95On 08/08/2012 03:59 PM, James Knott wrote:
Jay Lozier wrote:
When MS introduced Win95 they were well positioned to implement a
good GUI for MSOffice, they had already do it once on the Mac.
Check out Novell vs Microsoft for info on how Microsoft used hidden
API on Windows to ensure their apps worked better than the
competition. That case is in relation to Word Perfect, but Borland
also found the same thing re hidden APIs.
From using Wordperfect, Word, and others on a Mac years ago,
Wordperfect was a miserable, rabid dog. Yes, MS played dirty but there
was a good bit of incompetence with Wordperfect (and others) well before
the Win95 era. I am talking late 80's on a Mac. Many vendors had no
trouble writing good software for the Mac back then. Wordperfect was
harshly criticized for their sloppy Mac port. I was a Mac user back
then. If they could not implement the Mac GUI why would you expect them
to implement any other GUI correctly? I did not back then. The hidden
API's only made things worse and their incompetence more glaring.
I did try Wordperfect on a Mac in the late 80's because it had some
features at that time no one else had available but found it almost
impossible to use. My impression then was they did not try to understand
how any GUI worked and did not want to understand. So the fact they
failed was not a surprise to me.
I know circa 85 early versions of Word and Excel available on the Mac
and worked very well. At the time MS paid attention to the Mac API's and
GUI concepts. When Win95 came out MS had about 10 years of successful
experience with GUI's. Personally, I think the hidden API's issue was
partly true and partly an excuse for being caught unready. GUI's had
been successfully commercialized by Apple and Amiga in the 80's. Those
that made good software for GUI's had an advantage when Win95 came out
even with MS playing dirty.
--
Jay Lozier
jsloz...@gmail.com
--
For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted