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From: philip@Kermit.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: New MS Windows (?)
Message-ID: <1990May28.210914.28047@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 28 May 90 21:09:14 GMT
References: <22321@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <34844@<1990May23> <71100007@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
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Reply-To: philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
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In article <22321@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>, Jim.Matthews@dartmouth.edu
(Jim Matthews) writes:
> Here are the big differences I noticed in a 1 hour demo:
> * Windows runs over DOS, so you have a lot of the DOS limitations
[...]
> * There is no "Finder", just a program launcher.  So file manipulation is
> still performed with path names, etc.
> * The window-manipulation interface is klunky
[...]
> * Windows 3.0 isn't as ugly as version 2.11, but it's still ugly
[...]
> * Windows is slow.  On a 16Mhz 386sx machine the windowing functions seemed
> slower than MacOS on a Mac Plus.  It's also bigger than the MacOS -- nearly 
> 6Mbytes [disk?] is required for a 386 machine.  I'm not sure that you
can buy a 
> machine that would make Windows feel like MacOS on an '030 Mac.

Thanks - this also answers my original question about how much it would
cost to get equivalent functionality to a Mac.

The point I was trying to make is this is at least the 4th time Microsoft
has claimed to have "caught up" with the Mac, but when you examine the fine
print it turns out you need a high-end PC to emulate a Mac Plus running last
year's system software. HOWEVER, a lot of potential Mac buyers are not going
to go to the complications of working all this out. They want a simple machine
capable of running a word processor. They discover they can get a pretty
loaded XT (or even AT) compatible machine for the price of a Mac Plus with
a hard disk, and they hear MS claiming they can now do everything the Mac
can do. Of course, they can't on a machine that costs the same as a Mac Plus,
but I'm sure Apple is losing a lot of sales this way.

Philip Machanick
philip@pescadero.stanford.edu