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Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)

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Re: Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)

#61

Post by WillAdams »

adrian_b wrote: post #59
taneq wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is your ‘small tablet’ approach different to a trackpad? Do you use the tablet screen somehow? Sounds interesting!

It has no resemblance whatsoever with a trackpad. I use Wacom Intuos S graphic tablets, on Linux. These are cheap tablets without screens, with a USB or Bluetooth interface. These tablets have the same size as a traditional mouse pad, so they do not take more size on the desk than a mouse. The stylus is extremely light, so I can keep it between my fingers while touch typing with all fingers on the keyboard. Thus I ca…

Have you tried radial menus?

I found them quite nice in the early days when the popularity of styluses resulted in more experimentation.

Re: Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)

#62

Post by pjmlp »

WillAdams wrote: post #60
pjmlp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or fully embracing the Pascal programming model. I think it was in one of the On the Metal interviews where one of the guests mentions MPW was a submarine project, from UNIX background engineers, to eventually replace Pascal with C++.

Yes, but that could be problematic given the memory constraints of that time: https://www.folklore.org/Puzzle.html To this day, one of my favourite word processors is WriteNow, which was ~100,000 lines of assembly.

Why is writing inline Assembly considered an advantage of C, a language extension even not part of ISO, and always used to point out issues when other languages make use of it?

Naturally there had to be a balance, until mid-90s what we consider AAA games, were mostly Assembly.

Re: Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)

#63

Post by WillAdams »

pjmlp wrote: post #62
WillAdams wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that could be problematic given the memory constraints of that time: https://www.folklore.org/Puzzle.html To this day, one of my favourite word processors is WriteNow, which was ~100,000 lines of assembly.

Why is writing inline Assembly considered an advantage of C, a language extension even not part of ISO, and always used to point out issues when other languages make use of it? Naturally there had to be a balance, until mid-90s what we consider AAA games, were mostly Assembly.

I didn't mention C.

The observation was that linking in the Pascal library was problematic when one was storing everything on a single 400KB Micro Floppy.

Re: Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)

#64

Post by pjmlp »

WillAdams wrote: post #63
pjmlp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is writing inline Assembly considered an advantage of C, a language extension even not part of ISO, and always used to point out issues when other languages make use of it? Naturally there had to be a balance, until mid-90s what we consider AAA games, were mostly Assembly.

I didn't mention C. The observation was that linking in the Pascal library was problematic when one was storing everything on a single 400KB Micro Floppy.

It was implied from my previous post, the story regarding size and the reference to Assembly.

Sorry if misunderstood.

Re: Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)

#65

Post by [deleted] »

II2II wrote: post #29
simondotau wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History is written by the victors. In this case it’s completely fine, as Raskin’s “corrections” don’t really amount to much, and certainly would have led to a path where Macintosh was just another abandoned experiment like the Apple III. Perhaps in this alternate universe, a substantially reworked “Lisa II” might have been Apple’s long-lived computing platform.

The corrections may not amount to much, but there is no reason to believe that his version would be a failed experiment like the Apple III or the Lisa would have taken it's place. Part of the magic of the Macintosh was the simplicity of the hardware. In that respect, it was much closer to the Apple II than the Apple III or Lisa. Consumers may not think much about what's inside the case, but it matters when it comes t…

[deleted]

Re: Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)

#66

Post by rjrjrjrj »

simondotau wrote: post #50
asveikau wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> certainly would have led to a path where Macintosh was just another abandoned experiment like the Apple III. This seems really extreme. You're saying a trackpad would have made the whole thing a failure?

I'm saying that being designed around the singular task of word processing would have made it a platform/ecosystem failure, even if was a nominally successful one-off product. The Macintosh (specifically the original 128k version) was a dismal market failure too. What succeeded (relatively speaking) was the platform/ecosystem.

Even the 128k was reasonably successful commercially. Hundreds of thousands of units sold, which was quite good for the time. Inflation-adjusted, it cost quite a bit more than the Vision Pro. They sold the same model with very minor revisions (512, then 512e) into mid-1987.

The 1986 Macintosh Plus was a huge market success and it is only modestly different from the original. Even the SE and Classic didn't change things much.

