su@dartvax.UUCP (Peter Su) (08/22/87)
There are sort of two ways you can look at the usefullness of a multitasking operating system. On one level, there is lwo level support of multiple processes, independent of a high level shell like the Finder (say). On another level, there is high level support for easy switching between tasks, like the cshell in Unix, or Unix with X, or the Amiga. Now, it is possible to have one, without the other. The swithcer is sort of a primitve level of support of multiple tasks, and isn't a very effiecient approach. On the ther hand, in early Unix systems, you didn't have job control, and couldn't switch between tasks easily, though you could have lots of them. So, to evaluate the value of the Multifinder, I think we have to know whether it represents shell support for multiple tasks, or an actual extension of the Mac operating system to beef up process handling, and memory mannagement. The point it, if you can;t do a fork(), and if applications cannot handle multiple processes by themselves, then it would be next to useless, and we may as well go back to switcher. If it *is * real process management, then I think we will see a lot more neat software coming out for the Mac, because being able to manage multiple processes is a real win from a developer's point of view. Another big question is whether or not Multifinder uses the same "virtual mac" approach to memory management. If so, then it's just like switcher again, if not, then we can get a lot more milage out of it. So, what's the poop folks? Cheers from my new home, used to be CMU< now it's Dartmouth. Pete UUCP: su@dartvax.UUCP ARPA: su%dartvax@cs.relay.net BELL: 603-643-6300