MAC OWES ITS APPEAL NOT TO A MOUSE BUT A HANDY 1-SIZE-FITS-ALL INTERFACE

Ever since the Macintosh and its pet mouse captured the public imagination, engineers for IBM compatible makers have been trying to duplicate its appeal. Few engineers figured out why so many people found the Mac appealing, so they focused on what looked obvious: the mouse.

After the moving mouse moves the screen's cursor to the exact spot a user has chosen, perhaps to a box designed to signal "start," the user hits a button built into the mouse's head. And that starts the program. But nearly every program also builds in a way to issue commands without a mouse. So the mouse is not an absolute requirement.When IBM compatible computer engineers failed to duplicate the appeal of the mighty Mac, they turned to software engineers. At last they discovered the major aspect of the Mac's appeal: its every-program-works-the-same-way-and-looks-the-same user interface. Apple's mouse has little to do with this similar look and feel.

The real equivalence comes from the way Apple accommodated software programmers who were interested in writing for the Mac. They gave all the programmers small shortcut programs (called tools in computer jargon) enabling them to finish their programs quicker.

Prominent among tools was the pull-down menu, dialogue-box facility that's at the heart of all Macintosh programs. Behind the scenes, programmers don't have to reinvent ways for each of their programs to send output to hundreds of various printers, because the Macintosh computer itself handles that onerous chore.

The Mac machine came first. And along with its closed architecture came detailed requirements for programs, graphics, looks, commands, files. Mac programs were written to match the Mac standard, which has hardly changed since the first Mac.

The IBM PC came with open architecture, and without standardized requirements. Now that the IBM compatible peddlers would like to develop a Mac-like interface, every major program has to go through major, expensive rewrites.

Microsoft itself had some problems using Windows. After years of effort, it just finished writing the Windows version of its cornerstone word processing program, Word.

Mac has one other major plus going for it. Users seem able to perform many tasks on-screen at one time. In truth, only one program is ever at work, but your other programs and their files stand ready to be used. Unlike IBM users, Mac owners moving around among programs don't need to save a file and quit a program, then load the other program and file.