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From: jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: What System 7 Does For You: A Summary
Message-ID: <1991May11.191218.27642@potomac.ads.com>
Date: 11 May 91 19:12:18 GMT
Organization: Advanced Decision Systems, Arlington, VA
Lines: 59

>System 7 includes lots of little built-in things that you won't know
>how you ever lived without:

Yes there is lot of cool stuff in system 7.0.  Lots of tools that
people can build triumphant apps on.  Problem is that there are things
that the Mac needs that still are not provided such as:

o Protected process spaces.  I hate it when my lowly user app trashes
the system or when apps "Unexpectedly Quit."  All Macs have user and
kernal modes built into the chip.  Why can't the OS use them?

o Dynamic memory allocation.  All memory allocation for an app is
performed out of its own allocated app space.  This is elegant in a
sense since it protects other apps from your memory allocation
mistake.  Unfortunately since there's no protection between processes
you can trash him anyway.  Dynamic allocation of memory out of a
common heap would make cooperation between processes MUCH smoother and
eliminate the fiddling with the app size in get Info.

o Preemptive Multitasking.  Cooperative multitasking is kindof dumb.
Protected process spaces and a system scheduling algorithm, although
more complicated to control, would be more elegant for the user and
programmer.  Even with system 7.0 I have to reenter the event loop (or
at least do a Wait NeXTEvent) periodically to get any background
processing or update events processed.  Many apps doesn't do
background processing I'll bet because its inconvient as hell.

o TrueType isn't Postscript.  Well of course it isn't.  TrueType is a
good start but it can't do a LOT of stuff that Postscript can do.
Where's the rotated text?  Where's the blending?  All the other stuff
I want to do with fonts.

o Still need my old INITS.  Yup that's right.  System 7.0 doesn't
provide everything.  I still need INITS like HierDA and On Queue to
provide heiarchic menus and On Queue to conveniently launch my apps.
Oh launching can be done in System 7.0, its just not as convenient as
in On Queue.  Boomerang remembers the paths of commonly used folders
and provides a bunch of other utilities right from the SF dialog box.
Great stuff...  but system 7.0 doesn't have it.

And what about INIT management?  INITS are the bane of all Mac users
but system 7.0 provides nothing in the way of utilities for resolving
conflicts and sequencing INIT loading.  At least nothing that I've
found.  Maybe the Golden release has more than Ive seen in the Beta
releases.  Sigh.

o Full 32-bit clean ROMS on all machines.  Well this isn't a system
7.0 gripe really but hey... how come I don't have 32-bit clean ROMs in
my Mac IIcx?  This means I can only have 1.5 times the memory existant in
my machine as virtual memory**.  So if I'm running with 8 megabytes of
memory, I get only 14 meg of virtual as opposed to the 1 gigabyte of
virtual those pricey FX's can do.

** these numbers gleaned from tests using 7.01 beta and a mac II
(24-bit ROMS) a 68030 Daystar accelerator board.


So yes system 7.0 is a massive improvement but it doesn't solve a lot
of major defeciencies with the Mac.