clp (05/01/83)
Reading the latest discussion about Lisa, I am a little distressed.
I, too, was amazingly impressed by the Lisa demonstration here at Harvard.
However, I wanted to find out more about the system, so I hung around and
spent a few hours with Bill Atkins and crew talking about how they had done
the project and what Lisa applications would be like. I was THEN really
impressed for the first time:
Lisa is a carefully engineered collection of tools, with well-defined
interfaces. Apple is willing (and able) to provide one-on-one sessions with
applications writers to explain the interfaces and to help get them started.
The designers of Lisa knew that they couldn't do it all themselves and thus
wanted to make a framework (library) of routines that new software writers
could use. Lisa is an open system in the sense that no routines or interfaces
are hidden or undocumented...
And: just a note about windows. Bill Atkins has written a VERY impressive
system for Lisa. Anyone who mentions silly limitations in his system hasn't
talked to him. He clips arbitrary regions (rounded rectangles, etc.) and
does incremental updates to uncovered arbitrary regions, as well as having
fast charater painting and point size conversions, italisizing, etc. His
system is a good piece of work, and he'll be publishing a paper about it soon.
These routines are all discussed in the technical talks that he sometimes
gives after demos. My impression of him from the few hours I talked to him
was that he was an excellent programmer and project manager.
I don't work for Apple, or anything like that, but I felt I should mention
what I had learned from the designers, who aren't here to stick up for them-
selves. I believe that Lisa can succeed as a product, even with a slow disk,
because of Apple's strong committment to software development, especially
by new applications writers...
Charles L. Perkins
...decvax!genrad!wjh12!clpbernie (05/05/83)
I can't help but be a little skeptical of this glowing praise, coming second- hand from the people who designed the Lisa. I don't doubt that they are quite proud of their work, and perhaps justly so; however, when I want a balanced view of something, I don't go to the person who built it. Personally, I place far more weight on the comments of people who have actually *used* the system, since they can be more objective about its performance. The comments have been mixed, which suggests that Lisa is a good (but not great) product. Time will tell whether Lisa is here to stay, but for the time being all we can do is wait and see.
jsg (05/12/83)
I too would take with a grain of salt anything said by the designers of any product (not just Lisa, or computers for that matter). Their product may very well be the greatest invention since the wheel, but even if not they are going to be proud of their work. Wouldn't you be? Anyway, I saw a demonstration of Lisa several months ago at an office automation show here in Washington. From what I saw, I get a mixed feeling. The graphics are pretty good, and the product seems pretty easy to learn and get used to. However, the responce time was *VERY* disappointing. When the person giving the demo selected a function, we started timing the respnce. While the demonstrator distracted(?) you expaining how Lisa was working, it was busy chugging away. The responce time from selection of the function until the screen was updated and ready to proceed was consistantly greater thean 50 seconds. I don't think any system designer would emphysize that fact. Basically, I think Lisa is something which will probably be built upon, and can do nothing but get better. Any other comments, Jeff Grunewald RLG Corp. ...!(seismo,brl-bmd,mcnc,we13,lime)!rlgvax!jsg