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From: sobiloff@agnes.acc.stolaf.edu (Blake Sobiloff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: What do I want to see in the Apple of the 90's?
Message-ID: <9878@thor.acc.stolaf.edu>
Date: 15 Dec 89 07:15:02 GMT
References: <9986@zodiac.ADS.COM> <3273@hub.UUCP> <10077@zodiac.ADS.COM>
Sender: news@thor.acc.stolaf.edu
Reply-To: sobiloff@agnes.stolaf.edu (Blake Sobiloff)
Organization: St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN
Lines: 38

In article <10077@zodiac.ADS.COM> jtn@zodiac.ADS.COM (John Nelson) writes:
>Why hasn't apple developed sets of resources WDEFS CDEFS and so on to
>extend the Mac OS becuase it sounds like this is just what resources
>are good for?  At the very LEAST Apple could act as the distribution
>center for such new extensions.  It looks to me like Apple isn't doing
>a whole lot to help the little guy or the public domain BBOARDS.
>They just don't seem to participate (although individual employeess do).

Well, there *is* a new piece of software called WindChooser that provides
four differnt WDEFs for you to play with, and the promise to provide more
if people send the author more so he can distribute them.  They're pretty
nice (no, I don't have any affiliation... :-)

>>rhetoric. The NeXT requires you to know how to develop for UNIX, Objective
>>C, and the class library NeXT has constructed if you want to build new
>>objects for the NeXT. This is as esoteric if not more esoteric than anything
>>on the Mac. And it's the ENTIRE basis of the OS. 
>
>Granted, both are obtuse.  I don't have experience with the NeXT (wish I did)
>to make comparisons.  The only reason I'm going with a Mac now and not a NeXT
>is because the software I need is available on the Mac NOW.

Er, I recently attended a very impressive demo of a NeXT cube here at St. Olaf
and I know that I could start putting together applications that worked well in
about a day or two.  That's *much* shorter than wading through IM I-V, etc.
And no, I don't know much about UNIX either.  I think that the NeXT platform
has certainly shown how computers should be made to work for/with people, not
the other way around.  Now, you certainly won't be able to sit just anyone
down in front of a NeXT and have them learn how to program it in just a few
days, but like I said before, it is a much-needed step in the right direction.

							-Blake


* Blake Sobiloff          sobiloff@thor.acc.stolaf.edu * 
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