Re: Errors in a Microsoft Propaganda Book

[Charlie Springer <RAM@regnirps.com>]

On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 02:05:30 -0700, Joshua Bell wrote
(in article <uzFWh.1565$H_.847@newssvr21.news.prodigy.net>):

> Reading folklore.org many years later (and with a CS degree and industry 
> experience under my belt), it finally hit me that the Mac really was just an 
> incremental improvement over the Apple II that got *extremely* lucky - the 
> daring move of no backward compatibility combined with about 5 deeply 
> intertwingled strokes of genius (built-in monitor, standard mouse, bitmapped 
> display, toolbox in ROM, high capacity floppies, elegant GUI design).

It is funny, but all these are tied into Raskin's human interface theory. 
Monotony - everything works the same. Modelessness - you can't find yourself 
locked into a different mode of operation. The modal dialog box is as close 
as you can get and he wasn't crazy about that. Determinism - the system owns 
your diskette (and any other resources) till it is finished with it. You 
request an ejection and it cleans up first. MS was stuck with hardware with 
drives with a mechanical eject button that caused no end of lost data and 
fouled up systems.

-- Charlie Springer