[geeks] Subject: Re: Microsoft Surface...

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sun, 3 Jun 2007, Phil Stracchino wrote:

> I still say Apple's "one button mouse, single global menu-bar" metaphor
> is complete and absolute crap.  I don't give a damn what their
> "usability experts" say.

I like it a lot better for how I work.  I rarely maximize any windows,
so in XP I'd have menubars scattered all over the screen.  It really is
much faster for me just to toss the mouse at the top of the screen than
to try to hit a 16px band some arbitrary distance above where the mouse
pointer is presently.

> Their usability experts apparently don't use computers the same way I
> do.  One size does not fit all.

Exactly.

> There are cases which are rather damning.  Like, for instance, MS
> Frontpage producing invalid HTML, which MSIE "just happened" to render
> in the way that Frontpage intended (though not in a manner compliant
> with the HTML spec).

Office still pulls that crap.  Nevermind how atrocious the HTML itself
is, completely full of MS-specific CSS.

> And then there's the Microsoft products which would check to see if
> you were running DR-DOS, and if so, refuse to start because DR-DOS was
> "incompatible" ...  yet if you hacked the MS executable to bypass the
> OS check, it would run *perfectly*.

Ooh, I remember running Windows 3.1 on DR-DOS.  You'd get a nice scary
warning message after Program Manager loaded.  Visual Basic for DOS,
QBX, and some versions of MASM did this, too.

In fact, many versions of QBX fail that check if you run them under
Windows NT, as well, which just makes me giggle.

IIRC, they were hauled into court over this particular scare-tactic and
lost.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke ) "If we keep our pride, though paradise is lost, we
Elgin, TX        (   will pay the price, but we cannot count the cost."
USA               )                             --Neil Peart, "Bravado"