From: geoff@softwords.bc.ca (Geoff Seeley)
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Organization: Softwords Research International Ltd., Victoria, B.C., Canada
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 93 18:35:35 GMT

> In article <1993Jan4.114316.11600@klaava.Helsinki.FI> lindblad@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Jarkko Lindblad) writes:
> >MB is so objective: approximately 2 lines of Amiga OS strenghts, and
> >70 of weaknesses...:)
> 
>    I could have had 70 more lines of weaknesses.  On the surface, the AmigaOS
> is riddled with defects.  Take drag-and-drop, for instance.  This feature is
> totally broken on the Amiga.  On the Macintosh, when an icon is dragged and
> held over a folder, the destination folder highlights to tell you exactly where
> the file will end up when it is released.  This does not happen on the Amiga.
> On the Amiga, drag-and-drop operations are done almost completely blind.

	True, the Amiga does not highlight the drawer, but this doesn't mean
	the MacOS works any better for drag-and-drop. I can't begin to tell
	you how many times I've dragged icons on the Mac only to have them
	end up someplace I *didn't* want them...
> 
>    Another feature that is totally broken on the Amiga is launching of 
> applications by double-clicking a project.  On the Macintosh, when you
> double-click a project, the 'creator' application is always found and launched
> and the project is loaded, no matter where the creator application is located
> on the disk.  On the Amiga, tooltypes are almost always hard-coded.  There 
> is almost no flexibility to the way the Amiga does it.  

	Have you ever tried to change the default application of a Mac file?
	Unless you have a utility program to change the creator field, the
	Mac OS has *no* built-in utility to do this, unlike the Amiga.

	Have you ever tried to open a text file on the Mac that was created
	by an application you don't have installed?  Unless you change the
	creator, you'll have to go find another application that reads the
	same file type (no MacOS function shows this either), launch it, 
	and open the file by searching through the file requestor...

>    For instance, I recently downloaded a bunch of Christmas SMUS music files
> from an Amiga FTP site.  The files came with a SMUS player, called 'play'.
> I unarchived the files, double-clicked one of the music files, and sure as
> the day the requester "Unable to open your tool 'play'" appreared.  This 
> simply does not happen on the Macintosh.  On the Mac, the system will always
> do its best to locate the application to go with a project.  I can count on 
> one hand the number of times that I have ever double-clicked the icon for a
> text file on the Amiga and had the correct text-file-viewer actually come
> up.  Most of the time, all I get is a requester saying "unable to locate your
> tool 'less'" or something similar.

	Most tool-types are set to something thats logical (ie. C:MuchMore) so
	if you put the programs in the proper place, you don't have any problems.
	I've seen many tool-types that don't specify a hard-coded path to the
	default tool, so as long as you have the tool in your search path,
	you're in business...

> ...
>    The Macintosh also has a nicety called 'TeachText'.  TeachText is a very
> nice document viewer that can use documents with imbedded graphics.  The
> graphics can be color or black-and-white, structured or bitmapped.
> documentation files for a utility to have in them snapshots of screens from
> the utility, for instance.  Or you could have a doc file for a PostScript or
> TrueType font with a bitmapped picture of the font imbedded in the doc file.

	I just tried to open a 163k document using TeachText (*after* using
	ResEdit to change the file type to 'TEXT' as thats the only file
	type it shows in the requestor...) I got an error dialog saying that
	the document is too big for TeachText. Now, unless I search through
	the hard drive for TeachText and change the amount of memory it's
	allowed to use, I ain't viewing this sucker with TeachText...

	BTW, have you ever tried to open *two* documents with TeachText?
	(provided you find two small enough)  It won't do it...

> form, Commodore abandoned it.  I wish Commodore would do two things: come up
> with an IFF form for a text file with imbedded ILBM graphics.

	Huh?  An IFF file with TEXT/ILBM chunks *IS* what you just described...

>    That I can so easily come up with a long list of Amiga surface defects 
> testifies to how unprofessional the surface features of the AmigaOS really
> are.  I really tried making a list of things that could be improved with
> the surface features of the MacOS, and could not find more than three or four.

	HaHaHa... <laughing on floor>  You have not, obviously, used a Mac very
	much...  The MacOS has as many defects/quirks as AmigaDOS (more IMHO).

> But it seems so easy to whittle off a list of a hundred or so things with 
> the surface features of the AmigaOS that are broken or unworkable or badly
> in need of improvements.  It should not be so easy to come up with such a
> list.

	Sell your Amiga, buy a Mac, and after you have used it awhile, we'll
	all get a chuckle when you say the exact same thing about the MacOS...
> ---
> | Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
> --------------------------------------------------

	-Geoff Seeley
-- 
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