The Logic Off Topic list

At 03:20 AM 5/2/05 -0400, you wrote:
>Murray,
>
>Your point is well taken.  But remember, Apple's marketing line years ago
>was that the Mac was a 'computer for the rest of us'.  Most people aren't
>programmers, so when they see a command line, they freak out.

They must have really hated the Apple II then :-)

>Apple's success with the Mac has been built largely on keeping the user away
>from the under-the-hood stuff.  This can be seen both ways.  If the software
>is good, the user never needs to go near low-level stuff.  If the software
>is bad, low-level access is a plus.  Mac software for the most part, has
>been outstanding.  
<cough> 
>The need for low level access is a mute point for all but
>programmers.
>
>My frustrations with Windows bouncing back to DOS was more for the folks
>that were helpless with the DOS command line.  Programmers and savvy
>computer folk were ok, but the average person is left scratching his head
>with the DOS command line.

I was really talking about Win95 and onward here - the 3 years or so
(shudder) of Win 3.x involved lauching (largely)16 bit Windows from the
command prompt on your 16 bit DOS machine. GPFs were the order of the day. 

After that,  PCs had a (largely) 32 bit OS with memory protection and
proper multi-tasking. Mac didn't get this stuff till OSX. It was during
this period,  when Win95 based PCs were reducing the Mac market share down
to single figures,  that the sort of "it's still DOS underneath" campaign
was running. How fondly I remember those bits of bombast like "Win95 = Mac 88".

Underneath the GUI of OS 7 - 9 was a massive kludge that Apple spent the
better part of a billion dollars trying to replace with their own new
generation of code and then they gave up and bought Next for 400 large. M$
did a similar thing but sooner - they brought the author of Digital's VMS
operating system over for  a serious chunk of change and got him to create
the WinNT which is the progenitor of M$s consumer OS versions post Win2k.

>All this points to the average user's experience with the machine.  Most
>people don't want a machine with more than one 'personality'.  DOS command
>line prompts are fairly hostile for newbies and the masses in general (it's
>the reason Microsoft did 'Windows').
>
>I've been in both worlds and prefer a platform that yields an experience
>that doesn't require low-level tinkering.

You must get a real kick out of repairing your permissions then ;-)