From: johnsd2@vccnw01.its.rpi.edu (Daniel Norman Johnson)
Subject: Re: Why Macs are better (and the others aren't)
Reply-To: johnsd2@rpi.edu
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 01:07:48 GMT

In article <strobl.717624432@gmd.de>, strobl@gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) writes:
|> In <0_hzlck@rpi.edu> johnsd2@jec325.its.rpi.edu (Daniel Norman Johnson) writes:
|> 
|> >In article <strobl.717604304@gmd.de>, strobl@gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) writes:
|> [...]
|> >|> Perhaps because Microsoft has had to keep a standard look and 
|> >|> feel for its applications on a bigger scale, which dosn't just 
|> >|> include the Mac platform, only?
|> 
|> >Oh, c'mon.. Windows and the Mac aren't that different. Would it have
|> >hurt THAT much to have Excel do real Cut+paste, for instance?
|> 
|> I don't know. "Real" Cut and Past mean different things on MS-Windows
|> and on the Macintosh.

Really? What are they under MS-Windows? I udnerstood they were
the the same thing, from the users point of view.

|> >If you are saying the MS SHOULD make the Windows and MacOS versions
|> >as close as possible, I disagree. This is annoying to people who
|> >are using them and other apps on one machine. Id rather have it annoy
|> >people who use just the one app, but do so on various machines.
|> 
|> What do the Human Interface Guidlines say about that topic?
|> Probably nothing, because the Mac is a closed system.

No, they say you should follow the Human Interface Guidelines
and not do a port from some othe rsystem directly. They don't
cover one-GUI-to-annother however (as far as I know, anyway)

[deletia- stuff being covered just fine elsewhere in the thread]
|> 
|> >|> 
|> >|> >The point being that it is the data (document) that is important, not the
|> >|> >applications
|> >|> >that are used for creating those data.
|> >|> 
|> >|> I don't unterstand that. Neither the document nor the application make
|> >|> any sense without the other. Quick: what is more important: your
|> >|> laserprinter, or the paper it prints on?
|> 
|> >The paper, once the paper has been printed on. :) After all,
|> >that's what you were trying to get. And that makes perfect
|> >since without any laserprinter. [good analogy, btw :)]
|> 
|> So after the paper (== data) has been processed by the laserprinter 
|> (== application), there is not much necessity for the data to
|> application link, anymore. Right? You probably wouldn't want to process
|> your paper by the laserwriter again. Instead you use another 
|> processor (perhaps an automatic enveloping machine) to process it
|> further. 
|> 
|> The simple one to one relationship between data and its application
|> doesn't work very well, in this and similar examples. In reality,
|> it's a many-to-many relationship, where an application can understand
|> various document types, and one document type can be understood by
|> various applications. Both "application" (program) and "document" 
|> (data) are concepts in their own right and depend on each other.
|> Both are important.

Yes! I agree!

But the document is the center of it, to the user.
He wants to do thing to it, not use app xyz. Wouldn't
it be nice if he didn't have to muck about with use
that app, ok now use this one...

|> >[deletia- a desktop corruption example]
|> >|> 
|> >|> >No. It is not a setup problem. Have you ever used a Mac? 
|> >|> 
|> >|> Yes, obviously. :-)
|> >|> 
|> >|> Joking aside, yes, I have. It heavily used one about six or seven
|> >|> years ago, but very seldom afterwards.
|> >|>
|> 
|> >There have been some changes since then. :)
|> 
|> Rally? I have been told again and again, that it was fine
|> and dany from the very beginning. Not so? :-)

Of Course. The Macintosh Was Perfect Then. It Is Merely More Perfect
Now. :)

Big Fruit is your Friend...

|> >[deletia- explaination of desktop database, advice to rebuild it]
|> >|> >Your friends desktop file (or database) was obviously corrupted, and all
|> >|> >you 
|> >|> >needed to do was to force a rebuild of the desktopfile/database.
|> >|> 
|> >|> It wasn't obvious to him (or me) how to do that. After you explaination,
|> >|> it still isn't obvious to me. 
|> 
|> >That's cuz he didn't say how to do it. It isn't obvious.
|> 
|> I already have guessed that. :-)
|> 
|> >what you do is hold down the command and option keys while
|> >the hard drive (or whatever) is being mounted. It then throws up
|> >a dialog asking if you want to rebuild its desktop.. click okay
|> >and its off.
|> 
|> It seems to me that it is much harder to explain such hidden
|> secrets to simple minded users, that editing a path statement,
|> for example.

