mc4c+@andrew.cmu.edu (Mark Choi) (03/10/91)
O.K., I'm back on my own account and rarein' to go. About the microsoft/apple suit. As I remember it, the suit between Apple and DRI was over the grow box that expanded out of the disk and folder icons after they were opened. Apple said that they were a "look and feel" violation (can Mickey Rourke sue Bruce Willis for look and feel, can Sean Penn sue madonna's new boyfriend?) DRI simply took the grow boxes out of the code, and the case became moot. Apple does not stand a snowball in hells chance of winning this case. It is basically trumped up on the overlapping windows issue. There are so many overlapping window GUI's out there, and even XEROX was thinking about it before Apple ever got out there, that Apple can never prove propriety. The only reason that other systems didn't use it before were memory and speed constraints. Enter the mid eighties and the digital revolution, and everyone can do it. Apple and Michael Milken are the epitome of what can go wrong (IMHO) in a capitalist economy. For those who asked, the UT, a mind creation of David Small, is the hypothetical successor to the TT (ST, TT, UT...). It is the box that Small feels that Atari should have made the first time. It is basically in line with my feelings, and those of many others here, it would seem, that TT stands for Too little, Too late. Who wants vanilla VGA? Wasn't the Atari supposed to be a graphics machine. MIDI people are bailing to the Mac left right and center. And MIDI is such a small market anyway, so trying to base your market on such a small niche is foolish. Sound, sure DMA sound is nice, but so what? The hardware can do wonders if we bag TOS and get a real operating system. TOS is just MesS-DOS, with some of the bugs taken out. This was fine in 1985, but Atari, welcome to 1991. Atari should start form the ground up, like they did in '85, and design the ultimate multimedia machine, based around a 030, 88xxx, or a RISC processor, from the ground up. They didn't make an enhanced 800. They made the ST. They need to make the MACH 5 (yes, you know it), not the TT. Who is gonna buy a TT? No one who does not already own an ST. The TT will be an ST upgrade. So the abysmally small market share that they have now will be reduced even further. The least they could have done is liscenced flex-OS from DRI, along with X-GEM. AT least then we would have had a real operating system. Why is there so many posts about MiNT, g++, gulam, os-9 etc.? Because TOS bites. I loved my Atari when I got it years ago, and I still think that it beats the pants off MS-DOG base systems, and the like, but what can I do with it? Where are all the great word processors, that aren't so slow that you can make dinner while you leave a brick on your mouse button to get the screen to scroll? Where are the new multimedia spreadsheets that will give LDW (a great program) some competition? Were are the SQL databases? Photorealistic 32 bit graphics, video, cheap peripherals even? Atari has to drop this "Power without the Price" garbage (especially since their new machines are double what they should be) if they are not going to give anybody any real power. They can quote Mac and IBM prices til they are blue in the face, but that misses the point. Atari is not competing with IBM, they are competing with the clone makers, so to compare Atari prices to IBM prices is a whitewash. They can compare their prices to Apple, but Apple has the software, the developers, the third party hardware, the expansion, and the stability of the company to at least justify part of their ridiculous prices. What does Atari have? A great machine? Not enough. I want a great machine that I can use. A "great" machine has three parts: the machine itself, the operating system and environment, and the software and third party hardware base. Atari only scores a 1. From what I have read of, and from Allan Pratt, I like him a lot, and wish he were in charge back in the mid eighties. But even someone as talented and driven as he will get Atari anywhere unless the company as a whole shapes up its act. If Lexicor's product doesn't disappear in a puff of vapor(ware), and someone does actually do the impossible, and have a shotgun wedding for the TT and the Toaster, I would think there might be some life in the old beast yet. Otherwise, gang way, I'm takin my STacy, GCR and SuperCharger and jumpin' ship!
mathew@mwowm.mantis.co.uk (mathew) (03/13/91)
In <kbqIqTK00WAyMUApUM@andrew.cmu.edu>, Mark Choi writes: >bag TOS and get a real operating system. TOS is just MesS-DOS, with some >of the bugs taken out. Actually, it's CP/M 68K with some of the bugs taken out and some features added. > Where are all the >great word processors, that aren't so slow that you can make dinner >while you leave a brick on your mouse button to get the screen to >scroll? Europe. Try some of the German-written text editors and word processors. I use Tempus 2; not a word processor, but it has word-wrap (which is all I need for TeX) and scrolls smoothly at 40 lines per second. I gather that the authors have written a fully-featured word processor which is similarly speedy. mathew
ekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu (Ed Krimen) (03/15/91)
In article <A0b276og@mwowm.mantis.co.uk> mathew@mwowm.mantis.co.uk writes: >In <kbqIqTK00WAyMUApUM@andrew.cmu.edu>, Mark Choi writes: >> Where are all the >>great word processors, that aren't so slow that you can make dinner >>while you leave a brick on your mouse button to get the screen to >>scroll? > >Europe. Try some of the German-written text editors and word processors. >I use Tempus 2; not a word processor, but it has word-wrap (which is all I >need for TeX) and scrolls smoothly at 40 lines per second. I gather that >the authors have written a fully-featured word processor which is similarly >speedy. > ST Informer had a screen shot and small description about Tempus Word in their rumor column. The screen shot showed a line of text in a 'wave' pattern, instead of a straight line. (This was in an issue from a couple of months ago.) I think the manual and the commands are all in German. :^( Nonetheless, Tempus is FAST!! I think there's a demo of it at atari.archive. umich.edu under the filename TEMPUSDM.LZH. Don't know which directory. -- Ed Krimen ............................................... ||| Video Production Major, California State University, Chico ||| INTERNET: ekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu FREENET: al661 / | \ SysOp, Fuji BBS: 916-894-1261 FIDONET: 1:119/4.0
boyd@nu.cs.fsu.edu (Mickey Boyd) (03/15/91)
In <kbqIqTK00WAyMUApUM@andrew.cmu.edu>, Mark Choi writes: > Where are all the >great word processors, that aren't so slow that you can make dinner >while you leave a brick on your mouse button to get the screen to >scroll? There are great, fast, powerful programs out there for the ST. The problem is that there is also a lot of crap, and product support is frequently ripped out from under you. If you pick carefully, you will not have to put up with slow software. The purchase of a software accelerator can greatly increase the usability of most applications. I know what it is like to get burned, but since I started subscribing to Current Notes and reading comp.sys.atari.st, I have not purchased a lemon. As one netter said, "this newsgroup is worth a million bucks . . ." -- ---------------------------------+------------------------------------- Mickey R. Boyd | "It's amazing how much growing up FSU Computer Science | resembles being too tired." Technical Support Group | email: boyd@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu | - Heinlein ---------------------------------+-------------------------------------