bhyde@inmet.UUCP (03/24/84)
#N:inmet:17900014:000:3523 inmet!bhyde Mar 22 22:53:00 1984 I've had my Macintosh for about a month. It continues to be great. I have found only one bug in the last three weeks, its very obscure and in MacPaint. The most frustrating thing about the mac is speed. The applications take time to start up, the disk seems to be the bottle neck, I presume that more memory would solve this problem, I wonder if I wouldn't rather have the second drive be ram disk. It isn't really slow compaired to other floopy based systems its just that I value those few moments every day that I'm willing to work very highly and I hate to watch them dribble away. The applications are a real pleasure. It is a rare moment in computing when you aren't regualarly irritated by some boundary condiditon in the software. MacWrite really grows on you, I wish for a little of the vi/emac kind of power but the mouse is so zippy that I rank MacWrite is a close second to vi in my ranking. As a formater it isn't Scribe but it comes close on the user friendly axis, on the archecture axis is isn't much very special once you've gotten over the increadable power of the what you see is what you get feedback. MacPaint is magic. The author of this program is wizard, I don't think I've ever see a program this perfect. Its so smooth, no edges, so very accessable. And like scribe there is very substantail power hidden under that surface. The Microsoft spreadsheet is fine. It has all the limits of a classic spread sheet, I have a lot of trouble viewing the universe as one giant array. The user interface is everything it should be, Apple has set a good example and Microsoft didn't blow it. I've found a dozen or so little nits in it, mostly off my one problems, I don't believe they let enough talented users beat on it, and the author wasn't an artist but a competent hacker. The manual doesn't exactly agree with the implementation either. If your trying to sell this to a spreadsheet user then the user interface should do the trick, it is very easy to use. I have used the Microsoft Basic for a few hours at the store. It's fun but I can't bring my self to buy a basic for a whole mess of money. It takes it about 20-30 seconds to draw a thousand lines on the screen, I'd quess. I don't think you could write an game in it that moved sprites about the screen. The microsoft programs maybe copied to another disk, and run from the copy but a copy will always request that it see you master disk as it starts up, what a pain. It only needs to see the master the first time you start it up in the day, if you never turned the machine off this wouldn't be such a problem. There does not seem to be any copy protection on the Apple software, but then it may know the serial number of the machine some how, I doubt that since the hardware design doesn't seem to admit that as an option. I heard a funny story about some guy who'd gone to an interview at Microsoft. It seems they have this section of the building all boarded up for Mac development work, paper on the windows, locks on the doors, etc. The guy he went out to lunch with from that group allowed as he hadn't been out of the building in a month. The master Multiplan disk has all these 2:00Am, 5:15Am, Jan 30, 1984 dates on the files. I would very MUCH like to see a Macintosh notesfile. I want it called net.micro.mac, since it is cute. Could one of our fine ARPA net gateways step forward and plug us into the Flames from the white tower network, please? Ben Hyde, Intermetrics Inc, Cambridge, Mass.