[rescue] Mac Appliance

[joshua d boyd]

On Thu, Aug 02, 2001 at 02:09:33PM -0500, Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 02, 2001 at 03:06:59PM -0400, joshua d boyd wrote:
> > Perhaps some people.  Myself, I could switch to 9x and linux fast
> > enough.  I don't really ever want to go back to non 32bit computing (I
> > mean, unless it is a simple embeded chip).
> 
> What do you *do*, other than maybe Photoshop or web browsing, that
> requires anything more than a text interface 95% of the time?

Desktop publishing, math (I suppose that text works, but would you rather
see 5x^2/2x+2 or
  2
5x
---
2x+2

?

3d modelling, 3d animation (don't do much, working on some underlieing
subsystems first, like scene graphs and non-linear intropolation), are
also tasks performed.  Image editing code (working extremely slowly on a
morphing program for morphin video, currently on hold while I complete
that mentioned spline intropoloation package).

Lets see, I also play occasionally with what might be called presentation
theory or something.  Don't know what the term is, but where you try new
things for displaying info, like what TheBrain does, as well as minor
other things in that vein.

More to the point, while I'm the only one who uses my stuff, that isn't
the long term intention (it's just all extremely incomplete, buggy, flaky,
etc, because I keep hopping around so much, then decided to try the whole
having a life thing), I want to write softwar that other people could use
better.  My goal in going my own animation software is not just to save
money by not buying it, but to try out new ideas for procedural animation
so that people with less skill can do decent work, and people with great
skill can get the basics out of the way faster to focus on the important
details.

Likewise, while I like current PDAs, I find them to be a bit too
rigid.  Somethings, I have a hard time figuring out where to enter them,
like do they go in the calender, the todo list, the memo pad?  And I
wonder why do we have to make distinctions like that so much?  Why can't
it be a bit more free form.  Well, if I get anywhere, I might actually
code something for a PDA, for now I stick to desktop software that sorts
things out and downloads to PDA (with some redundancy because something
should maybe be noted in the calendar, but also needs a longer note, for
like driving directions).

I agree that most of what people currently do don't really benifit much
from a gui (well, maybe a little).  However, I think that computers and
their software are no where near as advanced as they should be.  Why are
people using computers to file and organize things just like they did
before?  Why not find a new way to file things?  A new way to direct
workflow?


-- 
Joshua D. Boyd