Whats next–from GUI to CIM?
Quarterdeck’s (Marina del Rey, CA) Desqview was a wonderful environment for swapping DOS applications. Lightning-fast compared to the early versions of Windows, it was also a delight to use, until you wanted the applications to really work with each other, or work like each other. There’s much to be said for the ease of use of graphical user interfaces, but the core benefit of the Mac, Windows, Motif and other GUIs is providing a “usability infrastructure.” Common activities that were treated differently in character-based applications (even figuring out how to exit some programs was a problem) become second nature for users of Windows or Mac applications. The GUIs allow users to focus more on what they want to do than on the operation of tools. The common features of using computer applications as tools for specific tasks were identified, distilled and placed at a different level–at the level of an overall environment, not at the level of applications. The problem was solved at the m
