I know this may sound like the old Mac vs. the PC re-kindled, but there
seem to be alot of similarities and some major differences between the
big GUI and OS players in the Mac and PC world.  DOS is getting ever closer
to the grave and Windows is destined to be the next PC operating system.

What are the good points and bad points of each interface?
Which interface is easier to use by new people?
Which interface offers the most flexibility and power to experienced people?
Which interface is "best", in your opinion, and WHY? (please give reasons)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the record, I think Windows has a slight edge.  I have used both and
prefer the infinite configuration possibilities and like the 3d look of
Windows.  For a new user, I wouldn't recommend it, as setting it up is a
royal pain in the ass (PITA).  Some things on the Mac interface aren't as
"intuitive" as Apple would have you think.  I have a friend that swears by
OS/2 2.0 as beating both by combining the best of both worlds.  OS/2's 
handicap is that it has "IBM" stamped on it.

155 responses total.

well, i'm not experienced very much across systems, but i'd like to note
that windows becomes about fourteen hundred times better when combined
with norton desktop, both as an environment and a work area. if i had to
work just in plain windows, i don't know what i'd do. 

Most definitely.  I just about forget that its not part of standard Windows.
Desktop makes a big difference, and in version 2.0, doesn't make that much
of a difference in performance, either.  TrueType is a better, speedier
alternative to Adobe Font Manager, but you have to have Win v3.1.

I'd like windows a lot more if I could commmunicate more linguistically with
it like I can with DOS.  I *HATE* mice!
For instance:
In DOS, I type: "del *.doc" in less than 1 sec., and it takes but another
moment to complete the operation.
In Windows (File Manager) there are a few ways to accomplish the same operation
but however you go about it, you have to point here and click there until 
you're sick.  THEN you wait while it does it's thing for a while. I dread the
day when there's no more DOS window to work in! Windows is great when it comes
to multi-tasking, and data sharing though. I also would not reccomend Windows
for the new user (PITA).  I think that Microsoft should be punished for their
advertisements touting the "ease" and" speed" of Windows - Windows is neither!

Windows is great -- for a DOS app.  But it lacks several features that
Motif and Open Look have.  One of the worst missing features, IMHO,
is a "focus follows mouse" mode (instead of "click to focus").  Under
Motif and Open Look, you can set up the window manager so that whichever
window contains the mouse also has the input focus (i.e., is the active
window).  You can switch the focus simply by moving the mouse; the
active window does not necessarily have to be the one at the top
of the window stack.  Especially on the small (both resolution-wise
and real-estate-wise) screens found on PCs, it's nice to be able to
type in a partially obscured window.

Unfortunately, X11 has its own problems; most notably, the fact that
it needs about 20MB of disk space and 16MB of memory to perform
well.  That's over and above what the OS itself requires (which is
usually on the order of 30MB of disk and 2MB-3MB of RAM).  It would
be nice if USL had implemented an "X11 lite" to go with their "Unix
lite" offering (aka Destiny, aka SVR4.2).  X11 is really, really powerful,
but it's also big and klunky and difficult to configure.  (What novice
computer user would like to have to edit something called a "resource
database file" to change configuration issues like which colors an
application uses?)

The Mac GUI, IMHO, is underpowered.  Even worse than Windows.  This
is exacerbated by the small screens found on most Macs.  The Macs
that I've used -- Macintosh LC's with 40MB hard drives -- were slow,
the screen resolution was low, and it was difficult to get anything
done.  Who wants to have to pull down five menus just to italicize
some text, anyway?

One more comment about Motif vs. Open Look: IMHO, Open Look is a better
interface.  Unfortunately Sun has handicapped it by making a distribution
license about two orders of magnitude more expensive than the Motif
distribution license.  Guess which one gets shipped with most Unix
boxes?  Sun, to their credit, has allowed the olwm (Open Look Window
Manager) and XView toolkit sources to be distributed with the X11
sources, whereas OSF still insists that people pay for Motif source.
(So much for the "Open" Software Foundation...)

  I'd pick X as my favorite among the windowing systems mentioned..
I can't stand Open Look, though..  olwm drives me batty..  I'd much
rather use Motif & mwm..

  As far as comparing Windows vs. the Mac Finder, I much prefer the
Mac interface.  Its primary advantage is that it is tied into the
operating system seamlessly, instead of being a hack that was slapped
on top long after the fact.  Windows is better than MS-DOS without
Windows, but it's too much of a kludge and can cause too many problems.
Things are getting better as Windows becomes a pretty much assumed 
part of any PC setup, but they've still got a ways to go.  On the
other hand, from all reports, Windows NT sounds like a *big* improvement.

