From: bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT
Date: 9 Oct 92 13:01:13 EDT
Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA

In article <Eep8o6G00YUoEciK0u@andrew.cmu.edu>, cj00+@andrew.cmu.edu (Carl B Jabido) writes:
>  
> Maybe he does real work instead of setting his system up
> every hour of every day of every week.  I've noticed that most Mac
> people like to waste time by seeing what startup sound they'll have,
> what ending sound they have, what sound is played when a disk is put in,
> what color their background is, what font is used or whatever.

Funny, I can say the same thing about many PC owners I know -- always fiddling
with the hardware, swapping boards, reconfiguring, reinstalling.

The Mac people you know don't seem to be a representative sample of the
Mac users at large.

> No, changing fonts in OS/2 is easier than in Macintoy land.  

Macinto*SH* It is Macintosh. There is no "y". 

If you are going to visit comp.sys.mac.advocacy, at least have the 
decency to spell the computer's name correctly. Or you won't be 
invited back.

> Yeah, but OLE and DDE are standardized, so Joe Programmer can write a
> word processor, and Chris Developer can write a Paint program.  As long
> as they both use OLE, they can talk.  

Will it work over a network? In real-time?

There are plenty of programs that use DDE. Are there any that use OLE yet?

>> >>* Built-in support for standard 24-bit color, with automatic interpolation
>>  
>> >Device Independent Graphics means any video device could be supported,
>> >be it 1-bit or 24-bit, with the necessary device driver.
>>  
> PC's do have device-independent graphics.  OS/2 will run if you have
> XGA, Trident Svga, Tseng labs SVGA, VGA, IBM VGA, 8514, ATI 8514.

Ah, but the necessary video drivers for 24-bit color don't exist. Ouch.

>> >Multiple monitors is theoretically possible if hardware exists.
> 
> Ah, but then you haven't seen one video card which does let you use 4
> VGA monitors at once, each with a different display.  The display is
> just like having one big monitor: basically 1280x960!

Neither has anyone else, because it is still in development. <grin>

Actually, the problem here is that for the PC, you need a special
display card for this. On the Mac, you don't need anything special. Just
plug in any display card, and bingo, multiple monitors.

Of course, I was really emphasizing color interpolation and bit-depth
changing in my list. Multiple Monitors is a known PC sore point.

> HAHAHA!!  Chicago font is a piece of SHIT!  That is the single ugliest
> font in the entire world, no, universe!!!  

The Chicago font wasn't designed to be stylish. It was designed to be legible
when menu items were greyed out on a 2-color display. It does that job
extremely well.

> Buttons and controls on a Mac?  I haven't seen buttons, Mac's got the 
> simple color-fill when pressed thingie, which Windows had in 2.0!  

The Mac isn't limited to these buttons, although they do look and work 
correctly on a 2-color display, and they don't take up much screen real
estate as they would with fancy "three dimensional" borders.

> Scroll bars are proportional, Mac can't touch that without some hacked up 
> program.

I believe Apple did user testing on proportional scroll bars. They apparently
confused users. This is a feature, not a bug.

> Couldn't touch memory protection could you?

Memory protection provides little benefit to the user. (There I said it)
Memory protection only works when applications crash. Applications shouldn't
crash in the hands of the end user.

Now, developers have a need for memory protection, and they see it as a 
benefit. To the users, other factors are much more important.

Which is not to say that memory protection isn't a Good Thing. It is. It
just doesn't happen to convey an enormous benefit to the user.

-- 
Bill Coleman, AA4LR                ! CIS: 76067,2327    AppleLink: D1958
Principal Software Engineer        ! Packet Radio: AA4LR @ W4QO
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Disclaimer: "My employer doesn't pay me to have opinions."
Quote: "The same light shines on vineyards that makes deserts." -Steve Hackett.