Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!web-4a!laba-1aj
From: laba-1aj@web-4a.berkeley.edu (John Kawakami)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Computer Aesthetics (Re: 386 vs the TT)
Message-ID: <1989Oct23.073225.10313@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 23 Oct 89 07:32:25 GMT
References: <8910210938.AA01163@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator;;;;ZU44)
Reply-To: laba-1aj@web-4a.UUCP (John Kawakami)
Organization: Berzerkley Institute
Lines: 36

In article <8910210938.AA01163@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> 01659@AECLCR.BITNET (Greg Csullog) writes:
>
>A survey has shown that in business, the average number of applications
>used by PC users is 1, the average by Mac users is 4. Why? Learning one
>PC appl does not tell you anything about the next. Learning one Mac appl
>or one GEM appl totally prepares you for the next ones. Sorry PC users,
>speed of processing is not the only determinant of productivity!

I think it's finally sinking in to the big micro computer software developers
that there is much to be said for standards and regular interfaces.
Programs should be written to act alike.  Unfortunately, this did not
happened in the MS-DOS world since there were no written standards for 
user interfaces.  This is where Apple had an edge.  It's not that the
programs were intrinsically easy to use; it's just that for the most part,
the programs all seemed to be born of the same mother and acted similarly.
Unix users see this too.  Even though unix is supposed to be a user hostile
environment, there are some de-facto standards regarding command line
args and key bindings that make using the programs fairly easy to remember.

More, on a divergent topic:
The only nice looking interface environment for micros is the Mac's.
All others are ugly poseurs.  The thing that gets my goat is that for
very little money (~$10000) Atari, Commodore, and Microsoft could all
have had beautiful graphics and nice fonts for their windowing environments.

Now you (John/Jane Q. Tightcode) might be saying "the graphics aren't
as important as the speed."  Well, I have some news for you: you are
wrong.  The graphics are the user's view of the machine.  They determine
how valuable the machine is to the user.  I don't doubt that the Mac's 
good looks make user think that the $2K she/he just threw down for a
Plus was actually worth it.  (We can laugh at how much Mac buyers are
overcharged, but the buyers are satisfied.  If there are luxury
cars, why not luxury computers.)
&  John Kawakami
&  laba-1aj@web.berkeley.edu
&  Live each day as if it were your first