Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a218
From: a218@mindlink.UUCP (Charlie Gibbs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: User interface(was Re: Xerox sues Apple!!!)
Message-ID: <822@mindlink.UUCP>
Date: 18 Dec 89 18:33:31 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Lines: 58

In article <5828@internal.Apple.COM> casseres@apple.com (David Casseres)
writes:

>In article <JACOBS.89Dec18090720@cmos.cs.utah.edu> jacobs@cs.utah.edu
>(Steven R. Jacobs) writes:
>> Menus and mice are great when you are first learning to use a system, but
>> they get in the way of experienced users.
>
>Sorry, but this is an absurd statement.  There are many thousands of
>experienced users who are very happy with the Mac interface.

     There may be many thousands of experienced users who aren't,
and many more thousands who would like to choose one or the other
according to their needs or moods.  I'm sure I could find many
thousands of experienced users who are very happy with the IBM
interface; this doesn't justify calling a preference for mice and
menus "absurd".

>> ...An ideal system should
>> allow the user to use _either_ the mouse or the keyboard, based on the
>> preference of the user.
>
>This may be so, but the expense of developing two user interfaces for one
>system would be rather high.

     I could call this an "absurd statement" but I'll stay away
from such polemics.  :-)  In fact, writing a command interpreter
is easy enough to do that Commodore provides _two_ with the Amiga,
and a number of other people have written their own excellent
alternatives.

>                              The real benefit of a type-in user interface
>comes in being able to write a script of many commands to be executed as a
>batch, and in applications where this makes sense, the application
>developers have provided macro facilities that serve the purpose.

     This is _a_ real benefit.  Whether it's _the_ real benefit
depends on whether you want to use commands for anything else.

>                                                                   For
>programmers, Apple's own MPW offers a highly customizable interface that
>give you just about as much type-in as you want, or as little.
          ^^^^^^^^^^
     'Nuff said.

>                                                                There is
>no real need to provide something as specialized as a type-in interface at
>the system level, forcing everyone to pay for it.

     Specialized?  Ask a Unix user how specialized a command line
is.  As for "forcing everyone to pay for it", the Amiga's CLI
doesn't even appear unless you specifically ask for it.  If instead
you're referring to development costs again, I don't think the
Amiga costs so much more than a Mac that people will complain.  :-)

Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.UUCP
"I could never get the hang of ideology.  I do the rock, myself."
        -- Tim Curry