Atari 8-Bit - Which GUI?

[atari8warez]

Jeebus, again. Vote with your wallets people, vote with your wallets...

 

Don't worry people who know who really delivers actually do.....

[jaybird3rd]

Is atari8warez talking nonsense over here, too? This is the same guy who believed (after the idea had already been thoroughly repudiated) that Windows 8 and touch on the desktop were the "Way of the Future", that touchscreens were such a boon to productivity that everyone should be forced to get rid of their keyboards and mice and completely redesign their desks for giant touchscreen monitors, and that those who refuse are simply "old" and "set in their ways" and "afraid of change" and generally deserve to be sent straight to the glue factory. I used to wonder why he never returned to that thread to "put his money where his mouth is" and show us what a workable touch-based desktop workstation would look like, as several of us challenged him to do, but now I know it's because he's been trolling over here. So, the next time he offers his opinion about the merits of GUIs or accuses others of failing to follow through, just remember who you're talking to.

[atari8warez]

Is atari8warez talking nonsense over here, too? This is the same guy who believed (after the idea had already been thoroughly repudiated) that Windows 8 and touch on the desktop were the "Way of the Future", that touchscreens were such a boon to productivity that everyone should be forced to get rid of their keyboards and mice and completely redesign their desks for giant touchscreen monitors, and that those who refuse are simply "old" and "set in their ways" and "afraid of change" and generally deserve to be sent straight to the glue factory. I used to wonder why he never returned to that thread to "put his money where his mouth is" and show us what a workable touch-based desktop workstation would look like, as several of us challenged him to do, but now I know it's because he's been trolling over here. So, the next time he offers his opinion about the merits of GUIs or accuses others of failing to follow through, just remember who you're talking to.

 

Talk is cheap bud, facts speak for themselves, does Microsoft still rules: YES, is touch screen going away anytime soon: NO, are tablet sales increasing by the day and kicking the desktops' and laptops' ass: YES, do innovative people find new ways of using touch technology everyday: YEAHHH, do people adapt to touch screen a lot more than you would like to see: Hell YES. So what are you talking about????

 

I stopped posting in the Win8 hater's thread because I knew I would have been talking to the air.

 

P.S: if you're so vehemently against touch screen, your best chance in the future will be this, so start getting used to it already:

 

 

 

In the meantime some food for thought

 

Edited November 26, 2014 by atari8warez

[Rex Dart]

 

 

 

 

b7f25828.jpg

 

Cute toy. Hook it up to a monitor and you've got a poor, non-tactile keyboard I guess.

[jaybird3rd]

Talk is cheap bud, facts speak for themselves, does Microsoft still rules: YES

Well, maybe they does, and maybe they doesn't. It all depends on what market you're talking about. When it comes to phones, they're still barely a blip on the radar compared to Android and iOS.

 

Their reputation isn't in the dire straits that it was in about a year and a half ago, but they've had to radically change their strategy after being severely chastised for their arrogance in trying to force-feed the marketplace something that it wasn't—and isn't—ready to accept: a "one size fits all" computing solution that is totally inappropriate for the majority of real users who have real work to do.

 

is touch screen going away anytime soon: NO, are tablet sales increasing by the day and kicking the desktops' and laptops' ass: YES, do innovative people find new ways of using touch technology everyday: YEAHHH, do people adapt to touch screen a lot more than you would like to see: Hell YES. So what are you talking about????

Actually, there are signs that the tablet fad is starting to cool off and that desktops sales are picking up again. That's not to say that tablets are going away, but the market is readjusting as people learn that tablets can't do everything they want and that there's still a place for desktops, which is all to the good. I've always said that people should have choices and should be free to pick the right tools for the right job, whether it's a modern PC form factor or a GUI for our trusty old Atari machines.

 

I stopped posting in the Win8 hater's thread because I knew I would have been talking to the air.

 

P.S: if you're so vehemently against touch screen, your best chance in the future will be this, so start getting used to it already:

Again, it isn't touchscreens per se that I've been objecting to, but the overemphasis on tablet-style form factors. They're not the panacea that they've been claimed to be, by you and by others who allowed themselves to get caught up in a shallow computing fad.

