Re: Computers

[Larry Smith <Larry.Smith@snow.edu>]

At 8:15 AM -0500 2/27/97, Donald E. Simanek wrote:
> Some of us
> are quite turned off by the [Mac] interface, the pull down menus, the
> icons, >and
> *especially* the dependence on the mouse, features which initially attract
> the novice, but stand in the way of productivity for the power user. And
> these features now infect the DOS world as well, for the disease has taken
> over the Windows environment nearly totally. Oh, one *can* still do
> Windows 95 without the mouse most of the time, using keyboard equivalents
> only,

This is also true for the Mac, much more so than used to be the case.

> but there's still too much mucking around in what I consider a
> user-hostile environment of both Mac and Windows platforms.

The Computer Science text I teach from says the criteria for a good user
interface are: 1) it must be visually oriented (icons), 2) it must be
forgiving ("are you really sure you want to erase your hard drive?"), and
3) transparent (one should be able to concentrate on the job rather than
the tool).

> So, I'm not a religious advocate of either platform; I hate them both, and
> whenever possible I stick to plain DOS. My entire Web page and all of my
> HTML documents on it were created with a text editor. I've gotten to like
> UNIX more and more as I get into it.

Someone else said:
> Windows 95 works so much like a
> Mac that there seems to be no compelling reason to by Mac.

There may be some subtle underlying issues, but on the face of it, this
statement doesn't make a lot of sense.  If Windows is almost as good as a
Mac, why not just buy a Mac?

The only people in the anti-Mac camp that have a non-hypcritical leg to
stand on are CLI (command-line interface) die-hards, like DOS and unix
afficcionados.  You can't like Windows and dislike the Mac (and not be a
hypocrite).  It appears that at least Donald has a consistent position in
not liking Macs, since he doesn't like Windows either.

Larry