Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!daemon
From: tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen)
Subject: Re: GeoWorks Ensemble: any comments?
Message-ID: <1991Mar17.194447.2756@watserv1.waterloo.edu>
Sender: daemon@watserv1.waterloo.edu
Organization: University of Waterloo, WATMIMS Research Group
References: <13085@helios.TAMU.EDU> <399@intuit.intuit.COM>
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1991 19:44:47 GMT
Lines: 32

Eric Shenk <eshenk@intuit.intuit.COM> writes:
> I have only seen demos and played around with it, so I can't give you
> a user's viewpoint.  However, from what I've seen and read, I can only
> say that the guys at GeoWorks are absolutely brilliant!  [...]

> PS, If these guys go under and Microsoft succeeds, it will definitely prove
> that there is no justice in the world and that good money matters a heck of
> a lot more than good product.

Sure, GeoWorks is slick and fast and beautiful, but where was it in 1985
when Windows first came on the market?  Weren't these guys brilliant back
then yet?  Microsoft has slowly built up development tools, applications 
and momentum for Windows, so that 6 years later we have a fairly comprehen-
sive environment with lots of tools and apps.

Really, if you take into account the changes in software technology and so
on, Geoworks isn't really much more advanced (relatively speaking) than
Windows 1.0 was in its day.  There is no spreadsheet, and almost no other
apps, and not even an SDK (Windows had one back then even).  And Geoworks
does not take advantage of the fact that almost all new machines have over
a megabyte of memory installed.  These guys have been able to draw on the
experience of Windows, Mac, GEM, Motif, X, Amiga, and all others --- the
waters are much better charted now than when Microsoft first shipped Win1.
And given that MS-DOS is so brain-damaged, and it'd be so easy to write a
better single-tasking OS for the PC, why didn't anyone else do it back in
'80 or so?  Could it be that it's always easier to do something well once
it's already been done by someone else?

Geoworks is well done, but a Windows 3.0 it ain't.

[ \tom haapanen --- university of waterloo --- tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu ]
[ "i don't even know what street canada is on"               -- al capone ]
