Path: utzoo!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!decvax!ima!haddock!suitti From: suitti@haddock.ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Iconitis Message-ID: <12738@haddock.ima.isc.com> Date: 18 Apr 89 18:07:30 GMT References: <1930@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <11555@lanl.gov> <17376@cisunx.UUCP> <28558@apple.Apple.COM> <7898@pyr.gatech.EDU> <28679@apple.Apple.COM> <4855@bunker.UUCP> Reply-To: suitti@haddock.ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti) Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston Lines: 82 In article <4855@bunker.UUCP> garys@bunker.UUCP (Gary M. Samuelson) writes: >In article <28679@apple.Apple.COM> austing@Apple.COM (Glenn L. Austin) writes: >>In article <7898@pyr.gatech.EDU> is813cs@pyr.UUCP (Cris Simpson) writes: >>>Anytime I have had to use a Mac, I always asked, >>>"Why is it so slow?." >> >>Compare the time it takes to type "DIR" with double-click. If you >>notice, it takes a lot less time to double-click than it does to type the >>command. > >Not a fair comparison. Typing DIR corresponds to moving the mouse until >it points to (for example) the icon of the disk whose contents you want >to examine. "DIR" is a poor example. The time it takes to learn a complicated application dominates these days. At home i have a Mac II & a PC XT clone (7.15 MHz). They were purchased at the same time (within a week of each other). The clone was about half the cost. The clone has 50 Meg of disk, the Mac has 40 Meg (they both eat disk). The clone has 640K RAM (plenty), the Mac has 2 Meg (not enough). They have about the same response. (A Mac Se is slightly slower than the clone - but "good enough"). Take a typical program for the clone: pkarc. It has more than a dozen options, no real defaults. I keep a crib sheet under my clone's keyboard "pkarc -nct a dsk:archive files...", and "pkxarc -x dsk:archive", just to give me a hint on how to do these things. Maybe i'm slow, but it took me most of an hour to figure out how it worked. The equivelent on the Mac, "stuffit", never gave me any trouble. OK, so it doesn't work the way *I* would have designed it. It still uses the Mac interface, i didn't have to read the manual, i don't have to keep crib notes. Now take a complicated program. I have "canvas" for the Mac. It does object & bit oriented color graphics. I've used it for postprocessing scanned in images. I've used it as a drafting table (it supports arrows, measurements, etc). I've used it for graphics file conversion. It has a manual, and you need it. It has nearly infinite features. Sure, some of the icons don't mean anything until you read the manual. But they do mean something once you get the idea. No crib notes. It uses the Mac interface, so i can just play with it. It has help online. It comes with a tutorial and a reference guide (i wish more software came with both). I don't have anything nearly as complicated on the clone. The reason is that i simply don't have the time. It would take months rather than just days to learn something like that. My crib notes would be the size of most manuals. Commercial programs for clones are getting better. Turbo C uses menus. Interstel's EMPIRE (great game) uses menus and/or a mouse. Guess what? When you do that, the user interface slows down! The CPU needs to really kick in order to give you any kind of response. It takes all sorts of CPU to move the bits around the screen. At work, i use a Compaq 386/25, running UNIX. Incredible. Easily 3-4 times the speed of the old '780, and (often) all to myself. Guess what happens when we run X windows with a large bitmaped screen? It slows down to what i'm used to, but says "yes master", lots more often. This is a good deal. UNIX has one of the most cryptic command line interfaces ever invented. Powerful, yes. Who would have voluntarily come up with hundreds of two character command names. Almost no commands have options of more than one character. Many commands use both upper and lower case for options because they have too many. Hardly any commands with built in help. AT&T actually removed the manual pages from the distribution (though they may be coming back)!!!?! I'm convinced it was designed by people who could type maybe five words per minute, but who could play "concentration" in their sleep, and never make a mistake. Large bitmapped screens, X windows, mice (with too many buttons - come on guys: there are no lables on mouse buttons!) and real window managers could turn UNIX into a powerful AND user friendly system. Maybe even better than a Mac. Of course, vendors will have to realize that with $10k machines, their software will have to be cheaper... I'm not holding my breath. Stephen.