ianf@nada.kth.se (Ian Feldman) (11/25/89)
In article <9071@hoptoad.uucp> you wrote quoting <2008@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> by jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Jim Wright): > >>I WANT REAL MULTITASKING. Multifinder is better than MSDOS, but not much. >> >>Followup to alt.dev.null. There's not much to do about this without a >>radical change to the Mac OS. > >Wrong. On the other hand, your point is not completely without merit. Actually, I believe that Jim's standpoint of a radically changed, brand-new OS for the Mac has more merit and is closer in time than he thinks. The present, heavily-patched OS, originally designed for a particularly limited hardware platform (a joke by our 1989 standards, no less) with lots of misconceptions regarding "real- life" use by future "knowledge workers" built right in (along with all the good stuff decided by Steven Jobs) is nearing fast the end of its physical life. No MultiFinder, nor ever-improved System versions can help it. Indeed I have reasons to believe that the total rewrite of the OS for the Mac, promised publicly by John Sculley in the spring of 1988 is in advanced gestation period at Apple. Nobody from there will comment on that, of course. I believe, however, that the management's decision to redo it from scratch has in part been caused by a realisation that the Mac OS, as we know it, won't be a match for the OS/2* once the latter gets its wrinkles out. It is, after all, a newer and a truly-multitasking operating environment that's also theoretically nicely integrated in a much fuller range of hardware than that of the Mac. Also, let's not forget that, a worthy match for UNIX, AIX and MACH-type platforms. No amount of improvement, present or future, could ever bring the Mac OS near it. Instead I'd say let us hope that what Apple does in this matter will again, in some fashion, represent as radical step from the prevailing 'market wisdom' as was the introduction of the original Macintosh. How easily we forget the impact of the Macintosh' graphics-rich environment in a world dominated (then AND still) by command-line- interface platforms. How easily do we accept the fact that Mac OS was, at one time, a step o two of magnitude above the rest. Alas, no longer... or not for very much longer. In fact, I wouldn't be a bit surprized if the COMMING SOON TO A MAC NEAR YOU! BRAND-NEW! IMPROVED! A TOTAL REWRITE! Macintosh OS succeeded in giving us a modern UNIX-y environment with a twist, say, a synthesis of Finder AND Hypercard on the operating-system level. Or an ability to execute multiple concurrent different- operating system functions (including that the UNIX variety,) as mere tasks under its own shell. Where OS/2 enables one to run MS-DOS in a window the MacOS("The Second") would give us the familiar Finder interface with different windows running under different operating systems. With full inter-process communication AND hypertext links between data structures accessible from ANY level in real time! --Ian Feldman / ianf@nada.kth.se || uunet!nada.kth.se!ianf / "Go ahead, make my day, tell me to RTFM"