info-mac@utcsrgv.UUCP (info-mac) (07/11/84)
Date: Monday, 9 July 1984 20:21:12 EDT
From: uw-beaver!Thomas.Newton@cmu-cs-spice.arpa
To: info-mac@sumex-aim.arpa
Subject: Mac as appliance
Accepting the view that the Macintosh should be considered an appliance,
it still has a number of flaws. Most of them can be corrected if Apple
is willing to take the effort to make the changes.
1) MacWrite cannot handle documents longer than roughly ten pages. There
are two possible solutions: (a) increase the amount of memory in the Mac,
or (b) modify MacWrite to be able to keep part of a document on disk.
2) MacWrite has no keyboard commands for moving the cursor, deleting lines
and blocks, etc. After using Unix Emacs (no mouse) and Oil (a subset of
Emacs that has both keyboard and mouse commands), I can say that mice are
a big win ONLY IF YOU GET TO KEEP YOUR KEYBOARD COMMANDS.
3) MacWrite has no provision for handling footnotes at the bottom of a page.
Inserting footnotes by hand is a real pain on a typewriter; it is worse with
a word processor. For a machine being sold in large numbers to students, the
lack of footnotes is a major omission.
4) MacWrite does not handle italics correctly -- they protrude beyond the
right edge of justified lines, and spaces between italics and regular text
look smaller than spaces between two words of regular text.
5) It is impossible to select any part of a MacPaint document that is larger
than the drawing window.
6) The System Disk should contain utilities such as
- A font editor (you don't need to be a programmer to be able to
design a font -- artists are probably better at
font design than most programmers)
- A two-disk copy program that doesn't require inserting the
Startup disk in the middle of the backup.
- A keyboard configuration editor (so you can change the keyboard
layout to DVORAK, rebind the editor keys (see
above), etc.)
- A Font Mover program that can move fonts between two System disks
directly (no need for an intermediate Fonts file)
7) The Calculator on the Apple menu is next to useless. Surely a $2500
computer can simulate a calculator with memory, sqrt, sin, cos, etc.
8) The ImageWriter has an aspect ratio problem (it only prints 72dpi in the
vertical direction, while the Mac screen is 80dpi) that results in MacPaint
skipping every tenth line on printouts. This makes patterns look rather bad.
9) Although the cloverleaf key acts like the CTRL key on other computers, it
occupies a rather awkward position by the space bar. It really should be in
the position currently occupied by the CAPS LOCK key. Interchanging the two
keys (& offering a cheap upgrade to present owners) would make the keyboard
100% better than it is now.
10) There is almost no software out for the Macintosh!! The packages I have
seen so far are:
Habadex & MailMerge (both cost $$$$, have poor reviews)
Transylvania (but it has bugs that can trash the disk)
* Microsoft BASIC (generic MBASIC made inconvenient to use)
Microsoft Multiplan (had bugs; currently pulled from the market)
* Creative Solutions (has bugs in documentation & program, but
Forth some work is being done with it)
MacWrite/MacPaint (MacWrite needs quite a bit of work, but
MacPaint is almost polished)
* - of interest mainly to programmers
Unless a fair amount of GOOD software becomes available for this machine
quickly, it may go the way of the TI 99/4A. That would be a shame.info-mac@utcsrgv.UUCP (info-mac) (07/11/84)
Date: 10 Jul 84 05:03:36 PDT (Tuesday) From: uw-beaver!kato.PA@XEROX.ARPA Subject: Re: Mac as appliance In-Reply-To: <1984.7.9.23.35.6.Thomas.Newton@cmu-cs-spice.arpa> To: Thomas.Newton@CMU-CS-SPICE.ARPA Cc: info-mac@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA I agree with most of what you said. Here are my disagreements. 1,3) As far as beginners are concerned, MacWrite is good enough. For people who are doing serious writing (long docs, footnotes, etc...), there's Microsoft WORD. MacWrite is a limited package targeted for simple users, it doesn't need to be the "everything you ever wanted" package. For now, it suits my letter writing and documenting needs quite admirably. 6) I'd like a font editor, but there's a chance that Ma and/or Pa Kettle will screw up some of their fonts by accident. They could just grab the font again from their master disk... No. They didn't use their m a s t... 10) I believe that Multiplan is back on the shelves. I also saw a disk that said it was a demo for a program called the "Main Street Filer". There are a few companies that are waiting to see if the Mac will catch on before they devote resources to developing software for it. I know of at least one of the companies that is listed on the Mac Developers poster that is watching and waiting. I believe that this is a mistake. It's pretty obvious that making Mac software is not the easiest thing to do. Look at all the buggy packages that have come out. But that's just my opinion. And my favorite beef: MacPaint is almost polished but I wish Apple would DOCUMENT its capabilities!!! Now, for major agreements. 5) !!!!!!!!! 7) ! 8) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I thought my eyes were going bad. Gary M. Kato Kato.pa@Xerox.ARPA