: Fundamental Complaints Re Mac (Discurvive Flame)
info-mac
I got lucky in Stanford's discount lottery, got an early Mac, and have been
using it moderately heavily since then (and had access to a Lisa before
that). The Mac is losing its initial glow, for several reasons:
1) Rigidity of its interface: I agree totally with Jerry Pournelle: Any
computer to be used seriously must have a SUBMIT or ".CMD" or batch
facility, so you can put it doing things and go away (or at least turn your
attention away). (On a DEC-20, for example, if you know the system you can
rattle off 6 unrelated commands from the keyboard, invoking 6 separate
programs, and the system will store up all the keystrokes and process them
in order). When the Mac repeatedly makes you wait 20 sec or longer, then
give some trivial input, then wait again, those pauses are just long enough
to slow you down and make you feel irritated, and not long enough to turn
your attention to some other task, even if it's right in front of you. You
mostly can't enter commands from the Mac keyboard, and when you can, the
buffer isn't very big.
2) Limitations of the mouse: I've come to realize that the mouse is
"insanely great" for certain things, like selecting cells in Multiplan for
instance, or graphics of course; but for anyone who has typing skills it's
lousy for sustained composition and word processing. Continually moving
your hand from keyboard to mouse is very disruptive. Give me an all
keyboard word processor -- and an all keyboard system for entering commands
and responding to inquiries any time.
3) Lack of software: Not even an elementary assembler. (Hell, my TRS-80
Model 1 cassette machine had an assmbler). "Real soon now" has passed.
You can get lots of promises, but when you've bought the hardware and the
software isn't there yet, YOU'RE the hostage.
4) Inadequate documentation: I am getting very frustrated at being unable
to find any clear description or picture of the conceptual structure of the
Mac operating system and its software ... what's the Finder, what's the
System, what's going on in all these disk swaps, what's stored where? I
don't want to do any detailed programming, but I do want to have a basic
understanding of the structure of the machine. For example, I've just
gotten the updated System diskette, new Finder, etc. How much of this do
I have to copy onto my older diskettes and backups, especially those for
other non-Apple programs, and how do I do it? What's essential to change
and what isn't? The documentation doesn't say, and I can't find a clear
enough understanding of the logical structure of the system to figure it
out for myself (which I have been able to do on a dozen previous computer
systems, large and small).
My affection for the TRS-80 Model 100 laptop that I sold to buy the Mac grew
with increasing use; my affection for the Mac is shrinking. Almost wish
I had the Model 100 back...
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