Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!purdue!gatech!dcatla!mclek
From: mclek@dcatla.UUCP (Larry E. Kollar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Hey Apple Mac engineers, answer->MacWorld Interview Answers you.
Keywords: multitasking, improvements
Message-ID: <21857@dcatla.UUCP>
Date: 8 Aug 89 14:50:20 GMT
References: <14845@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <27159@srcsip.UUCP>
Reply-To: mclek@sunb.UUCP (Larry E. Kollar)
Organization: DCA Inc., Alpharetta, GA
Lines: 38

>I defy you as a user to sit at both a PM machine and a Mac both running modern
>software (in the Mac's case MF Friendly, in the PM case a PM app) and tell me 
>which one is "truly multi-tasking" and which one isn't.and which one isn't.
>
>One thing that seems to get overlooked in these discussions of true vs. fake
>multi-tasking is that for the most part, it doesn't make a bit of difference 
>if the user can't tell the difference.  And I'm talking about the vast majority
>of users who ARE NOT programmers or harware types.  Just ordinary folks mousing
>away.

I don't know about PM, but I use Macs and Amigas both quite a bit.  I can
tell the difference (I'm a tech writer, not a programmer):

	- The Mac dialog boxes lock out *all* user input to tasks or windows
	  other than the dialog box itself.  What if I want to pull up the
	  on-line documentation to help me decide what to set in the dialog?
	  This is a BIG malfeature of Multifinder.

	- While printing a background job, I often have a hard time keeping
	  control of the mouse pointer -- it's like using the mouse as a
	  slingshot.  Very annoying.

	- How do you set task priorities under MultiFinder; say, if you
	  want your downloads to proceed faster while doing something else?

	- You need gobs of memory to do anything useful with MultiFinder.
	  This is as much the fault of what I call "software bloat" as
	  MultiFinder's actual memory requirements (although 500K+ is quite
	  a bit), and this is getting just as bad on Amigas, so this isn't
	  that much of a difference.

Now I realize that MultiFinder patches an OS that wasn't designed for
multitasking, but I hope Apple fixes at least the first two things in 7.0.
I tend to expect more out of a computer that costs 3-4 times as much as the
one at home.
-- 
Larry Kollar	...!gatech!dcatla!mclek
: life BEGIN funds @ enough_to_retire < WHILE work REPEAT ;