Re: architecture (was MIDI files on IIgs?)

[Eric Jacobs <no@no.no>]

Nathan Mates wrote:
> 
> In article <5l82qp$2aq2@uni.library.ucla.edu>,
>  <pubpc1@library.ucla.edu> wrote:
> >Java runs on VMs (virtual machines) and the Mac
> >has a hard time implementing these properly in a web browser because
> >it does not have pre-emptive multitasking.  This is not a knock on
> >the Mac, but simply a statement of fact.  The PowerMac hardware is
> >powerful enough to do this, but its OS is not.
> 
>    Uh, the 68K processor and hardware in non-"power"macs is perfectly
> capable of doing preemptive multitasking, etc. The Commie Amiga, NeXT
> hardware, workstations from HP, and probably a few more setups all
> used the same type of hardware, but the software was *BETTER*.
> 
>    Apple (and most Macheads) have this inferiority complex saying "we
> were better in 1984. We're so much better we never need to change."
> Thus, the core of Mac 97 = Color Mac 84. A few tweaks to make them
> more usable have occurred, but overall, they've been standing still
> while the rest of the world has either equalled or surpassed them. And
> the competitiors ain't resting on their laurels, they're advancing
> even as Apple is now playing catch-up.

What's ridiculous is for the most part, this attitude is justified. Consider the
years 1984-1997: generally speaking, the computer industry has been moving to
imitate Apple's godly interface. Graphical interfaces. Windows, pull-down menus,
icons. And then Windows 95: Dragging icons between windows. View by Icon/Name/
Date/Size. Icons on the desktop. Making a fake desktop directory. Associating
directories with menus. The list can go on.

To be honest, I'm really sick of it all--the GS included, unfortunately. The GS 
system is really just a descendant of the Mac interface, slightly better off
in some respects, slightly worse off in others. But at the core, it is only an
imitation.

As is so much in this computer world today. The Mac idea WAS great when it was
first conceived. But what made it great was that it was new--people could think
a new way, could understand things a different way. But no matter how great of
an idea anything is, it needs to grow and evolve with the rest of the world.
Exactly what Apple hasn't done.

I'll tell you what I'm particularly sick of: overlapping windows. No matter what
computer I'm using, be it Mac, Windows, or the GS, and no matter how fast it is,
as soon as I try to do anything serious, I find myself spending less time being
productive and more time clicking incessantly on little scroll bars, size boxes,
title bars. When it gets to the way I like it, soon I need to open a new document,
and the circus begins again. When one window occludes others, how useful are those
other windows? ZERO. Absolutely useless.

The way I see it, a graphical user interface takes a specific set of data items
as input, and produces a two-dimensional bitmap as output. Either one of two
conditions will occur:

1. The information will fit.
2. The information won't fit.

If it will fit, the computer should MAKE it fit. If it doesn't fit, then I'll have
to choose what I want to see. It's ridiculous, unproductive, and incredibly
annoying to have half of my document displayed convered up by an incident window.
We now have these new, modern, blazing fast PC's, and they can't even organize
a screen sensibly.

Why?

Because it's the paradigm. I believe Apple did the right thing back in 1984.. the
Mac was wonderful idea. Its concepts were new, and skillfully implemented in that
cute little box. But, it's 1997, now, folks, and the thought that the computer
industry has been mindlessly following this temporal meme of Macintosh-ness. Very
little, if any, thought has been given to how things might be better. We simply
just follow instictively, blindly.

If you think things are that much different, think for a minute: What is the Web? 
What is Java?? Half of a Java reference book:  new Button()  ... etc. Layouts,
buttons, cute clicky stuff.

I await anxiously the day when people decide to buy things that are useful. It
certainly hasn't come yet. Maybe then, friends, ...

-ej