Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!texbell!sugar!karl
From: karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Mac vs. Xerox (was Re: Amiga mentality cont'd)
Message-ID: <5562@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Date: 11 Apr 90 20:58:10 GMT
References: <1342@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> <90098.170806JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu> <4087@nmtsun.nmt.edu> <5561@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1990Apr11.182605.288@wam.umd.edu>
Reply-To: karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer)
Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston
Lines: 73

In article <1990Apr11.182605.288@wam.umd.edu> ddev@wam.umd.edu (Don DeVoe) writes:
>Excuse me, but what do multitasking and object-oriented programming have to
>do with a GUI? 

They provide ways to make better use of the GUI.  Watch the Amiga scroll
several windows at once, all of which may be partially or even completely
obscured.  I don't think multitasking and the programming environment can
be as cleanly divorced from the GUI as you would like to imagine.

>Are you trying to say that Apple's interface is less
>powerful than the Xerox's? 

Yes.

>Have you ever used a Xerox? Do you know what you're saying?? 

Yes.  Yes.

>Please tell me how your comments are relevant to the power of a
>GUI, and how you decided that Apple's GUI 'degraded' the power of the
>Xerox GUI...without talking about OS concerns.

OK, I will.  First of all let me make note that you totally sidestepped my
major point which was that people did not have to copy the Mac to get GUIs
and that, in fact, the Mac substantially copied Xerox's GUI.  Apple even gave
credit to Alan Kay for GUI concepts when they launched of the machine, but
that was the "old Apple", before Apple decided they invented GUIs after all.

Now as to things in the Mac that are degraded from the Xerox GUI.  One.
On the Xerox desktop, all objects are peers.  There is no difference between
the garbage can and other programs that could have files dropped on them.
That is, on the Xerox, you could drop a file on a program and the program
would execute with that file as an input parameter.  On the Mac, all that
is left of that useful concept is the trashcan.

Two.  Pop-up menus.  On the Xerox the menu popped up where the mouse was.
On the Mac it pops up on top.  This causes one to have to drive the mouse
a bunch to get to the menus, useful on a machine without a lot of pixels,
but a pain.  Granted some workarounds have appeared, such as programs that
warp the cursor up to the top then back, but that's nonstandard and kind of
a kludge.  I will acknowledge that this is kind of a judgement call, so no
followups taking me to task on this single issue, OK?

Three.  The Xerox had a three-button mouse and the buttons behaved consistently.
The one-button mouse of the Mac was supposed to be an improvement, but that
button has ended up having several multiplexed actions, one click, two clicks,
three clicks, even five clicks for some programs.  I've tried dialing a phone
with the switchhook for fun.  Quintuple-clicking reminds me of that.

Four.  Icons would change on the Xerox depending on what was going on.
If you dropped something on the mailbox to send to someone, the mailbox icon
would show something in it until it was delivered.  Now some stuff has
appeared that does things like this on the Mac, but it was not in the original
Mac GUI, hence "degraded."

Speaking of lineage, the Amiga mouse has a menu button.  As the Xerox has one
and the Mac doesn't, I would certainly trace the lineage of this Amiga feature
to the Star and not to the Mac.

And I can think of another machine's GUI that is a predecessor of the Mac
that is better implemented than the Mac...  Yes, the Lisa.  Remember
the original hype about the Mac?  75% percent of the functionality of the Lisa
for 25% of the price?  They said 75%, not 125% or something, so even Apple
knew and admitted that the Mac was less than the Lisa.  To quote Cringely from
a few months back, "The Lisa had problems, but it was a terrific piece of
engineering that still puts the Macintosh to shame."

And you guys are still paying the price for the corners that had to be cut
in the original Mac to meet its target price, i.e. software shortcuts (no
multitasking) to meet the original 64K ROM target, etc.
-- 
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