::scr Drooling GUI

[Simon Wistow]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 11:36:21AM +0000, Clifton Evans said:
> Or at least too specific for most people. Or all people. Artists would
> prefer a studio metaphor. Gamers an arcade metaphor. Chefs a kitchen
> metaphor. And so on.

Ironically, we used to have that. Back in the good ol' days applications
took over the whole computer - on my ST if I wanted to draw I booted
using the Dega Elite disk and my entire computer became a drawing box,
music I stuck in Cubase and it was a sequencer, games, I stuck in Head
over Heels etc etc.

However that was possible because the apps were small and fast to load
and people needed all the valuable memory that the OS was taking up.

I don't think that's possible anymore because nobody wants to reboot
everytime they want to switch tasks (and let's face it, how many times
to you stay in Photoshop all day, even just to read your email).

The alternative would be niche OSs - a designer's OS, a programmers'
OS, a Secretary's OS - but that would never work as it's just too
expensive. Even BeOS, which was touted as a Media OS failed.

The second altenative would be to have different machines for everything
but then you'd have to lug around 25 pounds of hardware everytime you
went off site, or took work home.

Simon says, pessimistically.

-- 
: fast, cheap and out of control