Yeah, this is obscure.

|> What about sideeffects from rebuilding the desktop?

That's even worse! It erases all your file comments!
AAAAAAAA! How could apple do that, that's what I want
to know. Somebody should be shot.

|> Anyway, I think it's similar to the situation one faces
|> when using one of these fully automatic, all singing all
|> dancing cameras. As long as the work, they're fast, fun,
|> and even create decent, sometimes even good pictures. 
|> 
|> But if they don't, you're in a mess. 

Yup, broken cameras are a pain. :) However,
not knowing the first thing about photography
I cant keep this analogy going. Simply:
the macintosh produces good results, too, so there.

[deletia- camera stuff]
|> 
|> Automatic operation behind the scenes is a fine thing,
|> especially if you can switch it off.

You should never have to.

|> >|> Application to file association isn't fully automatic under Windows
|> >|> (in comparison to the way the Macintosh seems to handle that), but
|> >|> it isn't a big problem: you can do it manually, by using the the
|> >|> filemanagers "associate" menue entry, but usually the setup 
|> >|> programm of an app makes all the necessary changes. And the
|> >|> automatical method has its own problems, imho.
|> 
|> >Such as? [assuming nothing is corrupted.. I doubt windows would work
|> >too well if it was corrupted, either...]
|> 
|> I suspect a quite nonstandard use of the word "corrupted" here.

I meant that it was busted.

|> In the case I was talking about, there wasn't any indication
|> of a "corrupted desktop" - no dialog box saying "Desktiop corrupted,
|> please recreate it". It just said that it couldn't find the
|> file. Well, if this is just the same thing as "This disk
|> isn't initialized, shall I initialize it" instead of
|> "There is something wrong with the data structures describing
|> the contents of this disk, I can't understand it", than
|> this is the first problem. 

There wasn't anything wrong with the floppy; the hard drive
was missing some info that it needed to have. The finder
would have fixed it if it had seen anything actually invalid.
At least, that's my best guess.

|> COuld it be that "corrupted" simply is a notion for all cases where the 
|> automatic mechanism fails? 

No. Actually it means there is something wrong with the
contence of the desktop database. In this case something
was missing. It was vague because I dont know exactly what
was wrong.

|> I fail to see how an automatic mechanism should be able
|> to decide which of various copies of an application
|> (some on the floppy, some on a local, others on a 
|> remote hard disk) I intend to use. It only can guess.

That's what it does.

|> Perhaps its guesses are better than mine, but perhaps, not.

If you don't like it, drag the docuemtn to the application icon
you wish to use. It will then use THAT app. You can override it.

[deletia- font tool]
|> 
|> >To get this, you double click the fonts icon. A window comes
|> >up displaying a sample. You can tell if a font is truetype or not
|> >by its icon, and also because you get samples at various sizes
|> >if its a truetype font. If its a bitmap font, you just get the
|> >one size that the font is bitmapped in.
|> 
|> I fail to see where the big advantage on the Macintoshs side
|> is. Here you double click a font icon and get a window which
|> displays that font. There you do exactly the same. Here you
|> install the font by dragging it to a folder. There you simply
|> hit the INSTALL button contained in that windows.
|> 
|> Where is the big difference?

You never have to open any control panels to do this; its
all integrated into the finder. You dont have to learn
anything new. The fonts work like control panels or
extensions, essentially. You look inside the same way
you'd look inside a document, or a sound, or a folder.

|> >|> Why a control panel at all? It is quite possible to encode each
|> >|> and every parameter change in the system into some kind of file
|> >|> movement ("Move the 'Green' file to the 'BackgroundColor' folder"),
|> >|> but I doubt that this is the way to go.
|> 
|> >This is why the Macintosh has a control panel also. Actually,
|> >it has a control panels folder, and there are control panels inside
|> >of it. You can move htem, rename them, etc like files (they are files);
|> >You can add new ones that do c00l things. Its a very use-friendly
|> >way to extend your system.
|> 
|> >I dont know if that is possible in Windows. Care to enlighten me?
|> 
|> Windows 2.x and 3.0 had a static control panel, which displayed
|> a fixed set of system setup icons (fonts, clock&date, desktop,
|> keyboard and so on). Windows 3.1 has a dynamic control panel, 
|> which looks very much the same, but uses separate dynamic link
|> libraries for each icon. System extensions which need some kind
|> of global setup add these to the Windows system directory, and
|> the control panel uses them, automatically. There is no dra&drop
|> interface withing the control panel I am aware of.

Ok. Thats just like the old, system 6 control panel (except
that a control panel can BE a system extension; no extra
steps be eithe rthe user or the installer are needed to make
it work)

The system 7 one, again, offers consitency; you add and remove
stuff just like any old file, and so on. (Apple did a bunch of
that stuff in system 7. Really just fixing user interface probs
in system 6)

|> >|> > 
|> >|> >> There aren't such things as desk accessories in Windows.This is
|> >|> >> an outdated concept.  
|> >|> 
|> >|> >Nor are there in System 7 - this is indeed an outdated concept.
|> >|> 
|> >|> Fine, finally we can agree on something. :-). Nice that the
|> >|> Macintosh OS has finally caught up to Windows, after six or seven
|> >|> years. (Sorry, couldn't resist - in fact I don't like that sort 
|> >|> of remark much; I just hear it all to often).
|> 
|> ><grrrr>
|> 
|> >Anyway, I dont know when Multifinder came out, but we didn't need
|> >DAs after that... although the apple menu didn't support non-DA-thing
|> >until System 7. However, Windows did (and still doesn't) have an
|> >Apple menu equivalent. Ya still gotta use teh program manager.
|> 
|> Not so. There are various shareware and payware utilities which
|> extend the system menu (its functionality is partially shared
|> by all apps) or the desktop (the background window, to be precise)
|> to give similar functionality.

I dont think we really want to drag extensions of various
sorts into this. :) If so, the capablilities of both
systems skyrocket, and nobody can be sure he's covered all
the options. Fer instance, u want scripting in the MAcOS? Buy it!

|> I have tried a few of them, myself,
|> but found them not very usefull. Most people I talk to see a
|> need for it, too.

Waitasecond. You found them not very usefull, but most people
you talk to see a need for it, *too*? huh?

|> This is perhaps because Windows doesn't use
|> the "single menu bar at the top left of the screen" concept.

I know; an apple menu as such would be inappropriate. But something
like that. An addendum to the system menu, perhaps?

|> Switching between applications is much more smooth because of
|> that. If I have the need to launch various applications in
|> rapid succession, I just keep the PM window open somewhere 
|> on the screen.

I agree. I dont think the menu belongs at the top of the screen,
despite any speed advantages. Its too confusing for new users; and
it makes it real easy to forget which apps are open.

|> 
|> >So I dont think its 6 or 7 years.
|> 
|> This is a matter of definition. As far as I know, System 7 is
|> the first version which essentially abadoned the differention
|> between applications and DAs. Earlier systems couldn't do
|> that, because the Multifinder was only an option, so DAs had
|> to stay as a kind of poor mans multitasking. MS windows, on
|> the other hand, never had something equivalent to the
|> (single) Finder.  It did multitask from the very beginning
|> and could implement applications and DAs in a uniform way,
|> because of that.

The Macintosh still support DAs for the very reason you
mention. But you don't gotta use 'em. You didn't undermultifinder
either, but DAs were still used because of the non-multifinder
types.

(however, System 7 does improve on teh user interface that deals with
them; you can now double-click DAs to launch them)
-- 
			- Dan Johnson
And God said "Jeeze, this is dull"... and it *WAS* dull. Genesis 0:0

These opinions have had all identifiying marks removed, and are untraceable.
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