Windows NT is supposed to REPLACE DOS and COMMAND.COM.  I would surely hope 
that they'd include a command line interpreter for those of us who sometimes
like that mode of computing.

I hate to butt in as I know most of you could care less, but I prefer Amiga
Workbench over Windows and Mac (Finder?).. The above is right - Mac is
underpowered.  Advantages - very clean and crisp looking.  Here again I don't
like the one-dimensional look.   Windows - Not very crisp and clean, but much
more powerful.  Also a bit (a lot) harder to use than the Mac interface.

Amiga Workbench 2.0 gives the crisp look of the MAC GUI, along with some of
the power in Windows (how much I have yet to find out).  It's easier to use
than Windows too.

Workbench does have the "Sun mouse" option available as opposed to the "Click
to focus" mentioned above.  Active window doesn't have to be the front window,
etc...

Most important advantage of Workbench over Windows?  Size.  It comes in ROM
(and gets updated often enough to make it useful :)  I paid $95 for Workbench
2.0, which includes AmigaDOS 2.0.  How much would you pay for Windows 3.1 and
DOS 5.0?

Windows takes up 14 megs of disk space.  You can run Workbench from a single
floppy if you have to (most people don't - I myself have a hard drive.. but
it's nice to know that on a 44 meg hard drive, I'll have probably 40 megs
available once I install every little thing I possible can, including
all the fonts and printer drivers and else.

Yes, I know.. EVERY DOS user has a hard drive.  It's getting that way with
the Amiga as well - we use the same IDE/SCSI drives as the next guy (just
that Amiga controllers have yet to come down in price, particularly for
the A500).

On a side note:  Amiga is the #1 selling computer in Europe.  Amiga Format
(a British Magazine) is the #1 selling computer magazine in Europe.

BUT, this is the United States, and most of you could probably not give
a hoot.  Back to your regularly scheduled DOS/MAC discussion.

I think everybody is going to forget about all those mac msoft window projects
and go with xwindows at the end.

One of X's best features, which I failed to mention above, is the fact
that it is network-transparent.  It makes no difference to your application
that it's displaying on a machine 200 miles away versus in the next room
versus the local console.  Try *that* with Windows...

(Of course, this also means that X is somewhat large and bloated.  And
because every mouse movement, keystroke, button event, etc. is transmitted
over the network, it creates a *lot* of network traffic and needs a fast
network connection to be useful.)

(This is a little off-track, but I find Ric's comments on the small
size of the Amiga OS and user interface very interesting.  I often
wonder if the huge memory and disk requirements of modern operating
environments are really all that necessary, and suspect bad design
and sometimes -- taking the paranoid view -- collusion between the
people who write software and the people who sell hardware.)

There may be some collusion, but I more suspect bad design.  These
companies are in such a rush to get things out, they don't really 
bother to optimize.  Instead, they use the time it would take to
optimize to bring out another version, with which they can soak
their users.

  In the case of X, I suspect it's a case of trying to be all things
to all people..  Much of the same code has to compile on a zillion different
platforms and it has to behave consistently across many different machine
types, so for a large part of it there is very little opportunity to tailor
the system to the particular aptitudes of the system it will be running on.

  MS Windows, I suspect, also suffers from this syndrome, having to support
a wide array of display and output devices (plus it has to step lightly
since MS-DOS wasn't designed with it in mind..)  However, I also suspect
that Windows suffers a great deal from typical Microsoft software bloat..
They usually wind up turning out product that works nicely (after several
major revisions and literally dozens of bug-fix versions) but at the same
time their products tend to be huge and inefficient..

  The Macintosh Finder and the AmigaDos Workbench are both relatively small
compared to X, Windows, the Presentation Manager, etc.. in part because they
can make certain assumptions about the hardware they will be expected to
run on and tailor themselves to work best on those platforms.  As hardware
options for those computers become more numerous, too, their windowing 
systems are growing larger..  The current version of Workbench and AmigaDos
aren't usable on my old 512K Amiga 1000 and things are only going to get
bigger..

Right.  Actually, I'm not sure if Windows can really use portability
as an excuse for its big-ness.  X, after all, runs on at least 10
different CPUs and 20 different operating systems.  It runs over
several kinds of networks, and supports displays from a 640x480 mono
screen to a huge 1664x1280 true-color display.  Windows, while it
supports lots of different video cards and printers, doesn't run on
any OS other than MS-DOS, and can't run over a network.  Hmm.

