On Tuesday, January 8, 2002, at 10:45 , Jon Glass wrote:
> I hate to burst bubbles, but the Newton OS, while on the surface a
> wonderful
> OS, by the time of its demise, was a bunch of patches and hacks, and
> was a
> disaster under the surface. In other words, it didn't have "legs" to
> last
> much longer.
That may very well be so but it doesn't mean that it didn't have
conceptual novelties which have still not made it in todays operating
systems. The document centric approach and how everything is integrated
into the OS, the ability to expand this in a way that expansion appear
seemlessly integrated instead of bolted on, all that has yet to surface
in other OSes.
It may even be that the implementation of these concepts wasn't very
good. I take your word for it. However, when new things get built it is
as much about learning how to do it in the best possible way as it is
about having these new things available. If somebody went about making
an effort, they would quite possibly find a better way to implement
those concepts.
However, the trouble seems to be that since the Newton nobody has even
been trying to take on at least some of those concepts and implement
them. Nobody seems to even have accepted them as being worth while for
adoption.
> Now, now, you begin to sound like a conspiracy theorist. ;-) People use
> what
> they want to use. They see what they want to see, and believe what they
> want
> to believe for the most part. To pretend that they are too stupid to
> know
> better is a bit presumptuous.
Nothing to do with being stupid. It's about the convenience of going the
path of least resistance, taking whatever is the gospel of the day for
granted because there seems to be little incentive to question and
verify it.
> The truth is that maybe they don't have the
> same priorities you do.
For as long as it doesn't have an impact on anything else I couldn't
care less what people's priorities are.
However, if people in the Middle East are teaching their kids that it is
their duty to kill Westerners and blow up buildings in places I visit,
then it has an impact on my life and anybody else's and then I do care.
Likewise if the collective of the world's IT so called professionals
manages to teach their users and thereby most of us who would normally
not be impacted by what one profession does that being sloppy is good
and nothing matters anymore because things are just not meant to be done
properly, then this too has a dramatic impact on my life and anybody
else's and then I do care about it.
I don't enjoy to live in an environment where nobody cares about what
they are doing and as a result no matter where you go everything is
mediocre. Products and services are mediocre all over the place. I am
sorry to offend you but I am making this my business and if I have to
insult people to realise that they deliver a mediocre service or
product, then so be it.
> To insult them or their intelligence is a bit much
> for me. :-)
Again, it is not about intelligence but about laziness.
> There may be those who, through ignorance of computers in
> general, put up with more than they need to, but I have also found that
> those same people are not willing to change or choose "better" by my
> standards. That is their choice.
That is very true, but unfortunately it isn't as simple as to say it is
their choice because being lazy or sloppy and careless (in the sense of
don;t care mentality) has an impact on others and if a threshold has
been reached where a given number of people make the choice of don't
care - doesn't matter then the outcome is mediocre products and services
everywhere not just in certain computer products.
It's a social virus that will sooner or later need to be eradicated.
rgds
bk
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