 

As for the pretty keyboard in the picture: it's a three-year-old conceptual drawing of a keyboard that never actually became a real product as far as I can tell. An ironic example from somebody who's accusing flashjazzcat of dangling carrots in peoples' faces and failing to deliver a product. I can see a device like that being useful in certain very strictly delimited usage domains (kiosks and point-of-sale terminals, for instance), but like so many of the pie-in-the-sky technologies that you fall in love with and then want to force on everyone else ("Get used to it already!"), it isn't right for a majority of real people. For one thing, there's no tactile feedback from a touchscreen, which would make extended usage extremely uncomfortable.

 

I predict that plenty of people will still have real Atari keyboards on their desks—or, for PC users, Unicomp Model M keyboards—long after most of the touchscreens being used today have gone the way of Old Yeller.

[jaybird3rd]

I just noticed that you added a video. Simulated tactile feedback using computer-controlled farts ... goody. Maybe they can add scent packs and finally make Smell-O-Vision a reality; then they'd have two products that nobody wants, rolled into one!

 

I like the part at the beginning with the guy laboriously drawing a 3D model using hand-waving gestures. His job would be a whole lot easier if he would stop playing with toys and just use a damn $10 Logitech mouse!

[atarixle]

Is there a possibility to recompile Boss-X so it will run faster? I ran it Boss-X in a hard drive on a Black Box for years and it rocked. Not currently running it because of space constraints.

Yes, but ...

 

BOSS-X relies to much on the memory-map dictated by Turbo-BASIC. Compiling all the BASIC programs would just result in a crash.

 

When compiling BOSS-X, it would lose BASIC compatibility completely. At the moment BOSS-X/MyDOS can be used as a graphical Starter for Turbo-BASIC-, Atari-BASIC, Machine-programs out-of-the-box. Atari-BASIC and Turbo-BASIC would be lost.

 

BOSS-X is not just one BASIC-pogram, its a combined package of dozens of it. Compiling would make it hard to develop new components.

 

Finally, each year, Peter and me are adding one more ML-routine to make it faster as we can ...

 

 

BTW: BOSS-X naturally is open source … just try it yourself

Edited November 26, 2014 by atarixle

[atari8warez]

Cute toy. Hook it up to a monitor and you've got a poor, non-tactile keyboard I guess.

 

That's right, but obviously you haven't watched the video, people are at work to make touch screen, touch keyboard, or touch anything to give feedback. That is why I originally said "Touch is the way of the future", nothing is perfect so touch won't be perfect either but that doesn't deter innovation and people with imagination. I give FJC one big credit, and that is for his tenacity on the GUI, he knows it won't be perfect either but that doesn't deter him from trying.

Edited November 26, 2014 by atari8warez

[atari8warez]

from somebody who's accusing flashjazzcat of dangling carrots in peoples' faces and failing to deliver a product.

 

 

You know what the real problem is? It is your (and other people with a like mind) interpretation of my comments. I don't accuse anybody, I don't accuse flashjazzcat either, I am simply stating the facts. And it is a fact that the GUI thread is now longer than any other in AA and been going on since 2009 (isn't that a fact?), and FJC hasen't delivered a product yet (isn't that a fact also?), so where is the accusation here, unless the word has a different meaning that I am not aware of.

 

 

As for the pretty keyboard in the picture: it's a three-year-old conceptual drawing of a keyboard that never actually became a real product as far as I can tell.

 

You think that's pretty then watch the following, maybe this one is the reason why the above did not become a reality (if it indeed didn't), you no longer need a a real keyboard to type, you can do it on a tabletop . If this is not innovation, I don't know what is ($159 at Amazon, in Canadian funds)

 

 

 

And there is also one big point you seem to be missing, consumers drive the market not geeks, MS will obviously take some steps back to silence the opposition, but if you think the noise will be big enough to make them drop their "vision" for older technology, you are naive to say the least. There always be keyboards for people who can not, or not willing to adapt, or think what they had for ages is the best, but masses will swiftly move to more innovative designs.

