khayo@sonia.cs.ucla.edu (Erazm J. Behr) (10/20/87)
Hi, I have a question that some kind and knowledgeable soul out
there may be willing to answer; I'm still using the ancient
System 3.2/Finder 5.3 setup on my Mac+, and I'm told that the
current combination is 4.1/5.5. I don't want to stay behind the
times, but the old versions have served me well and I can easily
live without spinning hands on the clock cursor if it means adding
50K to my System Folders. What are the benefits vs. cost (in size)
of the current software? Believe it or not, I'm getting by with 1 Meg,
one 800K drive and RAMStart ("power user" I ain't ...) so memory &/or
disk space are important considerations for me. Thanks a lot - Eric.
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>>>>---------------> khayo@MATH.ucla.edu oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) (10/20/87)
In article <8723@shemp.UCLA.EDU> khayo@MATH.UCLA.EDU (Erazm J. Behr) writes: >I'm still using the ancient >System 3.2/Finder 5.3 setup on my Mac+, and I'm told that the >current combination is 4.1/5.5. I don't want to stay behind the... Let's genralize this a bit to "Should you stick with System 3.2, Finder 5.3 or should you upgrade to the current System and Finder." System 4.1 is soon to be replaced by a new system file and finder, even larger, that supports multi-finder. The new system and finder add a huge amount of new code that makes your system more compatible with: 1.) the Mac II. If you try to look at a Picture created on a Mac II it will probably crash your mac under anything but the system file. As more and more developers get Mac IIs, it will be more and morer necessary to run the new system to keep your machine from crashing. 2.) Apple's future plans for the Mac operating system. If you plan to use multi-finder so that you can run multiple programs at once, or so you can print in background you'll need to upgrade beyond System 3.2. (as a usenet user, I'm sure you'd like to have a program that fetched your mail and news while you were using your machine for something else. That way you could read your mail and news using only friendly, fast macintosh tools without suffering with unix tools. (Emacs was stubbornly refused to let me type that last sentence. It took 8 tries before I got it finished.) 3.) Application software that uses the new features. I write all my software so it checks to see what version of the System file you've got, and turns off all the features you can't use. Some of the features of the new system file: multiple fonts, sizes, and styles in a single TextEdit record (editable block of text.) 4.) multi-lingual software. The new System file is compatible with software that handles wildly different languages. If you should ever need to run a Japanese/English word processor or a Arabic/Korean word processor, you'll need this feature. 5.) improved AppleTalk. If you use your machine in an office environment, Appletalk will become more and more important. I already, jave my applications, check to see if appletalk is installed, check to see if anyone else is running the same application, check to see if that application is accessing the same file, and if it is, send command messages back and forth so that changes made by one person are reflected on all the screens of the users using the document. (Sort of program specific teleconferencing.) conclusion: Apple's system software is getting larger becuase it is getting more powerful. Reputable developers spend the time to make their software work with older system software, but 1.) as system versions proliferate there is a limit to how much of that they can do. (For example, THINK, Inc. manufacturers of LightSpeed C, has repeatedly refused to make programs compiled with their compiler run on any machine with 128k ROMs or newer running any system file before System 3.2.) 2.) because the new system software is more powerful, programs that run without it will have to run with less functionality. You may have to upgrade to get features you paid for in new software to work. --- David Phillip Oster --A Sun 3/60 makes a poor Macintosh II. Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --A Macintosh II makes a poor Sun 3/60. Uucp: {uwvax,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu