Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!rex!ames!eos!shelby!neon!Kermit.Stanford.EDU!philip
From: philip@Kermit.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Macintosh OS
Message-ID: <1990May30.230248.6200@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 30 May 90 23:02:48 GMT
References: <1935@key.COM> <30273@ut-emx.UUCP> <76700207@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <402@newave.UUCP>
Sender: news@Neon.Stanford.EDU (USENET News System)
Reply-To: philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 24

In article <1935@key.COM>, sjc@key.COM (Steve Correll) writes:
> In article <402@newave.UUCP>, john@newave.UUCP (John A. Weeks III) writes:
> > Can the Macintosh System be called an "Operating System"?  Ignoring
> > system 7.0, the Mac is a collection of procedures, some of which are
> > in ROM, that everyone agrees to call in the right order.  If anyone
> > screws up, you get a bomb.  There is no real multi-tasking, no scheduler,
> > no device or file locking, memory protection, processes, forking, etc.
> 
> Suppose you implemented the C library standalone on a bare machine,
adding the
> capability to execute multiple C programs by switching from one to another
> during calls to the library. Would that be an operating system? People
> accustomed to conventional timesharing systems might answer "no", but people
> accustomed to simple ROM-able operating systems might answer "yes".

This "is the Mac OS an OS" line seems to assume that an OS _only_ defines
multitasking. I always thought it defined a whole bunch of abstractions, like
the file system. The Mac does most of this conventional stuff, plus a sort
of abstract machine model for graphics. Maybe the implementation is not great
because you can break the abstractions too easily, but that's a different
issue.

Philip Machanick
philip@pescadero.stanford.edu