Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!uwmcsd1!nic.MR.NET!umn-cs!crayview!imp From: imp@crayview.msi.umn.edu (Chuck Lukaszewski) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Microsoft cuts corners, actually Summary: Merlyn is not alone in his sentiments... Message-ID: <6766@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> Date: 19 Aug 88 00:22:18 GMT References: <7988@cup.portal.com> <5832@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <1289@thumper.bellcore.com> Sender: news@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu Lines: 50 In article <1289@thumper.bellcore.com>, pff@thumper.bellcore.com (Peter Ferris) writes: > Merlyn, > It's my understanding that Excel has been fixed so it no longer requires "the first MB of RAM". I think you're really throwing the baby out with the bathwater > on this one. To say Microsoft is writes "crappy" software is a pretty hard > statement. On what do you base such a statement? I want to see something I'm sure that not everyone has had bad experiences with Microsoft. Well, I would like to add my two cents worth. The following is my *opinion* based on working with Microsoft products: First, Microsoft has acquired a deserved reputation in the last two years that they rush products to the market. Corallary: the users get to debug the pro- duct. This was certainly true with two major software releases: Word 3.0 and Microsoft Mail. I personally have crashed both software releases in SEVERAL different ways. Both products are sound in concept--but were rushed to market. In the case of Word 3.0, Microsoft had apparently cashed everyone's checks and was legally in the position of having to ship. In fairness, most of those bugs have been corrected, but we're talking major bugs here, things that should never have been in a release. Also in fairness to Microsoft, this reputation is recent and can be fixed, I think. I was terribly disappointed by being able to crash Microsoft Mail so easily. Second, and this is a question of programming philosophy, Microsoft has standardized on an in-house version of the C language, and they have trans- lators so that they don't have to rewrite lots of code for multi-machine packages. This is nice from an administrative standpoint (i.e. cost) but you pay the price in performance. For example, and this is a *technical* problem I have with Microsoft, they do many things on the Mac in non-inside-mac-fashion. Specifically, they do strange things in checking their environment (i.e. testing addresses greater than $400000 and $800000 for wraparound). Try looking in Excel 1.5 for this. This kind of hardware dependence is not a good idea. BTW, I dislike Practical Computer Applications programs for the same reason -- the games are GREAT, but they have largely thrown out the toolbox altogether. When the Mac II came out, none of their stuff ran. I guess I'll leave it at that for now. I have other problems with Micro- soft, but I'll save them for rebuttals. ---===---===---===---===--/* Chuck Lukaszewski */--===---===---===---===--- ARPAnet/NSFnet/MRnet: AppleLink: SnailMail: Ma Bell: imp@crayview.msi.umn.edu UG0138 Minneapolis MN 55418 612/789-0931 ---===---===---===---===--/* Chuck Lukaszewski */--===---===---===---===--- ARPAnet/NSFnet/MRnet: AppleLink: SnailMail: Ma Bell: imp@crayview.msi.umn.edu UG0138 Minneapolis MN 55418 612/789-0931