Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!amdahl!key!jsp
From: jsp@key.COM (James Preston)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Xerox sues Apple!!!
Message-ID: <1331@key.COM>
Date: 21 Dec 89 18:03:25 GMT
References: <33269@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <10673@encore.Encore.COM> <2676@aecom.yu.edu> <994@biar.UUCP> <1328@key.COM> <2590444E.22947@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Reply-To: jsp@penguin.key.COM (James Preston)
Organization: Key Computer Laboratories, Fremont
Lines: 45

In article <2590444E.22947@paris.ics.uci.edu> truesdel@ics.uci.edu (Scott Truesdell) writes:
>Your example was not the best, but I get the point. But, referring to
>your example, I NEVER saw ANY manual for MacPaint EVER. If I was ever
>confused about the little tipping paint bucket, the confusion lasted a
>total of about 3 seconds. And the bucket has the SAME FUNCTION in EVERY
>SINGLE PAINT PROGRAM. That is a gain. But the real gain comes when you
>get used to using feature-laden programs. While the icon based
>interface may or may not be easier to decypher at first try, it is
>definitely easier to do a quick visual recognition (one level of
>abstraction) rather than the visual recognition, then the language
>processing (two levels of abstraction) necessary for text-based
>interfaces.

I don't agree with this at all.  In the first place that "levels of 
abstraction" stuff is just bunk.  Are you actually saying that you personally
can tell the difference in the time it takes you to recognize the meaning
of a picture vs. the time it takes you to recognize the meaning of a word?
In the second place, even if I grant you that, if I am presented with a 
picture whose meaning I can't decipher, it doesn't matter that it would have
been quicker than a word; if I can't figure out what functionality it is
supposed to represent, I'm stuck.  So the paint bucket wasn't the best
example; how about the dotted retangle?  Or the lasso?  Or a picture of a
hand?  Or an asterisk?  Some of these I can look at and come up with a half
a dozen possible meanings for.  Others I can't even come up with one.  The 
point is that icon-boosters like to go on and on about how much better 
pictures are for all the reasons that we've all heard.  But I'm saying that 
there _are_ cases where a couple of words can be much more meaningful and 
more easily recognized than a picture.  Yes it's true that once you learn 
what this things mean, you can remember them.  But that argument applies 
to cryptic DOS commands too.  And the argument that every paint program uses 
the same pictures says nothing about the usefullness of the pictures themselves.Every program uses the same pictures because Apple told them too.  If Apple 
had decided to use the words "fill area" or "select region", it could have 
just as easily decreed that all programs use the same words.

>Until then, I have to say that from my point of view (I come from an
>art background) the Mac, despite its glaring faults, is BY FAR more
>satisfying and fun to use. 

I agree absolutely, that's why I finally broke down and shelled out big bucks
for one.  But "best" does not mean "perfect, has no faults, and can't possibly
be any better".  It really bothers me that so many Mac aficionados apparently
feel that _nothing_ on the Mac is less-than-optimal, and that any complaint or
suggestion to change something amounts to sacrilege.

--James Preston