into the same drive that it came from.
And you wouldn't have to worry about data loss from an open file that hasn't been
fully flushed.  

Sure you could get Windows, but the same sort of A:, B:, C: treatment of drives
still applies.  Until you get rid of DOS, you'll still be subject to the same
problems.  And even if you do get a new OS, the drives on a PC still don't have
the capability to match what the drives on a Mac can do.

But then, I wouldn't expect them too.  They're cheaper for a reason.

{If you can't remember why Mac drives are better, read the original Why Macs are
better (and the others aren't) post.}

[MGM]