 (well, I was attempting to be generous..  perhaps it's all Microsoft bloat..)

I run Win3.1 and it takes up about 8 megs on my disk.  It LIKES to have 4-8
megs of memory, but will run in 2.  It costs $99 new, or $49 on an upgrade
plan.  It is slow and big because MS wrote it.

I had the pleasure of trying out a NeXT workstation last night.  A most
impressive system that makes all DOS and Mac interfaces look like the
proverbial "C>" prompt of DOS in comparison.  The Object Oriented angle is
what makes all the difference.  It provides a level of ease of use and
intuitiveness that Apple and MS can only drool over.  WinNT and Sys7.0 are
nowhere close to doing this type of thing, and to my knowledge the NeXT
platform also outdoes Sun and the other OSF/Motif interfaces in the
"buildability" catagory.  I watched my friend put together a word processor
from off-the-shelf peices.  Granted, I may not always want a word processor,
but the pieces can be included in ANY application, due to OOP techiniques.
All visual, too, not a lick of code.  I've also previewed Borland's
ObjectVision.  Very close to what NeXT is doing with their entire interface.

I *like* the Amiga and routed for it when it was introduced.  But it just
doesn't seem to have taken off like Commodore wished.

re #13: Microsoft sales dept. rep. told me that Windows 3.1 will
run on a [Novell] network.  It can be run with Win31 on the File
server w/config files on local drive or in a user directory.

Yes, you can do that.  Dominant is doing that on their in-house fileserver,
and it works fine, mostly.

I think the major problem with Windows is that it is running on a
hardware architecture not designed well for such things.

(re way back when - Workbench and Amigados 2.0 *WILL* work on an A500
with only 512K of RAM, hell, I've got 1 meg of RAM, and when I have loaded
in Workbench, I still have a good 800K left).  It does slow down, that's
for sure.  I just think there is something about the old A1000 (being 6 years
old) that it doesn't like)

  If you're referring to my comment long ago (about not being able to
run Workbench 2.0, I do indeed have a 1000..)

  I think that MS-DOS is more of an impediment to a decent windowing
system than the PC hardware architecture is, especially in the case
of 386/486 level machines..

GUI's GUI's everywhere!  Apple was one of the first, DOS machines was
one of the last.  At this point in time, the Mac GUI is the smoothest
of the two.  Both have a lot of growing to do.  Mac because it's been
around a long time and has to break new ground without forgetting its
roots and Windows because it's the new kid on the block and needs to
loose its roots in DOS.

The Mac may be "smooth", but it certainly isn't anywhere near new and
slick.  In fact, the GUI is starting to look a bit worn around the
edges when you compare it to newer interfaces like Motif and Open Look.

One of the things I always liked about X was the fact that you can
choose your own window manager (you know, the program that puts the
borders and title bars and resize handles and such on windows).  So
you aren't forced into using the GUI that the design team liked; there
are at least five different commonly-available window managers for
X.  (mwm, olwm, twm, gwm, and ctwm.  Plus the virtual root window versions
of these, such as tvwm.)  You can even switch window managers without
shutting down your X session, since the window manager is just a
regular X client.

the mac interface is now 8 years old.  It looks very 2-dimensional compared
to the Windows or Unix equivalents(?).  Even Windows looks dated compared
to the Unix varients.  The interfaces of the future are on Unix systems.  The
Mac and the PC are too weak computationally to support them and any serious
applications.  Macs and PCs will continue to service PERSONAL computing needs,
but the high-end apps with the newest GUI's will be on Unix machines.

My only complaint with Windows is that its by Microsoft and is subsequently
about 3 Megs overweight.  My complaint with the Mac is that they pretend to
have invented the GUI, when in truth, they stole it from Xerox PARC.  Yeah,
stole.  You don't think Apple pays any royalties or fees to Xerox do you?

I thought the Xerox interface was called SPARC or SPARK or something.
We studied it in my User Interface class, and yeah, it was a Mac
desktop five years before the Mac was designed.  Actually, I thought
it looked better than a Mac...  >8)

(The Xerox R&D center where it was developed was PARC, Palo Alto
Research Center.  I don't know what the interface itself was called.)

