On 12/7/19 7:43 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"Ken Springer" wrote

| I'll admit, it was a single thing I saw with the iMac that sold me. The
| quality of the display. The image was astounding, far better than
| anything I'd seen with a Windows system.

Yes. The attention to detail is a delight. I'm not
wild about hiring a 12-year-old girl to design cutesy,
Looney Tunes icons, but aside from that it's almost
astonishingly tasteful.

Imo, the quality of the icon design has gone downhill over the last few
years. Not just Apple, but every where. They are no longer visually
intuitive.

A few years ago I tried Suse and noticed that was
also much better looking on the same hardware as
Windows. I don't know why Windows graphics are not
better. But it does seem that with Mac you get better
display and better design. Maybe MS make a point of
making it look generic. Like a pickup truck or sedan.
The design says, "get something done".

Since the hardware was the same, isn't that an indication the answer is
in the quality of the driver's code?

The current iMac, and device screens are the retina design. I don't
know what that means at the techno level, other than it's proprietary
tech at some level.

| I wonder what percentage of business actually create their own custom
| applications?
|

A lot. I have no figures. And I have virtually no direct
experience
with corporate business. I've never had an office job. But
I know that when MS decided to pull the plug on VB6 it was
estimated that there were 1 million VB programmers. It was
part of a big trend: RAD. Rapid Application Development.
Delphi was another popular tool. And even VC++ was a much
easier version of C++, with RAD elements like easy GUI
design.

I don't have any contact with corporate business, either.

A lot of that was database software. Microsoft bent over
backward to make it possible for people to write highly
functional software by pasting together components. They've
always provided lots of tools for all levels of expertise.

Some businesses will have departments create a database or two in Access
for a department's use. I know of one, anyway. Then they fired the
person who created it. She left no instructions about it either. Hope
they never need to modify it. LOL

The next big change was with .Net, where they tried to move
everyone by force to web apps. That took almost 20 more
years to happen, but Microsoft kept at it. Dotnet was still
very successful serverside and in companies. Even though it
was poorly suited to Desktop, MS kept pushing it. Today I
expect web scripting is probably the hottest skill, but for a
long time, programming jobs typically required dotnet or Java.
Common commercial software is not written in those languages.
It's all about custom business software and backend, server-side
functionality. (Also custom.)

Yet even today, 20 years after VB6 was "deprecated", VB6
and VC6 are still the most widely supported tools on Windows.
The runtimes are still shipped because businesses are still
running a lot of older custom software. I can write software
in VB6 that will run without any extra support files, and without
needing installation, on virtually any Windows machine still
running.

(I used to know a project manager who ran custom software
development for various companies. Her job was to keep
the programmers on track. Some in the US and a night shift
in India. They mostly used dotnet. I asked her why dotnet was
more succcessful than Java, its competitor. [Both are
simplified, high-level, object-oriented, wrapper systems that run
with JIT compiling on top of a giant runtime that translates
to API. Both focus on flexibility and RAD over efficiency.]
She said it was because the tools are so much better.)

| I wish I would win the lottery. Then I could hire maids and handymen,
| so I would have the time to learn more about Linux. LOL
|

I explored it a fair amount but ended up feeling that
it was a big time sucker. Everything changes. Everything
requires tweaking. Nothing is simple because the people
who use it like to feel like coding commandos. So everyone
brags about using a "shell", by which they mean a console
window where they run DOS-esque commands. The problem
I always ran into was that once I got settled and comfortable
there just wasn't anything to do. No software to speak of.
There are thousands of half-finished things created by
geeks and teenagers trying to impress their friends. But not
much in terms of stable, supported, finished productivity
software. Even the OS itself gets very limited support.
It's beta mania. I've always thought of it as the race
car owned by a greasemonkey -- always on the front lawn
with Bondo and primer on it; never actually being driven.

Or, an older British car? LOL

| Didn't desktop publishing get it's start with Macs?
|

Probably. And graphics. But that was way back when Apple
was ahead of Windows with graphics. They ended up having
a reputation for being superior for a long time. Long after
Windows caught up. So graphic artists still tend to use Macs.
After all, it's the computer for talented, creative people who
"think different". But Apple never made any effort to
accomodate business. Jobs wanted control. Businesses
want their own control. Macs never became popular until
there was a market for casual entertainment use of
computers.

There's a story about the display. I think it was in Wired
that I read it. Bill Gates was visiting Apple. He was in
a room with Jobs and a number of other people. Jobs
had a tantrum, blaming Gates for stealing Apple's ideas
in terms of GUI. Gates calmly responded that he saw it
differently: He and Jobs had a rich neighbor with a big
TV set, named Xerox. They both plotted to break in and
steal the TV. Jobs just happened to break in before
Gates got there. According to the article, the other
people in the room knew that Gates was right.

I've heard a similar story, but Jobs sued MS over stealing his UI
design. But someone pointed out that Xerox had the design before Jobs.

| These days, I couldn't live without spellcheck.

The woman I live with loves it, but mostly for entertainment.
"Look! It turned Kantef into fatten! Ha ha!" I find it irritating.
Similarly with search suggestions and auto-complete
suggestions. I don't want the software instigating actions
I didn't request. It's distracting.


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"