Edited November 26, 2014 by atari8warez

[jaybird3rd]

You think that's pretty then watch the following, maybe this one is the reason why the above did not become a reality (if it indeed didn't), you no longer need a a real keyboard to type, you can do it on a tabletop . If this is not innovation, I don't know what is ($159 at Amazon, in Canadian funds)

Again, it's a cool toy that makes a nice conversation piece, and it may be useful to some people in some situations (mobile device users who happen to have a convenient typing surface nearby, for instance), but what makes you think that this is going to reinvent computing or replace physical keyboards? Why would anyone want to get rid of their keyboard and spend upwards of $100 to get one of these instead? So they can enjoy the privilege of spending even more money than a new Model M would cost, all while losing tactile feedback, holding their fingers at an uncomfortable angle so they don't block the projected keys, and slowing down their typing? How, exactly, would that be an improvement?

 

You can claim that the primary market for a virtual keyboard projector like this is mobile users and not desktop users, and there may be something to that, but that only undermines the claim that this will replace desktop keyboards; after all, mobile users aren't walking around with desktop-sized keyboards anyway. You're talking about two totally different categories of users.

 

And there is also one big point you seem to be missing, consumers drive the market not geeks, MS will obviously take some steps back to silence the opposition, but if you think the noise will be big enough to make them drop their "vision" for older technology, you are naive to say the least. There always be keyboards for people who can not, or not willing to adapt, or think what they had for ages is the best, but masses will swiftly move to more innovative designs.

For every new product idea, the important question is whether it solves (or has the potential to solve) an important problem that is shared by enough people to justify making it into a product, and whether it does so economically enough that people will be willing to pay enough money for it to allow the manufacturers to make acceptable margins. The mere fact that an idea is "innovative" isn't enough. It's a mistake to close one's mind to new things, but it's just as much of a mistake to unquestioningly embrace them, and to assume—as you seem to do—that every innovative idea to come down the pike necessarily has the potential to become a world-changing, paradigm-shifting groundbreaker. I've seen plenty of harebrained ideas in my time that were very "innovative" in the sense that they were unlike anything that anyone had tried before, but when it came to making them into viable products, it turned out that there were usually very good reasons why nobody had tried them before. One example is the CueCat, which was an "innovative" input device that was such a prominent failure that it is now remembered as an emblematic example of Dot-Com 1.0 silliness. Apparently nobody involved in that project thought to ask that important question: does this solve any problems that any real person actually has, or is it a solution with no known problem?

 

Many of your "innovative ideas" also fall into that latter category. I can see some potential uses for the hand-wavy, air-jet-blowing stuff in certain niche industries or in games (though even the latter is questionable outside of a few specialty applications), but other than that, I don't see anything to justify all the hype. Picture an average professional computer user working at their desk, whether they're doing secretarial or clerical work, or design work, or network administration, or coding. Why would most of these people, who are doing real work in the real world, actually need any of this junk? If you're going to claim that it will someday replace what they already have, then you've set a pretty high bar for yourself: you have to provide plausible reasons why it will help them to do the work that they actually do better than their keyboard and mouse and monitor, because if you can't explain it, you can't sell it. (Don't try to claim that their work will somehow radically change to conform to the devices; basic desktop computing tasks were exactly the same fifteen years ago as they are today, and they'll be basically the same in another fifteen years.) If you're going to backtrack on your claims—again—and say that only certain users will benefit while others will be better off keeping what they have, then stop all the grandiose talk about "ways of the future". You can't lump casual users, professional users, mobile users, and desktop users all together into the same category. Different users have different needs and require different tools ... and sometimes, they don't have the luxury of being "innovative" merely for the sake of being "innovative".

[atari8warez]

Again, consumerism dictates that people will have what they WANT, not necessarily what they NEED. For a simple but obvious example you can just look around here where we are, how many Atariage users do you think NEED any of the new and innovative devices made for the 8 bit Ataris, do we really need a GUI for the 130XE's, 800XL's etc.. but most (if not all) of us bought at least one or two such devices. I personally bought a U1MB and a IDE+2 which are great upgrades but hardly really needed. Besides what is so magical about the old tired keyboard, just a mechanical device that gives people carpal tunnel syndrom over the long run, and you call that natural and comfortable? or are you simply attracted to the "tactile feedback". Do we really need intelligent cars that speak to us, yet the majority of new cars today have a voice command or voice feedback. You are living in a capitalist society and ignoring the very basics of that form of life which dictates what you need. The change will not stop, one day you will see the keyboard as we know it all but disappear and a new forum like Atariage may be formed to celebrate that archaic device, perhaps affectionately called KeyboardAge..........

