gsm@gsm001.uucp (Geoffrey S. Mendelson) (01/16/91)
Here we go, more fuel for flames. The Amiga operating system was designed from the ground up to be a pre-emptive operating system. Certain events such as mouse movement are not reflected to the current task until complete. If you mousor from one window to another, the first is suspeneded (if its waiting for a mouse event) and the second is notified when the button is hit (signifing, I want to use this window) The MacIntosh system was not designed to be multitasking. Every mouse movment is reflected to the owner of the currently open window. This was a good idea when there was only one window in use at at time. On the other hand the FINDER always had pre-emptive multitasking. Go into MacWrite. Now pull down the apple window and select a Control Panel. Sure seems like pre-emptive multitasking to me guys. Multifinder is hampered by the limitations of the system design. It cannot have good pre-emptive multitasking. If you want good pre-emptive multitasking, get A/UX. It includes "finder" windows to run your old software. You can open them to your hearts content and run pre-emptive multitasking between them. The cost of running A/UX is the amount of processing power you need to have it run, as finder is small and elegant, AU/X is not small nor is it elegant. AT&T is writing their code work almost everywhere and this requires simple, "stupid" code. Also if you want memory protect, a "good" schedular and virtual memory, you need a 68030. A fast 68030. You aren't going to find one on most Macs. Since "finder" needs to run on all Macs that can hold it. Apple needs to write their code to this least common denominator. System 7 is supposed to run on Mac Pluses, Se's and Classics. Without a MMU, an FPU, and in most cases lots of ram or disk space. IMHO what will happen is the guys with the big iron (68030/40 Macs) will go for A/UX. The people with everything else will go for System 7 and there will be lots of postings here complaing that System 7 doesn't do what (insert system name here) does. What amazes me is not what System 7 or for that matter System 6 does not do, not what does not run, but that you can get the features and still have software designed for a 128k Mac work. That's a far bigger trick than anyone who does not know what goes on inside an operating system can imagine. I guess the whole thing is point of view. I don't expect my Mac (a Classic) to be an Amiga. I don't expect it to be an IBM PC. I don't expect it to be a Vax, an IBM ES/9000 or a Cray. I expect it to be a Mac. With all the goodness and limitations and costs thereof. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Geoffrey S. Mendelson | Computer Software Consulting | Dr. | | (215) 242-8712 | IBM Mainframes, Unix, PCs, Macs | Who | | uunet!gsm001!gsm | | Fan too!|