How long? How long before we see a full-featured graphical user interface (GUI) in OS/400? By full-featured I mean features like object-oriented technology (OOT), drag and drop capability, and an iconic interface to the thousands of functions of OS/400. Lately I'm concerned that it may be too long-too long for the AS/400 to compete against computer systems that offer the ease-of-use and productivity gains offered by a GUI.
When it comes to everyday users of computer systems, the move toward GUI desktop systems may be the most significant event since the advent of the CRT. I believe a majority of computer users today have come to expect a GUI environment for their applications. The user interface to computers is important-so important that I believe that whoever owns the computer desktop could end up owning a lot more. Bill Gates knows it, and I hope IBM starts acting like they know it-especially when it comes to the AS/400.
Right now, the only true GUI to OS/400 from IBM is the PC Support Graphical Operations product. Unfortunately, it only accesses a fraction of OS/400, and IBM has no plans to extend it. Graphical Operations is a very short dead-end street.
IBM is working on a dynamic screen scraping product that will display the graphical equivalent of virtually every OS/400 panel. But screen scraping does not offer the full benefit of a GUI. It takes a lot more than screen scraping to allow a user to drag a file from one library object to another. Screen scraping is no more than an interim solution.
Recently announced is the additional GUI function for Client Access/400 known as System Object Access (SOA), which enables access to certain OS/400 objects from a Windows environment. According to IBM, SOA will be the strategic path to a GUI for OS/400. However, from what has been announced, SOA sounds similar to Graphical Operations in the function (or lack of function) it provides.
IBM needs to provide a complete, full-function GUI to OS/400, and quickly. The AS/400 is competing against an increasing number of very powerful GUI-enabled systems that you can buy today.
-Richard Shaler
How important will a GUI be to the AS/400? That depends on how we use its power and integration. Will the AS/400 be a file server, delivering information to desktops? Will it be the central processor and decision maker for systems integration? Or will it be an end-user machine vying for personal attention from a cybernetic mouse?
Where would that AS/GUI reside anyway? On the AS/400 itself? On an intelligent workstation? Maybe it should be a pen-based system, using Digital Ink! Maybe it should have voice recognition!
Would MS Windows be the right choice, or OS/2, or some variation of X-Windows? How about an iconic GUI, with a little icon for each and every OS/400 command, strung out in front of us on a scrollable toolbar?! Centuries from now, archeologists might view this array of icons as the Rosetta stone by which to decipher our psycho/electronic dysfunctionality.
Frank Lloyd Wright believed that the truly beautiful and usable architectures were products of form following function. IBM has stated that the AS/400 will be the server of choice. If IBM is serious about this, then-for the great majority of our users-the GUI by which they converse with the AS/400 will be the GUI "gluied" to the desktop. This may be Windows 95, Taligent, or some other. Time will tell.
Apple invented the desktop! Microsoft captured it! But isn't the Romantic Age of personal computing coming to an end? Aren't people-especially people in business-looking beyond the floral arrangements and wallpaper of their machines? Aren't they looking for the substance beneath that desktop-like four legs upon which to place the work that needs doing-instead of another electronic sandbox in which to sprinkle pixels and build castles made of silicon? Let form follow function!
-Thomas M. Stockwell
The AS/400 stacks up well with its competitors in many areas, such as security, database technology, and reliability. However, its text-based user interface is not something IBM brags about.
Text-based interfaces by today's standards are considered antiquated technology. A GUI is a standard component people have now come to expect in an operating system. The AS/400's text-based interface has drastically fallen behind the times. Competitors are cropping up on all sides sporting GUI interfaces that are luring customers away from what might otherwise be considered a superior computer system.
I believe IBM is beginning to take this problem seriously, but I'm afraid it may be too late. Graphical Operations supports only a tiny fraction of OS/400's capabilities. It's good for a limited set of functions, but what about the rest of the operating system? Now IBM is resorting to a dynamic screen scraper. This is merely a quick fix that will lack many of the graphical capabilities users take for granted. And while System Object Access sounds promising, it could be years before we see a complete solution.
What the AS/400 desperately needs is a fully-integrated graphical operating system. I believe the quickest, and possibly best, solution is to open up the AS/400 to other operating systems. My first choice would be Microsoft Windows NT, which has a GUI interface along with many of the same capabilities as OS/400. DEC ported NT to its Alpha system, and it proved to be very successful. I don't see any reason IBM can't do the same for the AS/400. But whatever IBM does, it had better do it soon.
-Robin Klima
Fact: OS/400 is one of the most robust, fully-implemented OSs in the world.
Fact: No one innovates or builds hardware better than IBM.
Fact: The Black Box AS/400 is a miracle of electrical engineering.
Fact: IBM is moving (albeit slowly) toward embracing non-IBM OSs as native OS/400 clients.
Fact: IBM is rewriting OS/400 in C++ at a furious pace to make it a portable OS.
Fact: IBM is streamlining itself to be a lean, mean computer com-pany machine.
Fact: Microsoft Windows and its "father"-Apple Macintosh, by virtue of their GUI interfaces-own the desktops of America.
And last, but not least...
Fact: IBM has missed the boat on a GUI interface for OS/400.
In its attempt to launch the Good Ship OS/400, IBM has overlooked a key tenet of corporate computing in America: GUI or die.
Today, users can go home at the end of a hard day's hammering on text-based OS/400 and sit down to a GUI-equipped, Intel Pentium-based, 100MHz computer with multiple GBs of DASD and 128MB of RAM and navigate the Internet with the click of a mouse button. They can cut and paste documents and print images, files, and graphics within a pure GUI domain. They can click an icon and print colored graphical reports on a printer that costs less than a five-year subscription to this magazine. They can initiate a file transfer between a Cray XMP-1 in outer Mongolia and their PC with one drag-and-drop of a mouse. And it's their patience that is fraying as the Good Ship OS/400 limps back into dry dock sans a GUI.
Perhaps OS/400 should be renamed. To the best of my knowledge, no one's using the name Titanic anymore.
-Kris Neely
If I hear one more person going on about the ease of use of the AS/400, I'm going to toss my cookies on their shoes. I recently needed to maintain security on a Windows NT system. I didn't have to type the command GRTOBJAUT. I didn't have to type the object name. I didn't have to specify an obscure object type. I didn't have to type the user profile name, and I didn't have to type an abbreviation for the authority I wanted to grant.
To grant authority under NT, I pulled up the familiar File Manager, selected the object I wanted to grant authority to (which, by the way, was on a different computer on the network). Then I clicked the Permissions button on the toolbar, clicked the Add button to grant new authority, selected the user from the list box, and picked the Read-only authority from the drop down list box. I did this to maintain authority on a C2 compliant operating system.
That was done under Windows NT 3.5. There is a new version of NT scheduled to come out that will have the even easier to use interface of Windows 95. The point is that the AS/400 user interface is getting to be generations behind other operating systems. It was easy to use in 1989 when it was first shipped, but not compared to the state of the art today.
IBM needs to accelerate the work of developing a Windows graphical front-end. The ease of use of the AS/400 is not taken seriously by people with experience outside of punch cards. A screen scraper is not an answer either because most of those tools take more processing power than is available on the typical desktop. IBM needs to deliver a GUI for the next five to 10 years, and it needs to do it now.
-Jim Hoopes
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