Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!bunyip!brolga!uqcspe!batserver.cs.uq.oz.au!brendan From: brendan@batserver.cs.uq.oz.au (Brendan Mahony) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: What can't it do? Loss of... Keywords: Multi-Finder, multitasking, Finder Message-ID: <4259@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> Date: 12 Jul 90 06:23:58 GMT References: <82023@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <2619@network.ucsd.edu> Sender: news@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au Reply-To: brendan@batserver.cs.uq.oz.au Lines: 31 pbiron@weber.ucsd.edu (Paul Biron) writes: >When you switch between applications with Multi-Finder, the >application you WERE using goes to sleep. I may be mistaken >here, I don't get to use Multi-Finder very often because none >of the Macs that I work on have enough memory. (If I am I'm >sure someone will point it out :-) >To be truely multi-tasking, an operating system must allow >multiple processes (or applications) to be running AT THE >SAME TIME (well, actually they each get a time slice). >The closest thing to true multitasking I've seen on a Mac >is the print spooler. Multi-finder is multi-tasking, the background process will be given CPU time, as long as the foreground process does not require the CPU. The difference between this and pre-emptive multi-tasking is simply in the scheduling algorithm. Essentially the user has control does the scheduling, if the user doesn't require the attention of the foreground process the background process may take over. For me this is exactly what I want from a PERSONAL computer. I don't want the performance of the foreground process being degraded by some tyranical scheduler. On this Sun I sometimes have to wait many seconds before the computer reacts to a mouse-click. This is really annoying when trying to access a menu. -- Brendan Mahony | brendan@batserver.cs.uq.oz | Department of Computer Science | University of Queensland | Australia |