Re: Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)

#67

Post by adrian_b »

WillAdams wrote: post #61
adrian_b wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has no resemblance whatsoever with a trackpad. I use Wacom Intuos S graphic tablets, on Linux. These are cheap tablets without screens, with a USB or Bluetooth interface. These tablets have the same size as a traditional mouse pad, so they do not take more size on the desk than a mouse. The stylus is extremely light, so I can keep it between my fingers while touch typing with all fingers on the keyboard. Thus I ca…

Have you tried radial menus? I found them quite nice in the early days when the popularity of styluses resulted in more experimentation.

I do not think that any of the programs that I use daily supports radial menus, but the shape of the menus has really no importance, because with the tablet in "Relative" mode and with reasonable values set for the acceleration and sensitivity of the cursor I can reach instantaneously any point on the display, with a very small hand movement, no more than one inch for going from one corner to the diagonally opposite corner of my monitor.

I think that radial menus could have been useful when used with graphic tablets used in their default "Absolute" mode, where the position of the stylus on the tablet corresponds directly to the position of the cursor on the screen, which makes more awkward the cursor movements in locations that are far away from the center of the screen.

No such problems exist when the tablet is in "Relative" mode, when the stylus behaves like a mouse, except that it has neither inertia nor friction and your hand rests in its natural orientation.

Using a graphic tablet in "Absolute" mode is equivalent with using a stylus on a touchscreen, e.g. on a smartphone or tablet, so in those cases using radial menus might also be convenient, unlike in my case, where the shape and position of menus do not matter.

Re: Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)

#68

Post by WillAdams »

adrian_b wrote: post #67
WillAdams wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried radial menus? I found them quite nice in the early days when the popularity of styluses resulted in more experimentation.

I do not think that any of the programs that I use daily supports radial menus, but the shape of the menus has really no importance, because with the tablet in "Relative" mode and with reasonable values set for the acceleration and sensitivity of the cursor I can reach instantaneously any point on the display, with a very small hand movement, no more than one inch for going from one corner to the diagonally opposite…

Like the pop-up main menu in NeXTstep, I found that radial menus afforded a certain amount of "muscle memory" which made usage even more efficient.

Re: Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)

#69

Post by getpost »

II2II wrote: post #29
simondotau wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History is written by the victors. In this case it’s completely fine, as Raskin’s “corrections” don’t really amount to much, and certainly would have led to a path where Macintosh was just another abandoned experiment like the Apple III. Perhaps in this alternate universe, a substantially reworked “Lisa II” might have been Apple’s long-lived computing platform.

The corrections may not amount to much, but there is no reason to believe that his version would be a failed experiment like the Apple III or the Lisa would have taken it's place. Part of the magic of the Macintosh was the simplicity of the hardware. In that respect, it was much closer to the Apple II than the Apple III or Lisa. Consumers may not think much about what's inside the case, but it matters when it comes t…

> While the original Macintosh was by no means cheap, it was about half the cost of the Apple III

Made me look it up! I was developing Apple ][/III/Lisa/Mac software at the time. I used the Apple III to write Apple Pascal for the Apple ][, and the Lisa to develop for the Mac. I'd completely forgotten the initial pricing of the Apple III, which was stratospheric. The $7,800 config was 256K I think (~$31K in today's dollars).

"It sold initially for between $4,340 and $7,800, depending on the configuration. The original Apple III had many problems, and was replaced by a revised model in mid 1981, which featured 256K RAM, updated system software, and a lower price ($3495). A 5 MB external hard disk was also made available. The Apple /// sold very poorly and was replaced by the Apple ///+ ($2995) in Late 1983. The Apple ///+ was discontinued in 1985."

https://apple-history.com/aiii

Re: Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)

#70

Post by musicale »

musicale wrote: post #37
II2II wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the Mac folks had no interest in converging the platform in favour of the Lisa is somewhat unfair. While it sounds like some code was shared between the two platforms, the Lisa's operating system was quite different. It would have been difficult to make Lisa software operate under the Macintosh System Software. To my knowledge, there was virtually no software for the Lisa anyhow. Breaking software compatibil…

Apple doesn't seem to have leveraged or combined work on (Lisa, Lisa Smalltalk, Lisa Xenix, Mac OS, A/UX, ...) as successfully as they might have. As you note, protected memory was deferred to multiple failed Mac OS successor projects (Pink/Taligent, Copland/NuKernel, etc.) Ultimately Apple gave up, acquired Steve Jobs and NeXT, and eventually successfully migrated the Mac platform to an OS with memory protection. Si…

In addition to Xenix, there was apparently also a System V port for the Lisa.
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