From: bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: IBM Funny
Date: 30 Sep 92 14:56:56 EDT
Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA

In article <1992Sep30.011703.4998@NeoSoft.com>, peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> In article <6057.2ac6dd05@hayes.com> bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman) writes:
>> In article <1992Sep27.122135.22721@NeoSoft.com>, peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> > The Windows GUI is significantly better designed than Apple's, 
> 
>> <GACK!>
> 
>> You must be using some unusual, non-standard definition of the word "better".
> 
> Um, easier to learn and use. More powerful. More convenient. Less surprising.
> More easily generalizable. Better feedback.

Easier to learn? GACK! No way. There's little consistancy between applications.
Heck, applications can't even decide on a consistant way to stop a program,
at least all Mac applications have File / Quit.

More Powerful? Well, that's quite vague. It is hard to determine what you
mean by "powerful." Do you mean capable? About the only thing that Windows
is capable of doing that you can't do on the Mac involves dynamic memory
allocation of storage between applications. OTOH, there's a whole lot of
things you can't do under Windows that you can do on the Mac, from switching
depth on the fly and multiple monitors, to AppleEvents and Publish / Subscribe
over a network. I don't think this qualifies as "more powerful."

More convienient? That's subjective. I don't know how you could objectively
measure that.

Less surprising. NOT! Windows lacks consistancy between applications. Quick!
What do the middle and right buttons do on the Windows mouse? "Left up to
the Application." Faugh. Without guidelines, there's no consistancy. Having
vague or incomplete guidelines is even worse.

More easily generalisable. Again, no consistancy, no chance of generalization.

Better Feedback? In what way? You must be referring to a specific operation.
On a Mac you can jam a diskette in the drive and the OS knows
you've done this. Under Windows, you still have to tell the File manager
to wake up and read the disk again. This is better feedback?

So much for those arguments.

>> QUICK! What's the keyboard shortcut for copy and past?
> 
> I don't have it in front of me (haven't used it in years), but that's in the
> Edit menu. Paste will be ALT<EP>, and either cut or copy will be ALT<EC>. The
> other will be ALT<EU> or ALT<EO> respectively. The keyboard shortcuts are
> uniformally mnemonic for the menu selections. *and* they're displayed on the
> screen.

Wrong. You bring up a dialog window, and ALT <ET>, ALT <EC> and ALT <EP>
(Cut, Copy, and Paste, respectively) won't work. Note that your message didn't
even have these correct, or perhaps there's even more variance between apps
than I thought.

No, to use shortcuts consistantly, you can't reply on ALT menu activation.
You have to use Shift-DEL, Control-Ins and Shift-Ins for Cut, Copy and Paste,
respectively. These will actually work in the dialog box.

What's more, many important applications don't even support this type of
editing. Like the Program Manager or the File Manager. Ugh.

You proved my point by demonstrating the inconsistant behavior of Windows.
QED.

> Quick, on the Mac, what's the keyboard shortcut for "Print Draft"?

There's no such shortcut. You print by pressing Command-P. You select 
draft mode in the subsequent job dialog. Draft mode looks horrible,
and isn't available on a lot of printers (like LaserWriters). So, there's
really no point in a specific keyboard shortcut.

I picked a generic example -- Cut, Copy and Paste. Things that you use all
the time in every application (practically). Notice that you picked an 
obscure example. 

> On the Mac, how do you tell just looking at the screen what programs you have
> running?

I click the application icon in the upper right hand corner and can see
the list. Of course, I can also see any windows any of those applications have
open (unless they are hidden).

> On the Mac, how do you get proportional scrollbars?

I don't even know what these are. Depending on what you mean, such behavior
might even violate Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.

> On the Mac, can you move the menu bar down to where you're working on a large
> screen?

Nope. The menu bar stays up at the top of the screen where you can get to it
accurately (even in the face of Fitt's law) because vertical overshoot is
absorbed by reaching the top of the screen.

> Sure, the implementation of much of this sucks. PIF files, blech. But the GUI
> itself is VERY nice.

I disagree. Come back in 5 years when there's some modicum of consistancy.

>> I can't see how you can say it is better, if the interface is this bad.
>> Perhaps you meant the programming interface.
> 
> That's what I said. Of course, the Mac program interface is pretty icky too.

True. It is more mature, and that helps a lot. There's also a number of
mature development tools for applications. From class libraries like MacApp
and TCL to interface building tools like Prototyper, AppMaker and Prograph.

Windows doesn't (yet) have tools of this caliber.

>> > The Windows GUI is about the only Microsoft designed software that's
>> > worth using. 
> 
>> Using Windows is certainly TONS better than using DOS. I'll admit.
> 
> DOS isn't Microsoft's only other product. I'm counting their languages, their
> word processor, their spreadsheet, their newer operating system, and the
> awful things they did to Xenix.

I wouldn't be so generous. Remember that MS has 70% of the Macintosh 
Applications market. 

> Hey, you want to stop that *quit buying Microsoft products*. 

Heh, heh. I don't own any MS products. At work, I have MS Word 4.0 because
I have need for it. Other members in other departments aren't so enlightened,
and I have to look at their files. (I prefer WriteNow)

> Xerox never believed they had a salable product. Software wasn't Xerox'
> main product line, like it is Apple's.
> 
> In any case, the two suits cover basically the same ground. Xerox invented
> most of the items Apple claimed rights to.

If you believe that, then you believe that Apple should win the MS/HP suit.
You can't have it both ways. Either the rights are there, or they are not.

>> At the time when Jobs came around, Xerox management was probably glad to have
>> washed their hands of the whole PARC issue. 
> 
> I don't think so. They sold the Xerox Star office system for quite a few years,
> and it was also significantly better than the Mac.

UGH! I actually had the priviledge of USING a Star (back in 1983, before
there ever was a Mac). 

It wasn't better than the Mac. I'd say it was barely usable. The Help system
was awful. And many times there were hidden modes were you couldn't do 
something that wasn't obvious.

The Star wasn't better than the Mac. Not by far. It wasn't even better than
the Lisa, aside from being more expensive.

-- 
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.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy