Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!gatech!udel!burdvax!dave From: dave@PRC.Unisys.COM (David Lee Matuszek) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: give me solid facts: why is the mac better than MeSsy DOS/WINDOWS Message-ID: <16918@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> Date: 20 Mar 91 16:23:46 GMT References: <29390@cs.yale.edu> <1991Mar12.025422.11530@amd.com> <1991Mar16.021936.21633@amd.com> Sender: news@PRC.Unisys.COM Organization: Unisys Corporation, Paoli Research Center; Paoli, PA Lines: 79 > In article francis@zaphod.uchicago.e > du writes: > |A LITTLE ahead? Try "has had a standard interface ever since it came > |out--changed it when it added true subdirectories, but everything > > I don't care about history. I look at the products as they are today. > There may be some subtle advantages on the Mac (and there are certainly > disadvantages too) but there's not any overwhelming advantages that > I can see. When I buy something, I don't care how much I'm "saving," I only look at the price I'm paying. So in this context I understand and agree with your comments. However, the "price history" of an item is totally irrelevant to its price today. The history of a computer system is VERY relevant. Products don't spring up full-grown overnight. The Mac and the IBM have been around for years, and have developed their own styles of programs, programming, and interfaces. Macintosh has a small market segment, and the interface tools were in ROM from day one--they have evolved, but have never been radically revised. Apple published style guidelines, and the Mac community has been very vocal about supporting them, to the extent of driving out of the marketplace (by totally ignoring) products which, although perfectly good or even excellent in other respects, showed a poor understanding of the Mac interface guidelines. Many of these were and are popular DOS programs. [And yes, MS Word is an exception; Nisus may yet displace it, by providing both power AND a great interface.] IBM and its clones have a many-times larger market segment, and essentially no guidelines. Many more products are available, and there is little uniformity among them. Instead of a single windowing environment, IBM users have a choice of several. And while the makers of these environments may publish style guidelines, no penalty is incurred for ignoring them, because users are used to the diversity. In principle, I favor diversity; it provides opportunities for rapid evolution and the emergence of newer and better things. As to "overwhelming advantages": unfortunately, this uniformity across applications is very hard for DOS users to see, and even harder for them to understand the importance of, but for me it's crucial. I use literally hundreds of programs; I couldn't possibly afford the time required to learn how to use all of these, memorizing commands and keystroke equivalents and the like. On a Mac I don't have to. If I had an IBM I would probably learn to use ONE word processor and ONE drawing program, thus severly limiting what I could do with the machine--not because it isn't entirely capable of doing more, but because *I'm* not. I use an IBM clone sparingly (very sparingly) at work, and I have a Mac at home. While my experience is admittedly limited, I have yet to see a single thing on an IBM that appeals to me--well, other than price :-(. The speed doesn't, because the IBMs need the horsepower just to make the windowing system usable (how did they make them so big and so slow?). The range of programs doesn't, because the thought of having to read all those manuals is too daunting. And I certainly don't want to have to figure out how to configure one of the things; I once learned how to format disks (though I've forgotten the details now), and that was more than enough, thank you. So I think the bottom line is: both are very powerful machines, and have excellent software available. IBM clones are inexpensive, but harder to learn and more hassle to use. Macs are user-friendly because of a strong committment to uniform, well-designed user interfaces (NOT because they have windows!), but cost more. There. That's as even-handed and impartial as I could make it. :-) Please ignore my .signature. -- Dave Matuszek (dave@prc.unisys.com) I don't speak for my employer. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | When I was young, my family bought a color TV. Our neigbors, who | | were poorer, had only a black-and-white set. They bought a piece of | | cellophane, red on top, yellow in the middle, and blue on the bottom, | | and taped it over their screen, so they could claim that they had a | | color TV, too. | | Now there's Windows 3.0. | -------------------------------------------------------------------------