jm7e+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU ("Jeremy G. Mereness") (03/04/89)
well said. I stil don't consider GS/OS a "real" operating system for the GS because of many of these issues: it is too volatile, standards are too new and are all too often ignored, and for some reason (and I can only assume that this is because the OS doesn't cover its tracks) a great deal of software crashes under it. Things like printing over Appletalk are much more clumsy than on the Mac as well as the mess of device drivers (I am still having hell with my Unidisk). Most of the GS users here at Carnegie-Mellon avoid GS/OS entirely preferring Prodos16 when it's necessary. I don't want to get flamed for this, as God knows I am really new to 16-bit programming, but GS/OS does not seem like a solid OS. I have worked with Macs for three years now and I know that HFS is in complete control of the system and what the rules are. Chooser, Keycaps, ControlPanel, and other DA's that are intimate with the system ALWAYS work on demand and are never compromised. The GS does not have this. My biggest complaint is that GS/OS does not check the disk drives, eject them when necessary, and often fails to realize that it needs the system disk and instead poles my Unidisk blindly until I reboot the machine. And there has to be a better way for Finder to handle its drives than polling them all the time. GS/OS is a step above Prodos16 in a couple of ways, but I certainly do not think it is worthy of release, despite the amount of time it took to get announced in the first place. I feel that Apple needs to set down some _rules_; just a few protocols even if they are as simple as a text-based "preferences" file on the startup disk like used on our Unix workstations. The Macintosh system is very strict and in some ways limited, but GS/OS seems weak and disorganized in comparison. and it is viscousy slow. jeremy mereness jm7e+@andrew.cmu.edu