>On 8 Jun 2003 at 21:17, Philip M. Aker wrote:
>> Firstly, I claimed that "Multitasking as an issue is only important to >> Windows developers...". > >Why would that be? Multitasking is something that all GUIs provide.
Your definition of multi-tasking is a little broad. Most people do not consider event-driven cooperative multi-tasking "true" multi-tasking. It's easy for one program to take over the machine and not allow anything else to run.
>> Secondly, I've previously explained to Jari that the keyword in my >> phrase was "concept". The whole Macintosh concept was first realized in >> 1984.
Actually the concept was released in January, 1982 by Apple and was called the Lisa. It was a much more capable machine than the Mac. The Mac was released in January, 1984 (in Boston at a BCS meeting, I was there) and was considered a watered-down version of the Lisa.
However, the Mac was actually affordable (the Lisa was $10,000).
When the Mac took off, Apple had a conversion system for making Lisa's into "Big Macs" for Mac developers.
>> 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. > >OK, I was trying to make sense of what you said, which to me was >nonsensical. You said Windows programmers had to deal with multi- >tasking and Mac programmers didn't. I took that to me that your >remarks about the Mac messaging loop were not counted by you as >multitasking. I didn't understand what you could possibly mean by >that, but took you at what I understood to be your word. > >> 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. > >There you go -- I cannot make any logical sense out of what you've >just said. First you say Mac has multitasking. Then you say it >doesn't.
Both Windows 3.0 and the Mac were handicapped by the lack of pre-emptive multi-tasking.
In my opinion, well written Windows apps cooperated better than Mac apps, leading people to say that Windows was better at cooperative multi-tasking.
>I thought Macs multitasked (cooperatively) from the release of the >very first Mac in 1984 (or whenever it was). They allowed you to run >more than one application at a time, right? So, they were >multitasking.
On a Mac, the foreground app seemed to get most of the time, background apps pretty much sat there doing nothing.
>Now, *how* they did it is another issue, and one where it's pretty >clear they did it differently from what MS implemented in Windows. > >But the MS approach was better in the long run, as it worked for a >lot longer, and laid the groundwork for real multitasking much sooner >than the Mac got it.
I agree.
Phil Daley < AutoDesk > http://www.conknet.com/~p_daley
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