Multitasking as an issue is only important to Windows developers because DOS (and I think Windows before W95) never had anything like the (old) MacOS event loop concept in the first place.
Eh?
DOS was single-tasking, so is not a relevant comparison to any version of Mac OS.
But you just noted to Jari: "Uh, DOS underlies all the Win9x kernels (Win95, Win98, WinME)..."
So I'll stand corrected on when exactly DOS died but have to ask why not? DOS was the Microsoft system at the time.
Win3.x was used cooperative multi-tasking, just like Mac OS, and used a messaging queue, as any multi-tasking operating environment must.
Win95 introduced a combination of cooperative multi-tasking and preemptive multi-tasking, depending on whether the software was fully 32-bit or depended on 16-bit components.
To claim that the "event loop" was an advantage that made multi-tasking unnecessary is rather ridiculous.
Firstly, I claimed that "Multitasking as an issue is only important to Windows developers...".
Secondly, I've previously explained to Jari that the keyword in my phrase was "concept". The whole Macintosh concept was first realized in 1984. I'm not sure of the date, but certainly before the end of 1986, Apple released AUX (Apple Unix); which is multitasking by definition and also supported a concurrently running MacOS that had all GUI features of that period. So the statement:
Microsoft got it right long before Apple, by introducing decent multi-tasking by Windows 3.0
is very misleading because obviously Apple had a multitasking system at their disposal years before Microsoft but for one reason or another decided it was not advantageous to use it at the time. Perhaps the Amiga fiasco scared them off a bit. I saw Windows 3.0 many years ago. It was pathetic.
Finally, I have to question whether either you or Jari truly understand that the (old) MacOS had it's way of arriving at solutions that MS has to use multitasking for. If I could use your previous example from the repertoire (and BTW don't you mean K. 333?):
The classic example of this is the Classical era notation of the apoggiatura. Take Mozart's K. 332 Sonata in Bb, which begins with the
falling figure, 16th-note appoggiatura, 8th note, 16th, 16th. It is played as 4 16ths, and the late 19th century Mozart edition published by B&H transcribed it as that.
But the result is that it obscres the musical significance of that first note. The original notation makes quite clear that it is a non-harmonic tone, that the one notated as the 8th note is the harmonic tone. It points out to the reader that the passage starts with a harmonic dissonance.
To attempt an analogy, I think that you and Jari have been deceived by only being exposed to and only analyzing the B&H version of the Mac score. And furthermore, don't understand that AppleEvents give the Mac--and hence its event loop--an extra dimension that makes it transcendent to Microsoft's notion. And prior to MacOS X, transcendent to any unix as well.
Philip Aker http://www.aker.ca
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