Saving Mail and Other Program Data

[Al Poulin]

on 23 Apr 2004 11:42:58 -0400, Alex <alist at sprint.ca> wrote:
> 
> On Thursday, Apr 22, 2004, at 21:41 Canada/Eastern, Al Poulin wrote:
> 
>> [...] (Rant on -- I keep wondering why must there be a Terminal
>> Application?
>> Command Language?  It reminds me of MS-DOS which I avoided like the
>> plague.
>> Just rhetorical, no need to answer. Rant off.)
> 
> Rhetorical, my foot. Of course you know that's the one question you'll
> get most answers for. I'll try to give you a slightly different one.
> 
> Think of Mac OS X as a cruise ship. Deep in the bowels there's the

SNIP

Thanks, Alex.  I can draw a diagram of the architecture from your write-up.
I suspect that if someone tried to show up a similar architecture of the
latest MS Windows, or NT, you'd find a bit of MS-DOS down deep at the core.

Anyway, you go way beyond the complaining mode that I was in.  I really
would like a (one) GUI in front of Terminal.

In going to a UNIX base, Apple got away from the Macintosh concept of
insulating the user from the guts with an excellent GUI.  Apple did not put
a GUI on Terminal, so folks are creating hundreds of tools, utilities,
plug-ins, whatever to short circuit the command language.  That's quite a
good help for a lot of users.  But when Apple goes to the next update of
Panther, or replaces Panther with the next upgrade of X, then some of those
tools are left in limbo.  Of course, Apple will buy or steal a few of these
things and integrate them into the user interface.  That's progress, I
guess.  Even so, much better than what the dark side persists in doing.

-- 
Al Poulin
Anger, hate, and revenge are for the devil, forgiveness is for God,
proactive self-defense is for the rest of us.