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From: mikef@bbs.acs.unc.edu (Michael Freedburg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Excel and Word on pcs and macs
Keywords: Stupid argument
Message-ID: <3016@beguine.UUCP>
Date: 19 Mar 91 15:59:32 GMT
Sender: usenet@beguine.UUCP
Lines: 46

phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes, that win has Excel 3.0,
what does the mac have, implying that windows now have a killer
spreadsheet application while mac users still rely on Multiplan
or something. Excel 3.0 will be out for the Macintosh in very
short order and will provide all of the features found in the
windows version.
I am stunned at Phil Ngai's assertion that Word for Windows is
much better than the Macintosh version. How so? There are a
number of features in the Macintosh version that are differently
implemented in Word for Windows and rarely as well. Take the
Define Styles dialog box, not the easiest thing on the Macintosh
and even more cumbersome to use in Word for Windows. What
precisely makes Word for Windows better? The fact that it is a
windows app? Please...
This entire matter is way out of hand. Everyone knows better
than the hardware and software people how it all should be
done. My feeling is, if you are such a *&^%$ know-it-all, why
don't you design, produce, and market this be-all and end-all
computer? It is so easy to point to flaws, but much harder to
correct them and even much more difficult to design a product
that is somehow totally error-free and suffers in no way from
any compromises in terms of design or pricing or performance.
Lessing countered the argument against the critic by claiming
that one did not need to be a cook to know that a soup is too
salty, but he also knew that recognizing the fault does not make
one a cook.
Apple, Microsoft, IBM, DEC are **businesses** and not saints.
On the matter of how intuitive it is to use a Macintosh, it is
not ever been a matter of totally hiding the OS from the user,
but making the OS much more alike to other operating
environments with which the user might be familiar.
Take the C:\> prompt. To what does that refer? A disk, a command
line, what? A new user cannot possibly deduce from it to what it
refers.
Now take the disk icon that actually looks like a floppy. It may
not be obvious which disk it is or where that disk may be, but
there is rarely any confusion about the referent of that object.
It refers to a disk. The trash can is a clear and meaningful
icon to ***any*** of the beginners I have taught. The C:\>
prompt is not.
Just for reference: I do hands-on training in DOS, Macintosh,
and Unix at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as
well as User Services and have almost 6 years of experience in
using and training under my belt.
Flame me all you want, but leave me out of this.
mikef@samba.acs.unc.edu