Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!uplherc!esunix!bambam!rwashbur
From: rwashbur@bambam.UUCP (Bob Washburne)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Comments about the Classic.
Message-ID: <2977@bambam.UUCP>
Date: 2 Nov 90 01:53:09 GMT
References: <34248@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp., Salt Lake City, Utah
Lines: 110

From article <34248@nigel.ee.udel.edu>, by TAAB5@ccvax.iastate.edu:
> 
>    I would like to compare the recently-introduced MAC Classic to the
> Amiga model that comes closest to matching it in price, the Amiga 500.
> 
>    As has been said before, the A500 blows the Classic away in terms
> of color, multitasking, overall speed, and animation.  
> 
>    However, the Classic blows the A500 away in overall useability
> (the Classic has a hard drive, the A500 does not), ease-of-setup,
> ease-of-use, quality of the display (the Classic has a high-quality
> non-interlaced display, the A500 has a display that flickers 
> horribly), and quality of available software.
> 
>    Given the above facts, I have to ask: which features are more
> important to a consumer: a fast computer, or a more friendly and
> useable computer?  Obviously, for the average person that the
> A500 and Classic are both tergeted at, the Classic is by far the
> more appealing, because it is so much easier to setup and use for
> anything other than games.
> 
>                                 -MB-

As a person who has had all of the major pc's foisted upon himself I feel
qualified to add a flame to this analysis.  While I can agree that the
mac has a far better display and availability of DTP software, I dissagree
that it is neccessarily easier to use and strongly disagree that is is 
easier to set up.

I hve been placed in the position of being told "Here is the computer the
last group bought.  See if you can't get it to work.  There may be some
documentation floating around here somewhere."  My backround has been with
APL and PRIMOS programming, no systems administration or operator
experiance.

My first experiance was with an IBM (true blue) PC/AT.  It had a hard disk
with the OS already installed and I found that "setting it up" was little
more than cleaning up directories and making sence of what was on it.  There
were no drivers to worry about, no special preferences or control pannels
to pour over.  Neither was there any consistancy between programs as to how
they should be run.  And the one time I attempted some system programming
to create a special DMA dump from disk, I thought I would go insane trying
to understand MS/DOS internals.  The project never saw the first line of code.
Bottom line was that the software was all professional and consistant WITHIN
each program, no setup was requires other than possibly copying down to the
hard drive, but I did have to learn a new OS command set.

My second experiance was with an Amiga 2000 which I bought for myself.  The
documentation was sketchy at best, but the only setup appeared to be making
a backup of the system (1.2) disk.  I don't recall ever having to use the CLI
for any system function.  Prefferences and printer setup was all available
and straight forward from the workbenck.  I did play with the CLI just to
poke around the system and compare it to MS/DOS, but that was my own fault.
This experiance was repeated last month when I helped a paster set up his new
A500.  I was able to configure his system and set up his word processor all
through the workbench.  Bottom line was a very simple setup, at least as easy
as the PC/AT.  No OS commands to learn, but a new concept of mice and 
windows to get used to.  No hard disk, but the system seemed to know which
disk it needed and told me to swap them at the times I would expect.

Now that I have all this pc experiance, I get a new job and the office has
inherited a gaggle of Mac Plus' from the previous occupents (I'm on the
sales support staff and the turnover of an entire office staff is common).
There were even manuals, of sorts, and I was tasked with bringing them to
life.  The first thing I found was that the docs were next to useless; they
happily showed you how to point, click, and drag, butt always seemed to 
assume you had a system which was already set up.  True, I probably didn't
have the right manual.  So I tried to do an install myself.  You will have
to imagine the confusion.  There were installer scripts, but they kept
complaining that they couldn't install on the disk I had booted from, there
wasn't enough disk space, or other errors I have since blocked from memory.
The Mac Plus only has one floppy drive, like the Amiga, no hard drive.  The
Mac was also thoughtfull enough to tell me when it needed a different disk.
But the Mac does an unbelieveable disk shuffle.  Instaed of the single swap I
had grown use to on the PC/AT and AMI, five or more swaps were common.  I 
remember one sesion were I had to sit for over forty-five minutes constantly
swapping disks as the machine would take a teaspoon of data from each.  It
was not a pretty sight.  Then there were the matter of drivers.  Some needed
only to be placed in the system directory (Imagewriter), others had to have
an install script run (LaserWriter) and no clue as to which were which.
Bottom line is that there were a far greater number of inconsistancies in the
Mac setup than either the AT or AMIGA.  The base machine was almost unusable.
Since every new device, font, or special program had to have something
in the system folder as soon as the system disk filled up you could no 
longer add software or devises.  The only solution was to buy a hard disk,
something not required by AT or AMIGA.  Then there was the problem of
printing on the ImageWriter.  A document on the PC or AMI prints the same
on any printer, adjusting to its resulution and features.  Not so the Mac.
Every printing mode on the IW created a different size document, and none of
them was the size implied by the screen.  The only solution was to buy a 
LaserWriter to get the proper size printed.

So, the only way to get a user friendly Mac (at least to the same level as
a A500) was to buy a hard disk and laser writer and then have someone
who somehow already knew Macs to set it up for you.  I wasn't impressed.

What do I use?  The Mac has much better DTP software available and I use it 
for that.  Anything else I use my Amiga.  But I don't kid myself about
"user friendly" ledgons.

Flame all you like.  These were my experiances and I see little improvement
since then.

Bob Washburne
Evans & Sutherland
(717) 564-9714
rwashbur@dsd.es.com

The above oppinions represent on that of the author and any other
Right Thinking individual who reads them.  My boss is not responcible.