Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!spool.mu.edu!uunet!mcsun!unido!gmdzi!strobl From: strobl@gmdzi.gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: give me solid facts: why is the mac better than MeSsy DOS/WINDOWS Message-ID: <4203@gmdzi.gmd.de> Date: 5 Mar 91 00:33:44 GMT References: <4176@gmdzi.gmd.de> <29159@cs.yale.edu> <4196@gmdzi.gmd.de> <1991Mar4.165247.12250@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE> Organization: GMD, Sankt Augustin, F. R. Germany Lines: 85 breidenb@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Oliver Breidenbach) writes: >hi there, >Wolfgang, I have two questions: >1.) Do you have no other things to do all the day long as to fight long > flame wars? (this is a personal question not a flame.) "This sentence is indeed true" Is anything which isn't breathless admiration of the system you're using looks like a flame war to you, that's your problem, not mine. My intent is to get into a technical discussion of the relative merits and problems of the various GUIs. This seems to be rather difficult, because many Mac enthusiasts perceive any attempt to analyze their system and to compare it to other systems as a personal attack. This doesn't prevent them from insulting other peoples of beeing stupid or ignorant, just because they use another system, which may be as good or usefull as their own system. I could start a flame war by quoting examples for that and/or pay back in the same currency, but why should I? I'm doing this, contrary to your assumption, mostly during the evening or during the night, and for fun or for my own education. Flame wars are neither fun nor educative. >2.) Did you ever even see a mac? Or programm it? Probably with MacApp? Yes, many. No. No. Did you? > Okay, actually these are three questions. But since you can't stand > to hazzle mac, I assume you haven't use it yet. Sure I did. Similar to all those people on this list who compare their new 68040 based high speed Mac to the old original IBM PC they where forced to use years ago, my own experience with Macs comes from using one of the first Macs (128K, one floppy) with beta versions of various programs. The machine was a joke, it was slow; the programs - MacWrite, MacPaint and Multiplan, if I remember correclty - crashed nearly everytime you tried to do something useful, and you had to have backup copy of the system disk, because the machine liked to trash the system on this disk now and then. The endless necessity to swap the application/data disk and the system disk was annoying. I recommended this system, nevertheless, because I recognized its superiour user interface, and because I could differenciate between the actual deficiencies and pitfalls of the machine, and its inherent elegance and possible usefullness. This may indeed be one of the reasons why the Mac is used heavily in my organization, nowadays. I prefer other machines, mainly because I started to use small computers long before the advent of the Mac, and because I like to have control over my machine, instead of having one supplier having the control. I was exposed to object oriented programming using SIMULA67 on a mainframe during my study, so references to MacApp and similar systems don't impress me that much, either. [story about impressed, but uninformed MSDOS user/programmer deleted] > About MacApp: I've never seen a simpler way to program complicated things. > Maybe the NextStep programming tool, but not on a MSDOS machine. > Using it provides you with the ability to write a text editor with 2000 > lines of code. The program will be very simple but support clipboard > operations, multible dokuments, different fonts, sizes, and attributes to > text, file operations and undo... Do you have a comparable programmers > tool under MSDOS? Oh, I forgot, it also will have printing on any printer > and will run with any previously and future releases of mac machines. I checked the samples which come with the Windows SDK (system development kit). It includes a 280 line program which is a complete editor, and a 1200 line program which is an editor, which includes clipboard support, file operations and printing. Supporting multiple documents is not necessary under MS Windows, because any application normally is reentrant, so you can start it as many times as you like, with different data. Of course, it prints on any printer and will run with any PC which runs Windows. These programs are quite longish, because they are programmed in a procedural language (C), which doesn't allow to shorten code by inheriting usefull things from predefined classes. Nevertheless, they show what can be done in MS Windows with relativly few lines of code. Wolfgang Strobl #include