Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Path: utzoo!utstat!philip
From: philip@utstat.uucp (Philip McDunnough)
Subject: Re: Woz giveth, Scully taketh away
Message-ID: <1990Oct4.171048.21481@utstat.uucp>
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 90 17:10:48 GMT
References: <184@alchemy.UUCP>
Organization: Statistics, U. of Toronto

In article <184@alchemy.UUCP> bbs@alchemy.UUCP (BBS Administration) writes:
>First off, let me state that I really enjoyed reading the various replies
>to my article. Rather than receiving flames, I've learned a great deal and
>am pleased with the overall outcome. Now, off to quoting things and replying
>to these comments...

Well let me say I have not enjoyed this whole train, and I really don't think
the net is the place for peoples' little experiments of this nature.

>I think it's more like *any computer* and a Macintosh are radically
>different computers. The Mac was one of, if not the, first computer to
>have ONLY a graphical interface. Now this is becoming commonplace, even
>the GS and IBM PCs are adapting. I think it's for the better since it
>takes less time to teach people how to be productive with a computer
>(training can be very expensive, especially when trying to teach people
>how to use brain-dead MS-DOS).

Your assertion re the training time being less for a computer with only a GUI
is really on shaky grounds. Apple loves quoting these Peat Marwick studies,etc..while the other camp points to studies which indicate people trained on Macs
tend to produce documents which are less rigorous in their logical foundation.
Nevertheless, will you give me a break on this training time stuff. For simple
applications it is very easy to design a menuing system to launch whatever
programs a person is using. This can be done on MS-DOS,Unix,etc...computers.
For more complex programs if a person needs icons to launch programs and handle
file i/o, then I doubt they could handle the programs anyways.

Would also please note that Windows3.0 , OS/2, NeXTStep, OpenLook,etc...do not
give you ONLY a GUI. They provide for a CLI. In my opinion, this is a serious
weakness in the Mac OS( and GS/OS).

>I like the Mac better.
>One of my best friends (who, like me is still an Apple enthusiast and
>still thinks the Apple II is a cool machine) sold his Apple II, and his
>Apple IIGS and now has a Mac (he's a Mac consultant even). The list goes
>on and on actually. 

Well I use Macs as well. I like them. I've had them all( except the IIfx).
They do the job I wanted them for. They aren't powerful enough to do any
serious work of the type I need, but they are good word processors and can
handle routine jobs. It's only recently that I got a GS. Like the Mac it
isn't powerful enough to do the things I require on our Unix Sytem. But it
serves me well as a terminal, has wonderful sound which I have experimented
with, cost me a lot less and is more fun to use.

It's hardly surprising your friend has moved on to the Mac, given that he's
now a Mac consultant- no doubt setting up Appletalk networks, teaching
Pagemaker,Illustrator,etc...One can't really take these things seriously. It
always amazes me the money people pay out to "consultants" who come in and
hook up an Appletalk net for them using phonenet.

It may be of interest to you, since we are in the process of describing our
friends' computer preferences, that most of the really good programmers
where I work, who were enthusiastic when the Mac first came out, have ALL
abandoned the Mac. They have moved on to platforms which are more powerful
and easier to program.

>To be honest, I
>still think the GS is a pretty hot machine, and feel really bad that
>Apple can't be a "two horse" company and support them both EQUALLY.
>I'd much rather have my children learning on a GS with all kinds of
>neat sounds and graphics and a good user interface then learning how
>to use MS-DOS on some CGA machine in monochrome. Then again, I wish the
>whole world would switch to Unix/Mach and NeXT Step! :) :) :)

There's no reason at all why Apple cannot continue to support the GS.
As for your assertion that you'd wish the whole world would switch to
Unix/Mach,etc...that simply tells me where you are coming from. It also
tell me you haven't really thought out carefully the issues involved in
home/educational/personal computing. As a consequence we have had to
put up with days of nonsense. Next time, why don't you just talk to
your friends when you want to know more about something?

Philip McDunnough
Professor of Statistics
University of Toronto-> philip@utstat.toronto.edu
[my opinions]