Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!chaos.cs.brandeis.edu!topgun
From: topgun@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Chandra Bajpai)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Xerox vs Apple; Finder User Interface Ideas wanted
Message-ID: <1990Mar26.142308.6947@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu>
Date: 26 Mar 90 14:23:08 GMT
References: <10149@wpi.wpi.edu> <1990Mar24.192730.20445@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> <2746@hudson.acc.virginia.edu> <2545@milton.acs.washington.edu>
Organization: Brandeis University Computer Science Dept
Lines: 21

>>My personal hopes, for rationality and progress, are for Xerox to lose
>>against Apple and Apple to lose against HP/Microsoft.  The graphical
>>user interface is an inspiring invention, but no one should own it, any
>>more than you can own the rights to automatic transmissions or the
>>metric system. 
>
>	Apple has never claimed the GUI as its own; it has claimed the Mac
>interface as its own.  The two are not the same.
>
What is it that consitutes the Mac User Interface vs. say NeXT Step or
OSF/Motif?  Trash cans? Disk icons? Double clicking and Dragging?
All these exist in other User Interfaces in one form or another.  Maybe
it's the way you perform a particular action that Apple is claiming is the
Mac User Interface.  Exactly what is Apple claiming?

Thinking along....If you could create a new User Interface for Finder what
would you change or add?  What are the complaints about Finder's interface?
Ejecting disks by dragging disks into trash cans are not intutive(sp?)!

-Chandra Bajpai
 topgun@brandeis.cs.edu