Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!uunet!math.fu-berlin.de!uniol!unido!gmdzi!strobl From: strobl@gmdzi.gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: Thought police, Apples and MS-DOS (was Re: give me solid facts: ... Message-ID: <4251@gmdzi.gmd.de> Date: 9 Mar 91 03:23:44 GMT References: <4196@gmdzi.gmd.de> <1991Mar4.052143.19855@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <1991Mar6.161839.21090@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <1991Mar7.045150.25791@gsm001.uucp> Organization: GMD, Sankt Augustin, F. R. Germany Lines: 35 gsm@gsm001.uucp (Geoffrey S. Mendelson) writes: >woody@nntp-server.caltech.edu (William Edward Woody) wrote praising Apples >restrictivness on the Mac: >> >>Actually, I personally *love* Apple for doing this, >>About that time I wrote my first utility, back in 1985. I still have that >>utility on my Mac II, and I have given it to people who use Mac IIfx's and >>Mac IIci's; I wrote it on my Mac 512K before there even was an HFS file system I sympathize with this emotion. Many Windows programmers including myself share it, because they saw their programs do the big step from real mode to protected mode without any hassle. One of my programs, which was written without any knowledge that there would ever be a protected mode version of Windows still floats around, unmodified, and still runs well. ... >Anyone who thinks Apple's too restrictive should try porting "standard" C >code from one "standard" Unix to another. You will cry yourself to sleep >at night :-) wishing AT&T was so restrictive. >Microsoft Windows imposes similar restrictions, but it is (IMHO) a case >of too little, too late. Why "too little"? Many things which have to be handled by forbidding, by rules on the Mac, are handled by making something impossible or more diffi- cult under Windows. A handle is a token, not an indirect pointer, and there are no global variables, for example. "Too late"? It's never too late. Do you really think that users will go back to character based menu systems like old SPF/PDF? I doubt it. Wolfgang Strobl #include