Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!fernwood!apple!olivea!mintaka!dcw From: dcw@lcs.mit.edu (David C. Whitney) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: Apple II / Mac discusson Message-ID: <1990Nov6.133419.27004@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> Date: 6 Nov 90 13:34:19 GMT References: <9011040755.AA25630@apple.com> <1990 Nov5.060817.22702@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <1990Nov5.141931.822@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> Sender: daemon@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu (Lucifer Maleficius) Distribution: comp Organization: MIT Spoken Language Systems Group Lines: 40 In article <1990Nov5.141931.822@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> q4kx@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (Joel Sumner) writes: >In article <1990Nov5.060817.22702@Neon.Stanford.EDU>, >torrie@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Evan James Torrie) writes: >> of running in the background while applications are being worked on in the >> foreground... > >Ok, now, while you are downloading that file, go into the finder and copy a >few files from floppy to hard disk, or, for that matter, save your word >processing file. Notice how quickly all downloading stops. It ain't true >multitasking. "True" is a relative term. You really mean, "It's not Preemptive multitasking," which is a different concept. Under Multifinder (as was pointed out in an earlier article), all applications must agree to multitask. They *must* make periodic system calls (even if unneeded by the app) so that the OS may time-slice properly. The Finder's copy subroutine does not make these periodic calls. Hopefully, System 7.0 will fix that. Multitasking means running more than one process at once. No more, no less. I can turn on a Mac and run more than one process at once - therefore it multitasks. Multitasking ability does not imply memory protection, preemptive interruption, or anything else (although those features make it easier on the author and users). Now, the technique behind it on the mac may be sloppy or incomplete or unsuitable for some people, but it DOES MULTITASK. The GS can do it too. A preliminary version of such stuff appeared in Leapfrog, but I think that only did switching - not multitasking (someone correct me on this). The GS (with the toolbox, and presuming you dump P8 apps) is no less capable of MultiFinder than the Mac is (except that it may be a "challenge" to implement it on the 65816). So there. -- Dave Whitney Computer Science MIT 1990 | I wrote Z-Link and BinSCII. Send me bug dcw@lcs.mit.edu | reports. I need a job. Send me an offer. Every now and then one makes a mistake. Mine was probably this post.