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From: akm@obelix.cs.uoregon.edu (Anant Kartik Mithal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc,comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: give me solid facts: why is the mac better than MeSsy DOS/WINDOWS
Summary: operating systems
Message-ID: <1991Mar26.063111.3133@cs.uoregon.edu>
Date: 26 Mar 91 06:31:11 GMT
References: <1991Mar24.025913.29727@amd.com> <1991Mar24.065427.16198@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <1991Mar26.011127.28302@amd.com>
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Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Oregon
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I perfer two things in the Mac. First, the file system is much better
than MSDOS, for simple things like the length of a file name, keeping
the lower/upper case-ness of characters, to more complex things like
maintaining seperate resource and data forks, associating icons with
every file, and associating a creating application with a file.

I also feel that the desktop/icon/running application is much better
integrated in the mac (wrote a paper about that...) This has immediate
consequences fo the user. For example, in Windows, if you have two
icons for Word for Windows, one in the program manager, and one on the
desktop (representing a running, but iconised version of Word), and
you double click on the icon in the program manager, you get an icon
box that says:


	 ----------------------------------------
	|                                        |
	|   Microsoft Word is already running    |
	|                                        |
	|                 OK                     |
	|                                        |
	 ----------------------------------------

On the mac, if you double click on the (greyed) icon for Word, you get
back to the running copy. Also, on the Mac, double clicking on a
second word doc gets you into word with the document, with Word for
Windows, you will get the error message. This is only in part because
of the way word is written, it is also because the FileManager,
Program Manager and Desktop are seperate entities in Windows, but all
parts of the same thing in the Macintosh Finder.

The seperation makes a different to users. I had a user who kept going
back to the icon in the program manager (that was the one that she new
about because that is the one she used to start Word with), and double
clicking on it, which resulted in her repeatedly getting the same
message. Finally, in frustration, she said "Yes I KNOW!! So RUN it!!"

The Mac has had a long time to iron out its problems, give Windows
time... 

kartik

-- 
Anant Kartik Mithal                                     akm@cs.uoregon.edu
Research Assistant, 					(503)346-4408 (msgs)
Department of Computer Science,                         (503)346-3989 (direct)
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1202