Edited November 26, 2014 by atari8warez

[flashjazzcat]

Looks like we need a forum called "MentalAge".

[jaybird3rd]

Again, consumerism dictates that people will have what they WANT, not necessarily what they NEED. For a simple but obvious example you can just look around here where we are, how many Atariage users do you think NEED any of the new and innovative devices made for the 8 bit Ataris, do we really need a GUI for the 130XE's, 800XL's etc.. but most (if not all) of us bought at least one or two such devices. I personally bought a U1MB and a IDE+2 which are great upgrades but hardly really needed.

Poor comparison. Vintage computers for us are exactly what vintage cars are for car buffs: they drive and maintain them for fun because they enjoy cars, but they still have newer cars that they use for more mundane trips. Two different use cases. Having one doesn't eliminate the need or the desire for the other.

 

Besides what is so magical about the old tired keyboard, just a mechanical device that gives people carpal tunnel syndrom over the long run, and you call that natural and comfortable? or are you simply attracted to the "tactile feedback".

Tactile feedback is vitally important in a keyboard. Without it, your typematic rate goes down and your error rate goes up, your hand and wrist muscles fatigue faster, and your fingertips become numbed and squashed from repeatedly striking against a hard surface. This is so obvious to anybody who has ever spent time with a physical keyboard (and doesn't have some sort of weird vendetta against them) that having to explaining this is almost like having to explaining to a two year old why they can't fly by flapping their arms, no matter how much they want to. If that all-touch conceptual keyboard you pictured earlier represents your ideal so well, why not look back on that page and read the user comments:

 

"Biggest Problem: Tactile feedback. There’s a reason why you can actually press keys down."

 

"Totally agree. There’s visual feedback, but you’re supposed to look at your screen while typing, not your keyboard."

 

"This is a pretty gadget for those who want a trendy keyboard and nothing else. First of all the lack of real keys makes typing uncomfortable because you no longer have a physical reference to whether you hit the key correctly or not. Those of us who touch-type without looking at the keyboard know that in most cases we know that we’ve made an error at the moment of input – and due to the physical memory of our hands. Secondly, the flat and slim layout may scream design but exudes a total, utter complete lack of ergonomy which is unacceptable for those who type for a living. Personally, I translate anywhere between 2.000 and 7.000 words a day and this keyboard would send me straight off to physiotherapy. Not every keyboard has to be designed for extreme usage but in my opinion design should always follow function and that is just not the case."

 

"Nice looking keyboard but I will stick with my basic logitech keyboard."

 

"Could it get better than this? Yes! Without tactile feedback it's pretty much useless as a keyboard."

 

And so on. Based on my discussions with them, I suspect that a majority of my students would say the same. Touch keyboards may have their place in the mobile space, but they are just not suitable for the kinds of work that physical keyboards regularly do, particularly for people who rely on their keyboards for more than just Facebook and Twitter. That applies to other kinds of keyboards, too: ask a professional pianist if they'd be able to play equally as well on a piano with a completely flat, featureless keyboard projected onto a hard glass surface. I have, and they wouldn't.

 

You are living in a capitalist society and ignoring the very basics of that form of life which dictates what you need. The change will not stop, one day you will see the keyboard as we know it all but disappear and a new forum like Atariage may be formed to celebrate that archaic device, perhaps affectionately called KeyboardAge..........

You're assuming here that the only argument in favor of physical keyboards is that we've always had them, that people use them only because they're forced to, but that when they're given the choice between a physical keyboard and a virtual keyboard, they will always go for the virtual keyboard, and that enough people will do so (and will continue to use virtual keyboards long-term) that keyboards as we know them will "all but disappear." You're free to believe that, of course, just as you're free to believe that Benito Mussolini was a pitcher for the Dodgers if you want to, but there is no factual basis whatsoever for that belief. Besides, if you're going to (repeatedly) make that assertion, the burden of proof is on you to support it: what are the facts that could convince someone without any preconceptions that virtual keyboards are just as efficient as physical keyboards for all applications and will become popular enough to take over the computing world? As the saying goes, "put up or shut up!"

