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From: mwilkins@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Mark Wilkins)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: NeXT Review;Quite a machine, but not a Mac
Message-ID: <5617@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Date: 30 Mar 90 02:18:47 GMT
References: <404@toaster.SFSU.EDU> <Ety5g43@cs.psu.edu> <9942@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <6329@blake.acs.washington.edu> <9958@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <419@toaster.SFSU.EDU> <33411@shemp.CS.UCLA. <85206@tiger.oxy.edu> <6453@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
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In article <6453@blake.acs.washington.edu> mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) writes:
>
>I just remembered another "feature" about the Mac, which reminds me
>why I intend never again to do software development on the Mac
>platform.  Like MS-DOS, the Mac operating system splits memory into
>64K segment; no object may be larger than that.  So, if you need a
>100,000 character string, you have to split it into chunks.
>
>Also, there's no memory mapping, so system memory management is done
>by shuffling.

[ stuff deleted ]

  Not to get into any sort of machine war or anything, but...

  Your comments on memory mapping are well taken.  However, memory is NOT
split into 64K segments.  Only certain types of data ever had a size
restriction.  Furthermore, at this time there are no such size restrictions
on any data type.  The only restriction which still stands in practice is
that relocatable code blocks must be less than 32K.  However, since you can
split your code into as many as you like, that's not a problem.

  Things have changed a lot in the Mac world over the past several years.
You might consider giving it another look.  In my opinion, features have
been added and many things have gotten simpler at the same time.

-- Mark Wilkins
   mwilkins@jarthur.claremont.edu

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