Killer Application (was: Squeak Foundation)

Bijan Parsia bparsia at email.unc.edu
Mon Jun 10 17:27:37 UTC 2002


On Sun, 9 Jun 2002, Ricardo Bánffy wrote:

> Gary Fisher wrote:
> 
> >Not to, er, beat a dead horse <g> but Squeak windows act *EXACTLY* like
> >native (Squeak) windows -- if I do something in Squeak on my Windows machine
> >I can know in advance how it will look on your Mac or the next guy's Linux
> >box or someone else's browser plugin.  
> >
> This is _generaly_  a good idea, but it may intimidate non-Squeak users 
> (or less computer-savvy people).

Well, a certain range of less computer-savvy people. If they're *totally*
non-computer-savvy, i.e., they don't know nothin', then they should be as
well off with Squeak's UI :)

> I know how to sit down in front of 
> almost any window manager/GUI combination and get roductive in a short 
> time, because I have been exposed to Windows, Mac and a bunch of other 
> window managers and GUIs in the Unix world. This is not the same with my 
> wife. She learned how to use Windows 9x and doesn't like the Macintosh I 
> set up for her use at home (which has a far better screen, keyboard and 
> mouse than her notebook). Maybe she doesn't like the way buttons are 
> arranged, the way windows resize, the screen font... I can't point 
> what's wrong, but fact is, she doesn't feel "at home" with MacOS and 
> certainly wouldn't feel at home with any Unix window manager or under 
> Squeak.

So she has a certain expertise. Indeed, it requires a fair bit of
expertise (relatively speaking) to get this good.

However, *liking* alternative interfaces isn't the same as being good at
it. I can handle loads of different GUI flavors, but dislike most of them
:)

[snip]
> As for the not happy-happy post, thank you. Change is neccessary for growth.

Er...since growth is a sort of change, I guess so :)

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.




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