> As a example of little details that matter, to change a name
> on a mac file you click on it and edit. In windows you select
> it, then go hunting in a menu.
Actually, you can just click on it and edit in Windows, too. It
still might not be as easy as the Mac (I hate Windows, though I continue
to use it because it's too much hassle and expense to change.) What you
do is click on it once to select it, wait a second, then click on it one
more time and wait another second. This highlights the name and you can
edit it. The timing of the clicks does matter, but once you've got it
down it's easy and doesn't require menu selections or function keys. It
is true that you must click once more to place your cursor if you want
to change just part of the name. Otherwise you will overtype the
highlighted name when you start typing.
> A great deal of thought and study went into even the tiny
> details of the mac interface. And they then wrote a book that
> anyone can buy giving all of it, including why.
Yup, and then Microsoft realized Mac was better and started changing
Windows to work more like a Mac. Maybe by the next century they'll have
it down. It must be pointed out, in all fairness, that Mac had a big
headstart. The early development of these windowed operating systems
grew out of a Xerox research project in object-oriented programming
during the 1970s. After initial research, a consortium was formed in
1980 (if I remember correctly) with Xerox, Tektronix, Apple,
Hewlett-Packard, and Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) contributing to
serious development. Apple is the only one of the consortium to come
out with a commercially successful model - first the Lisa and then the
MacIntosh. I used a Tektronix "Magnolia" system in 1983 and it was
pretty nice. Microsoft came along much later and just hacked out a
crude facsimile of a windowed, object-oriented OS which they were able
to sell cheaply to the masses and overrun the world. Their unhappy
customers (and probably internal maintenance headaches) have forced them
to adopt more and better implementations as time has passed. Too bad
they couldn't have just done it right in the first place like Apple did.
--Brian M. Godfrey
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