Here's something to consider.

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Tue Sep 15 15:29:55 1998

Ward Griffiths wrote:
> And the TRS-80 would have driven Apple into receivership by 1980 if it
> hadn't been for VisiCalc -- that one product saved the whole company,
> allowing it to survive long enough to produce the Lisa and the Mac,

Having been involved with both TRS-80s and Apple ][s from 1976 to 1984,
I seriously doubt that the TRS-80 posed a serious threat to the Apple ][,
or vice versa. Aside from Visicalc, there were still many compelling
advantages of each type of system.

> causing the plague of GUIs that haunts us more every day. (Oh, the
> GUIs would _exist_, but there wouldn't have been so much _pressure_).

GUIs have become dominant because they are what people want.

Before Windows became popular, many people sneered about icons, and WIMP
interfaces. Most of those same people are running GUIs now. And there's no
evidence that the GUIs were forced on them. The simple fact is that GUIs make
doing some kinds of tasks much easier.

Unfortunately many designers have seized upon that and tried to eliminate
the command-line interface entirely, not recognizing that there is another
class of tasks that are exceedingly difficult to do with GUIs.

Eric
Received on Tue Sep 15 1998 - 15:29:55 BST