oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) (11/11/88)
I having exerpted, but I think I have maintained the sense of the original. In article <1420@percival.UUCP> gary@percival.UUCP (Gary Wells) writes: >1) They must become simplier to use. _MUCH_ simpler. My wife cannot reliably >record a TV program of her choice because she can't remember to set all the >appropreate options A VCR has a lousy user-interface. Think how much better you could do, if you got rid of those stupid buttons, and just included a pointing device (mouse, light-pen, trackball, or joystick.) and drew a chart on the tv screen, with time running horizontally, and channels running vertically, and you just sweep out with the pointing device when you want the machine to record, and what channels. Since this is similar to what thge newspapers already print, it should be very fast to learn, and could even be integrated with an ascii program list, downloaded by the cable tv company, so it would look the same as the schedule you see in the newspapers. My Macintosh is connected to a BSR X-10 control system. In addition to the user interface to time and objects given above, I can also use an interface that shows a map of my apartment, with each appliance drawn in its place. If I want an appliance to do something on a certain day of the week, I point at a picture of the appliance, on a map of my apartment, on my screen, manipulate a picture of a switch, point at when in the week I want it to do it, and it does it. >2) Endless options, nice for the truely interested, should somehow be reserved >for the expert. The general person wants to write a letter, and send 6 copies >of it to friends. Sounds like MacWrite. >3) The general population wants to _see_ it on the screen the way it will look >on paper. They want color and the ablity to draw pictures. They want color >printers. Within the constraints of black&white printers, sounds like MacWrite. >4) They want "point and shoot", literally. Ask a person who is struglling with >any program what they want to do. They will point at a word (for instance) >that they want moved, point at where they want it, then point at the printer. >Their hand never touches the keyboard. To rename a file on a Macintosh, you click on the name you want to change, then type the new name. I have seen novices have trouble with this. When I asked them about it, all said, "Oh, I didn't believe it would be that obvious." >We will have a revelution when fingers are the primary pointing device, WYSIWYG >test editors are the rule, the program can configure itself A Mac II comes standard with a 612x480 display. If you stick a 1024x750 display card in it, you don't have to configure anything, It just works. All your old programs make use of it. Stick a color card in, it works. All your old programs make use of it (although a b&w paint program is still a b&w paint program, it just is running on a color screen.) The only configuring you will want to do is to tell the macintosh, by by clicking on and dragging pictures of crts, whether the big screen is to the left, right, below or above the other screen, so when yo drag a window off of one screen, it will be correctly aligned on the other. That is right, all 6 slots can be filled with CRT cards, the type of each independent of all the others, and the system will give you a giant, contiguous desktop, and use the full pixel and color resolution of each crt. You can click and drag the grow box of a window to make it span all 6 CRTs, if you wish. Put a font in the system, and it works in all programs, Put a printer driver in the system, and it works in all programs. The revolution you are asking for has already happened. It happened in 1984, when Steve Jobs introduced his last computer. (And if a Macintosh is too complex for your wife, there is always the Canon Cat: no graphics, no proportionally spaced fonts, one file per floppy so you don't have to worry about complex file systems. Designed by Jef Raskin, the original designer of the Macintosh.) --- David Phillip Oster --When you asked me to live in sin with you Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --I didn't know you meant sloth. Uucp: {uwvax,decvax}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (11/12/88)
[ Macintosh was a revolution in personal computers ] I won't argue with that. The Mac was, for all its faults, a revolutionary machine: a Star-type user interface that cost less than a small car. Too bad they didn't see fit to put a conventional operating system in there (no, I don't mean "like MS-DOS", I mean "like UNIX"... as in a similar design... OS/9, for example). It has other faults... but the biggest problem is that everything in the machine has become a slave to the user interface. Multitasking on a window basis just isn't efficient... look at the hardware it requires. The user learning-curve is pretty easy to conquer... but for programmers it's horrendous. The next revolution in *personal* computers was 1986, with the Amiga. Star- type user interface, but a real operating system, and color... and a significantly lower cost as well. This one is still being fought, thanks to a sterling example of malice and greed on the part of an ex-CEO that nearly crippled Commodore beyond recovery. And Apple is working against this one. -- Peter da Silva `-_-' Ferranti International Controls Corporation "Have you hugged U your wolf today?" uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter Disclaimer: My typos are my own damn business. peter@ficc.uu.net