🚀 go-pugleaf

Dan Pop (Dan.Pop@mail.cern.ch) wrote:
: In <schmeul-0108950744430001@pscmc3.chemistry.aa.wl.com> schmeul@umich.edu (Sam Huffman) writes:

: >In article <3vkkeu$ofc@freud.inst.com>, gato@freud.inst.com (gato) wrote:
: >
: >> : >Get real! Why in hell is Microsoft spending millions (billions?) of
: >> : >dollars trying to get a system which runs like a Mac. Windows95 is really
: >> : >Mac89 . Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The world is moving
: >> : >towards Mac without realizing it.
: >> 
: >> Exactly what makes Win95 even remotely similar to MacOS?  Please
: >
: >Windows, ICONs, the trash can, menus, folders, an arrow cursor... Who says
: >the way the Mac did it is the only way to design a GUI? The fact that
: >somehow, out of the BILLIONS of possible permutations, Windows ended up
: >with the same key interface elements as the Mac is a pretty clear
: >indication that Microsoft copied the Mac. 

: Maybe they have a common ancestor (XEROX PARC anyone?).

XEROX PARC never had trash cans, pull-down menus, folders, drag-and-drop 
icons, and a whole host of other Mac-isms.


: >If the Mac had never become
: >reality do you think a) there would have ever been a Windows, 

: Yes.  The basic ideas of the Mac come from a different company, who did
: the research.  Apple was the first one to include the results of this
: research work into a commercially successful product.


Actually, this is not strictly true (refer to my posting of email from 
Macintosh Project Architect Jef Raskin). The Mac's designer had already 
come up with some of the key concepts used in the Mac before PARC was 
even founded. Raskin's 1967 Master's thesis was called "THe QUick Draw 
Graphics System," and he published (in his thesis? separately?) a paper 
that described WYSIWYG printing before PARC was founded also.

While much of what the Mac and Lisa projects ended up doing was based on 
PARC work, much of it was already in the works before Jobs and Atkinson 
went to PARC.

In fact, Raskin's latest e-mail to me says that the reason why Jobs went 
to PARC in the first place was because Jobs thought that the Macintosh 
project was silly, and Raskin didn't have enough of a working system 
ready to prove otherwise, so he referred JObs to the only place that Raskin 
knew of where they had an actual working system based on the principles 
that were being used to design the Mac. Jobs returned a True Believer and 
the rest is history.


: >or b) it
: >would have looked _anything_ like what it does today?

: Probably yes, given the common ancestor already mentioned.
: >
: >If you'd asked your typical PC "power" user in the late 80s which was
: >better: GUI or CLUI, he would have told you CLUI. Are you saying PC users
: >lack vision? Or just that they need to wait until Apple proves the
: >superiority of an interface before they'll jump on the bandwagon?

: The "superiority" of the GUI interface has yet to be proven, as far as
: the power users are concerned.  In Unix, most people prefer to use a
: modern shell (which saves a lot of typing) rather than a drag, drop and
: multi-click GUI (plenty of them exist for Unix).


Just because "Plenty of systems" exist that use a GUI, doesn't mean that 
they are any good. The best GUI for UNIX that I am aware of is the NeXT 
interface, which is arguably still superior to everything else on a 
commercial system but it isn't very popular with the masses because of 
the expense.

Just because something is available, doesn't mean that it is good. Just 
because something is good, doesn't mean that it is available (to the mass 
market).


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Lawson English                            __  __     ____  ___       ___ ____
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