Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!jarthur!nntp-server.caltech.edu!woody From: woody@nntp-server.caltech.edu (William Edward Woody) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: give me solid facts: why is the mac better than MeSsy DOS/WINDOWS Message-ID: <1991Mar4.052143.19855@nntp-server.caltech.edu> Date: 4 Mar 91 05:21:43 GMT References: <4176@gmdzi.gmd.de> <29159@cs.yale.edu> <4196@gmdzi.gmd.de> Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena Lines: 140 In article <4196@gmdzi.gmd.de> strobl@gmdzi.gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) writes: >Your above problem with Paradox is ill described by "because Windows hogs >all the extended memory". Actually, Windows manages all the >extended memory and gives it to applications - including old DOS applications >- on demand. The problem is, Paradox does not use this interface. It >uses an older interface to get the memory and manages that memory itself. >Windows isn't the only environment where such ill behaved programs >give you headaches. Boy I shouldn't jump into this thread; I haven't been following it at all. However, after reading this paragraph, I couldn't quite bring myself to hit the 'n' key. As a developer for both the Macintosh environment (doing it since the little 128K toasters came out), and Microsoft Windows (not developing for it quite as long, but...) it seems that the whole problem with the DOS/ Windows environment is wrapped up into this paragraph. A very good book for DOS developers, "Undocumented DOS" (highly recommended, not for the tricks it tells you about, but for the insite into how DOS works), contained a statement which also reflects this principle problem. "The problem is that many of the DOS functions and data structures that Microsoft has not documented are crucial to fulfill MS-DOS's potential as an extensible operating system. Notice that we have been saying DOS allows or permits almost infinite extensibility: we never said that DOS actually _supports_ such extensions. That is because support, as opposed to mere permission, tends to reside in the undocumented areas of the DOS programmer's interface." Undocumented DOS, page 6. Quite simply put, there is no good well-defined and well-inforced interface standards in the DOS world, and thus each and every vendor has to either hunt around and discover what the commonly used interfaces are, or to invent their own. (Inventing your own seems to be what Microsoft does best.) And therefore in the MS-DOS world, things have to be tinkered with to get them working well. (Show me a man who has not had to tinker with thier config.sys file or their autoexec.bat file on an MS-DOS machine to get their machine working again after installing something and having the whole house of cards fall around their ears, and I will show you a man who has never had the honor of maintaining an MS-DOS machine!) This is in complete contrast with the Apple Macintosh world. Again, I quote, this time from the Apple Technical Notes: "It is getting increasingly difficult to make additions to the Macintosh Toolbox. The single greatest obstacle today is compatibility.... You're probably thinking "But I Followed the rules." You're right. You've followed the stated guidelines in Inside Macintosh and the Macintosh Technical Notes. You've done nothing explicitly wrong. However, you can do more than just follow the rules. Consider what effect your design decisions have on the Macintosh community. Understand that by taking advantage of a documented feature, you may be preventing the Macintosh from growing in the future...." Technical Note #227: Toolbox Karma (BTW, "taking advantage" here is used in the same sense as taking advantage of a person. I have removed a lot of the intermediate text for brevity which allows us to actually put this quote into context.) In the Apple Macintosh community there are rules, guides, comments about rules, Thought Police (remember them? also known as the Macintosh Evangelists), and everyone follows them or faces the threat of having their software possibly break in the future. Macintosh programmers hate Apple for this; you almost feel like you are being watched over your shoulder by Apple as you try to figure out how you are *supposed* to put your application together. And even if you think you are doing it right, it turns out you weren't paying attention and did it in a way which was in reality wrong. You can't simply stay up and pull an all- nighter and get your house of cards to work, sorta; you actually have to be paying attention the whole time. The result? No house of cards. For most users, no complex installation routines, fiddle with the config.sys and autoexec.bat files, and prey that the house of cards holds up. Instead, again for most users, you plug your computer together, plug in your software, and work. My brother, a person who is about as computer-illiterate as they come (he's a musician in a rock-'n'-roll band, and having a hell of a lot more fun than *I* am...) managed to put his new Macintosh IIsi together with no help in less than thirty minutes. (It took him that long because he actually read all the packing directions in great detail before removing the computer from the box.) And when he uses a new software package, he pops in the disks and copies them in. A friend of my family bought an MS-DOS machine. After he installed MS Windows, a mouse, and an accounting package (which runs under DOS and not Windows), he wound up comming to me to help him make his machine work, after spending the better part of a day tinkering with it. (It turned out to be a conflict between the non-standard mouse driver he bought, and the built-in Windows drivers.) The difference seems to be in the attitude taken by Microsoft in their operating system, and with Apple and their operating system. I am not suggesting that Apple is perfect--Apple has it's own problems. And I am not suggesting that Microsoft Windows is totally evil and horrible--if it were, I wouldn't be spending a lot of time, money, and effort learning how to write software for the Windows environment. And to be quite frank, Windows is one hell of an improvement over the older DOS environment--you are either Windows compatable, or you are not. This will make it economically important for vendors to be Windows compatable. However, as Apple started it first (yes, with thier thought police, and the Macintosh 'cult' of followers who are the first to reject software packages which are not Macintosh Compliant, and the long learning curve, and the feeling that someone is looking over your shoulders all the time), and Apple still is one of the few companies who have a line of computers which come the closest to being "plug and play", even to a computer-illerate user like my brother. Well, I'm out of here; I don't want to contribute any more to the flame wars. And not that I believe that Apple is superior to MS-DOS or visa-versa; I know each operating system grew up out of it's own environment and culture. I *do* believe that it is the attitude of Apple (with their enforcement of the Macintosh Way) that makes the Apple Macintosh a superior machine for the common user, but I also believe that Microsoft Windows have gone a very very long way to fixing the usability of the MS-DOS machine for the common user. -- Bill -- William Edward Woody | Disclamer: USNAIL P.O.Box 50986; Pasadena, CA 91115 | EMAIL woody@tybalt.caltech.edu | The useful stuff in this message ICBM 34 08' 44''N x 118 08' 41''W | was only line noise.