 

Personally, I find that belief to be very strange. Just what the hell is your problem with physical keyboards, anyway? Why are you willing to spend so much money and effort on such an incredible assortment of goofy alternatives? Desktop keyboards aren't expensive, they aren't scarce, they aren't inconvenient, and there is enough of a variety available to accommodate everybody's tastes and preferences, so what on earth is the problem that you're trying to solve here? Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is easily avoidable with safe keyboarding practices; I'm not troubled by it at all, and I've been keyboarding for over 32 years. Is it merely because the keyboard is "old" and you're tired of seeing it around and would rather have something new? If so, I sure wouldn't want to be your grandmother ...

[atari8warez]

If so, I sure wouldn't want to be your grandmother ...

 

, Ok i give-up now, I sure wouldn't want you to be my grandma either..lol, I am not really against the keyboard (that's what I still use anyway), you may be right on all accounts and I may be wrong, only time will tell, i just don't believe the old clunky keyboard is our only option for the years to come and that there will be more natural alternatives as the technology advances, true some of those seem like novelty right now, but I would really like to be able to revisit this discussion 10 years from now, who knows how it will sound then.

 

Time to take a break from this and back to work - using my keyboard with a tactile feedback - (heck i wish i didn't have to clean all that sticky junk accumulating under the keys)

[kogden]

Touch screens will never replace keyboards for situations where people CREATE content.

 

Tablets are still very much regarded as TOYS in the workplace in most situations. Just because they sell like hotcakes for people to use as Facebook appliances doesn't mean they are going to replace PC's.

 

Yes, they outsell desktop computers. When the Atari 8-bit was current, they were outsold by desk calculators but that didn't mean desk calculators were the future. As someone who actually runs an IT department and deals with supporting all manner of strange hardware, I can assure you that tablets are complementary devices to PC's, not replacements. They are simply less efficient to use for real work but they make handy portable web browsers.

 

Touch technology is not new. It's as old as the f**king desktop computer itself and the reality is that most people don't want their desktop to be a crippled piece of crap for preschoolers to fingerpaint on. And like it or not, people like *ME* make the corporate purchase decisions. The only folks the Win8 tablets made sense for are district supervisors in the field. Everybody else gets standard desktops or laptops.

 

Let me see you use nothing but touch to put together a nice spreadsheet faster and easier than I can do it with a mouse..... let me see you use touch for CAD software.... touch is the future for CONTENT CONSUMPTION by folks that are computer illiterate. Period.

 

Now sit at your desk and hold your arms straight out or bend your neck to face the desk. Now stay there for 8 hours and tell me that's the future of computing.

Edited November 26, 2014 by kogden

[atari8warez]

Looks like we need a forum called "MentalAge".

 

How about starting it yourself

[atari8warez]

Touch screens will never replace keyboards for situations where people CREATE content.

 

Apparently these innovators didn't hear that argument before, or maybe they don't really care

 

[jaybird3rd]

Apparently these innovators didn't hear that argument before, or maybe they don't really care

Okay, so what content are they actually CREATING there? They're putting pictures and other assets together and publishing them, but those assets have to come from somewhere ... and I can guarantee that they didn't come from professional graphic artists or writers working entirely on tablets.

 

(heck i wish i didn't have to clean all that sticky junk accumulating under the keys)

There's a solution for that, too: stop being a slob! Or, just use a keyboard skin, or a decent keyboard like the Model M that was designed to be taken apart and cleaned.

[+Stephen]

 

Apparently these innovators didn't hear that argument before, or maybe they don't really care

 

You can bet your ass that the people who created the software to drive that did so using a keyboard and most likely a multi-monitor setup. Please describe a setup for me, where Visual Studio would benefit from a touch interface?

