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From: lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Reality check: Amiga coverage is not a right, but a privilege
Message-ID: <2408@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 14 Dec 90 08:08:15 GMT
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Return-Path: <lpami!lphillips>
To: van-bc!rnews

In <1990Dec13.155848.8152@maytag.waterloo.edu>, giguere@csg.uwaterloo.ca (Eric Giguere) writes:
>In article <1395@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> U3364521@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au (Lou Cavallo) writes:
>>PS: how many of us have read statements similar to "you don't need any
>>multi tasking", or "multimedia has yet not arrived" in PC magazines? I
>>realise I'm only scratching the tip of a volcano here but ...
>
>Don't flame me for this, but.... most people DON'T need multitasking on
>their computer.  What they do need is a way to switch rapidly between
>applications and/or share data.  Very few people are TRULY doing two
>concurrent things.  (Print spooling is about the only thing I can think of
>that the average user will want to do.)  This is why MultiFinder on the
>Mac, the ultimate kludge, is successful.  It works!  (Well, usually.)  It's
>why Windows could get away with "co-operative multitasking".  It's why
>the IBM world proliferates with TSRs.

Shame on you Eric. You've had your Amiga for long enough to know the benefits
of multitasking. Hmm.. perhaps you've had it long enough to have become innured
to the benefits, and tend to forget all those times when multitasking is a
benefit to you. While it is true that the Mac folks are happy with Multifinder
(well, most of them are, I guess), it's only because they have come a long way
from the days of their previous primitive state, and let's face it, Multifinder
is at least cooperative multitasking, and things running in background _do_ get
cycles in most circumstances. TSRs are more like what you are speaking of, the
ability to switch betewwn tasks and share data, and it is plain to see that
they are a pathetic attempt to squeeze a little more functionality out of an
already strained OS that was obsolete when it was introduced.

If you can't think of anything other than print spooling as a benefit of
multitasking, you are just not thinking. Telecomm is a classic example that
benefits immensely from the ability to multitask. Down/uploading is not exactly
my idea of the most fun thing to do, and unless you actually like watching a
transfer counter, you will likely be doing something else worthwhile with the
machine while it happens, but only if you can multitask. Prretty average use,
I'd say, considering the number of folks out there with modems.

More to the point, and especially germaine to discussions involving the Amiga,
are the various rendering programs that an average user might want to run.
These, in order to be fast and efficient, should not be programmed with a lot
of calls to the OS in the innermost loops, as you would when writing one for a
cooperative multitasking machine. On a single tasking machine, you have little
choice; run the render and go do something else, or stop the render and do
something else.

Don't forget the advantages that come with multitasking, that are not
conciously noticed by most people. Programs can (and often do) start multiple
processes, each doing some modular task, and many of the things you take for
granted are accomplished by tasks just waiting for a message, doing their
thing, and waiting again. The name of the game is not just to be able to
conciously do multiple things at once, but to make the most efficient use of
the machine's resources; to waste as few cycles as possible. The average user
does not think of it in this way, but benefits from it nonetheless because of
it.

You are right though, in one way. Nobody NEEDS multitasking, but then nobody
needs a windowing interface, or a mouse, or a CLI, or speed, or a lot of
memory, or for that matter, a computer. They are all things that are optional,
but like all optional things, having them can be fun, or productive, or
profitable, and so on.


>BUT even so, the Amiga can offer all these capabilities BECAUSE it offers 
>"true" multitasking, doing so much more cleanly and efficiently.  Applications
>don't have to do anything special.  Of course, hacker-types love it even
>more because they can do other things while compiling or downloading...

I am amazed that you put 'downloading' into the category of things done by
'hacker types'. Boggles the mind, it does.

-larry

--
The best way to accelerate an MsDos machine is at 32 ft/sec/sec.
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|   //   Larry Phillips                                                 |
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