24 May
2001
24 May
'01
1:41 a.m.
I am just going to note that while I do prefer a command line to a GUI,
not all GUI's are created equal. In Windows, IU find myself fiddling
most of the time with the OS rather than actually accomplishing anything.
This sort of activity is largely masturbatory rather than productive. I
don't enjoy playing with Bill's little bits. I find switching from my
Amiga to a Windows loss gives me a 30+% loss in productivity.
On Thu, 24 May 2001, Alan Pearson wrote:
M. K. Peirce
Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc.
Shady Lea, Rhode Island
"Casta est quam nemo rogavit."
- Ovid
If you ever
worked on a Xerox, where you had the copy/move/prop/...
special
keys on the left hand side of your keyboard
you'd know how easy handling
can
be ... unlike todays interface, where you use the
mouse for several thing,
here the little critter was only a pointing device, while you selected
most
functions via keys (and your left hand).
Heck yes, it's *way* better that what we've ended up with! I reckon things
started going downhill when somebody dreamt up the menu bar - the original
Star interface had a button bar across the top of the window where you could
get at the few functions you couldn't provide by the left-hand keypad. None
of this "hunt the menu option" rubbish you have to do now.
IMHO the Star interface was, and still is, about as good as you're likely
to get with the windows-icons-mouse paradigm. Look at the fuss Microsoft
made about making the desktop more "document-centric" - that's what the
Star
desktop was all about in the first place! Something was lost when Apple
implemented their own version of it, which Microsoft then copied.
Al