Re: What has changed in the Apple world last 6 months?

[dalloff@gcfn.org (Dave Althoff Jr)]

dev.null@personal.information.com wrote:
: Dennis Doms <SynABit@kc.invalid> wrote:
: > Someone mentioned text over GUI for some purposes, which is true; GUI
: > for a specific task isn't always better. However, GUI gives you
: > multiwindowing, and with most people wanting to combine applications,
: > that  _is_ no longer a capability that can be sacrificed. And the
: > interaction is more seamless if everything is GUI.

: It is possible to obtain multiwindowing without the GUI.  'screen' is a
: handy Unix utility which is used in conjunction with my shell account.
: It allows me to work with more than one application at any given time.
: Usually, it is used to flip between multiple 'virtual' terminals.  It
: is also possible to use it to divide the screen into multiple regions,
: to handle data between two or more applications.  It is not exactly
: something that you would want to do in the 80x25 text mode found on
: most Apple II's, but the capability could exit.

You gotta look at a Psion!  The Psion Series 3 is a *true* multitasking
machine (16 threads, I think is the limit) but only one application on the
screen at a time.  Hit an application button, and you are instantly there.
 Highlight text in one application, switch to another application and
issue the "Bring" command, and it comes up.  And it's all operated from
the keyboard; it all fits into a shirt pocket, and it doesn't care what
kind of desktop computer you might want to connect it to...or for that
matter whether you even have a desktop machine.  

In the 8-bit A][ world, what was that Beagle Bros. program to allow you to
run (asynchronously...it was task switching, not multitasking) two apps on
a 128k ][e...Extra-K, perhaps?

: > I wonder how many Apple II people would react to an AppleWorks PDA
: > that ran their Apple II software? I might be interested in that
: > combination. :)

: Interesting idea, that PDA with a 6502 is.  And the great part is that
: it is not too far fetched (as an inexpensive alternative to those
: palm pilots and windows ce gizmos).

Does it matter what CPU the machine has?  The Psion has an 8086-clone
operating at 28 MHz (the Series 3mx)...and a suite of proprietary apps
that look awfully familiar.  They're not AppleWorks, but they maintain a
lot of that same functionality.  Point of fact, the Psion apps will do
more than AppleWorks; the word processor is even quasi-WYSIWYG (the small
screen size notwithstanding) but the shift from one machine to the other
is remarkably easy.  Psion even put the CONTROL key in the right place.  8-)

--Dave Althoff, ][.
-- 
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