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From: philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)
Subject: Re: Turning off time slices in S7
Message-ID: <1991Jun4.203243.25833@neon.Stanford.EDU>
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References: <0E010021.82xzfh@gla-aux.uucp> <1991Jun1.070626.2853@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <1991Jun3.015035.5222@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> <1991Jun3.142717.103@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> <1991Jun3.232340.5237@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>
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Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1991 20:32:43 GMT
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In article <1991Jun3.232340.5237@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>, umh@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:
[Lots of stuff about limits of the Mac OS, as distinct from the user
interface]
|> Now, what of the competition. Everyone shrinks back at the thought of UNIX.
|> Dammit- we are interested in UNIX the OS here, not UNIX the shell. The fact is
|> that as an operating system, UNIX is fundamentally more powerful than the
|> MacOS. Mach is a kernel based on networking/parallel processing concepts that
|> is rather more powerful than UNIX, can be customized rather more easily for a
|> certain task, and can be made to look like UNIX to a programmer- and like UNIX,
|> to look like anything you want including a Mac, to the user.

I agree with everything you said up to this paragraph. Certainly, unix
does everything you have pointed out as missing from the Mac OS, but does
it really do these things _well_? unix was designed for small minis, and
has grown out of proportion. I think Apple ought to be able to do better
starting from scratch. This doesn't mean they shouldn't also support
unix compatibility, in the same way as A/UX supports Mac compatibility.
My ideal future OS would be capable of running Mac, A/UX and its new native
mode applications.

|> There are a few innovative features in the MacOS. Things like resources and
|> parts of Quickdraw. But most of it is not nearly as good as what is available,
|> and it makes no sense to claim either that it is, or that we do not need the
|> improvements.

Again, I agree that it's silly to pretend the Mac OS can't be
improved (or better still, completely rewritten). However, we
should also remember that there are some parts of unix that would
be a big step backwards from the Mac.
-- 
Philip Machanick
philip@pescadero.stanford.edu