[kogden]

i simply said and I am still saying a usable pre-emptive multitasking GUI OS on an Atari 8 bit is just a fantasy. Sure it can be done for demo purposes but that's as far as it goes. If you don't agree prove me wrong, BUT STOP CRYING LIKE A LITTLE GIRL....

 

 

It's been done on other platforms with similar capabilities many times over now. And other than spouting off about things you don't understand, I have yet to see any proof from you that it can't be done. No one has put forth the effort before as it wasn't considered worth it since the ST was pretty cheap. And with one developer devoting his spare time to it, I'm not surprised it's been 5 years. Commodore/Atari/Apple all had a team of developers. Not one guy.

 

Just from the progress shown, the GUI has come a long way and already has a lot of functionality I never expected. Especially from one guy's hobby project.

 

Other than an overpriced USB->TTL serial adapter crammed in an SIO connector (which just about anybody could build) and badly maintaining Aspeqt, what exactly is it you contribute to this community besides a pain in the ass attitude?

[pixelmischief]

Other than an overpriced USB->TTL serial adapter crammed in an SIO connector (which just about anybody could build) and badly maintaining Aspeqt, what exactly is it you contribute to this community besides a pain in the ass attitude?

 

Yeah. I guess I agree with this. I guess that's what bothers me about it.

[flashjazzcat]

Hey... the GUI is already capable of practical, real-world application:

 

 

Check out that accurate thread profiling!

[jaybird3rd]

Hey... the GUI is already capable of practical, real-world application:

 

Check out that accurate thread profiling!

 

Just one slight error: that "7% Insight" reading should be more like 1%.

[atari8warez]

 

Other than an overpriced USB->TTL serial adapter crammed in an SIO connector (which just about anybody could build) and badly maintaining Aspeqt, what exactly is it you contribute to this community besides a pain in the ass attitude?

 

Sure go ahead build one for yourself, but if i remember correctly you chose to buy one of those cheap chinese serial to USB adaptors and was lucky enough to have a chip in it that barely worked, i still remember your big sigh! when the FTDI driver did not disable it. Like everything in life you get what you pay for. I spend many hours to build just one of these devices. To recap what's involved let me summerize it for you:

 

- Design the PCB (countless hours to make it perfect and make everything fit into a 4.5cm2 or 0.15 sq inch PCB)

- Choose and buy all the components so that they are the best offered in the market.

- Hand assemble each and every board, clean them after soldering, check each pin of each component individually for soldering mistakes using one of these:

 

 

- Customize the SIO plug so it will accomodate the PCB, the LEDS and the USB connector

- Test each and every unit and do a burn-in run for at least an hour

- I don't mention other related chores like maintaining and updating the drivers, the documentation the web site etc....

- AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, I never failed to deliver (we all know some other vendors! who did and their customers who are still waiting for their purchases after many years)

 

For the price you pay what you get is a device built with utmost care, a warranty that's always honoured (only needed to do this once or twice so far by the way once for a bad cable that i didn't manufacture and a missing feature that I never advertised at the time), support when you needed (try to get that from Shanghai's back streets if you can).

 

I don't mention AspeQt, as my involvement with that is purely for fun and personal satisfaction without any promises.

 

So, it's your turn, tell me what you did for the Atari community, that gives you the right to be so arrogant?

[atari8warez]

 

Yeah. I guess I agree with this. I guess that's what bothers me about it.

 

I don't know which of the points you agree with exactly but let me try to sort it out:

 

"overpriced USB->TTL serial adapter crammed in an SIO connector"

Currently there is only one other ready to use SIO2PC device that is widely sold and it is the Atarimax device:

 

So let's compare them here and put the $ facts together:

 

A8W device AtariMax Device

Hardware $55 $59.95

Software Free 49.99

Software Upgrades Free ??.?? x ?

Total $55 $109.90 + ??

 

I don't see anybody complaining about Atarimax selling overpriced serial to USB converters. That's because the problem isn't the price, the problem is just perception among some people.

 

"which just about anybody could build"

Really, so why don't they.

 

"besides a pain in the ass attitude"

Only to people who choose me to be a pain in their ass, and because I don't easily bow to their perceived superiority

Edited November 26, 2014 by atari8warez