The "SPARC" is a SUN designed RISC chipset.
 
re 22: There was a lawsuit over the stealing of Xerox's GUI.  Xerox lost.

 re #22: >It looks very 2-dimensional...

 So?  Granted, there's plenty of stuff missing from the Mac interface
that has been incorporated by other GUIs, but what does it matter
whetherr the window gadgets look 2-D or 3-D?  As long as they're
reasonably aesthetic and work as you'd expect, the appearance of the
buttons, scrollbars, etc, is simply a matter of personal taste

(besides, if you really wanted to, I suspect you could use ResEdit
to change the Mac GUI's appearance to match that of Window or your favorite
X window manager..

  Yeah, you can do a lot with ResEdit on the Mac... Windows also uses
resources, but I have yet to find an editor anywhere NEAR the Mac's.

  Also, despite some limitations on power, the Mac OS is by FAR the easiest to
use.  There's usually a short way to do things that get very long and involved
under Windows, and everything integrates fairly smoothly.  It's not ideal, but
a hell of a lot better than Windows (not sure about OS/2 - I haven't had time
to 'play' with it, though it looks good, I'm not sure how well it's done, since
it still requires the silly DOS compatibility stuff...)

  The only X windows system I've seen was a DEC running Ultrix and dxwindows.
I can't say I was favorably impressed, but I've seen some other systems running
it that looked real good...  Does the NeXT support X windows?  If so, I take
back the thing about the DEC being the only machine I've seen X Windows on,
and I was quite impressed by the NeXT...

The NeXT uses its own window system (NeXTstep?); however, X is available
for it.

I read that there will soon be a NeXTstep486 for the Intel crowd.  Requires
at least 8M of RAM, 120M of HD space, a pointing device and a CD ROM since
that's how the software will be distributed.  I don't recall the system
requirement to the tee but the above figures are ballparkish.  (Maybe it
required at least 16M RAM?)

And I use to think that setting asside 5M for the system partition on my
Mac was liberal compared to other OS's!  Little did I know.

From what I've heard, you'll also have to get a special graphics card
(and monitor?) from NeXT.  They won't stoop to using normal VGA
hardware, or something like that...

Do they actually expect to sell any of these??

They are targeting much the same market that Sun is with Solaris for
Intel -- people who have a mostly Sun or NeXT installation, but have
a few PCs and want to run the same OS across the board.  I don't
think they'retargeting the same market that, say, SCO is for
SCO Unix.  They might overlap a bit for SCO Open Desktop, but by
restricting themselves to EISA-only and NeXT-graphics-only systems,
respectively, they've left SCO a lot of market.

re: #27:  "...get very long an involved in Windows..."

Just for the record, Windows programs that follow the spec sheet do not even
need a mouse to work, as all commands have key-shortcuts or at least menu
equivalents that can be invoked.  I've yet to see anything on a Mac that
can't be done on a Windows machine just as easily.

My wife has a Mac and has been trying for the last 2 weeks to get a modem
connection to GEnie through Versaterm.  My version of Procomm on the PC
handles it with ease, but her mac program has so many menus, and interface
stuff in the way of the communications underneath, neither one of us could
get a connection, and we ended up going over to the PC and running procomm.
The Mac is not always an easy solution or a solution that even works.

  I've never had any problems connecting with Versaterm..  What's 
the problem?

I've never seen a GUI-based terminal program that I liked.  (Well,
xterm, but that doesn't count.)

Me neither, but there's a new version of Procomm for Windows that I 
wouldn't mind getting a gander at.

If you like Procomm Plus, I think you might be disappointed.  I was.  They
didn't do much except translate existing Procomm into Windows and add lots
of cutesy, but harder-to-use GUI tools.  You still have to use a scroll back
mode (which I detest in a Windows app), and you can only choose 1 protocol
per phone number and if you want to switch protocols mid-session, you ahve
to go into the session settings and change them instead of simply picking
a new protocol.  The host mode is now implemented as a macro and I think
its actually slower in transferring things in the background.  Not confirmed
on that, but I've gotten some pretty strange results, despite what the
numbers say.  To the order of twice as long--definitely noticeable.  I think
they've actually made Procomm HARDER to use going to Windows.  I switched
back to Procomm Plus 2.0 and it works just fine -- in Windows, too.  Try
before you buy, if possible.

That's enough bad new for me, Jeff.  I think you just saved us
about $69.  

Glad to be of service.  Try it out, though.  I know people who think its the
greatest thing since sliced bread.  *I* didn't like it.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss