Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!bu-cs!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!thomas
From: thomas@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Thomas Summerall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Hey Apple Mac engineers, answer->MacWorld Interview Answers you.
Keywords: DMA, coprocessing, improvements
Message-ID: <14845@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 4 Aug 89 16:56:48 GMT
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: thomas@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Thomas Summerall)
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 39

In article <577@studsys.mu.edu> stevej@studsys.mu.edu (jovanovic) writes:
>Dear Apple,

...various apple bashings...

>First, let's talk about multitasking.

I tend to agree with many of the points in this posting.  Apple should have
REAL multitasking.  I think amigas are cheesy, but even they can do some
impressive multitasking.

Apple needs to get it soon, too, because as we have seen with presentation
manager etc. the competition isn't going to sit and wait for apple to catch up.
Macs may still be slicker graphically and functionally, but the gap is closing
and pretty soon the only difference between a mac and an IBM will be that the
Mac is slow and non multitasking.

To finish, see the interview in September's MacWorld with Edward Birss, VP for
product engineering at Apple.  He says something pretty scary at the end when
asked if system 7.0 will have TRUE multitasking:

"It depends upon what you mean by truly."  (we've heard that before.)
"From the user perspective, yes absolutely, because you can print in the
background, download from compuserve, and type a memo, all at the same time"
(that's a start, but what about caculating a long spreadsheet at the same
time?  LISA could do it!  Come on, guys...)

Referring to A/UX:

"I would say that we have shown multitasking capability for both the user and
for systems programming.  And while it is not a traditional definition of
multitasking, it is a version of multitasking well suited to our vision of
personal computing."

That's kind of scary...I don't think its going to suit most other people's
versions in the coming years...

Thomas Summerall
thomas@eleazar.dartmouth.edu