Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!pyramid!voder!apple!goldman
From: goldman@Apple.COM (Phil Goldman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: How to quit MF?(was Re: Quitting the Finder under MF)
Message-ID: <7785@apple.Apple.Com>
Date: 25 Mar 88 19:23:46 GMT
References: <1316@ut-emx.UUCP> <7767@apple.Apple.Com> <2156@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: goldman@apple.UUCP (Phil Goldman)
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 31

In article <2156@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> buzz@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Mahboud Zabetian) writes:
>There is no way to quit the Finder.  That's alright, it's nice having the
>Finder around all the time.  What I want to know is:
>
>	Why is it that you can't quit Multifinder?  It would be so nice being
>	able to do that instead of rebooting.

Well, there are basically 2 reasons to quit MF, as far as I can figure.
(1)  To run apps incompatible w/ MF
(2)  To run apps so large that they can't run just by themselves under MF.

Category 2 is a pretty small one.  There are only a handful of apps that must
have 670K to run (I know, now everyone in the world will mention MacFoo, which
needs exactly 700K to run, so that it won't run w/MF, but will still work on
a Plus anyway).  Anyway, if it were possible to quit the Finder, then we're
talking about a **very** narrow band of memory requirements for an app that
could run standalone on a a MacPlus, but not under MF.  So, this leaves
category 1.

If such a feature was added to MF, it would take away all, or at least most,
incentive for the developers of the incompatible app to rev their product in
order to make it MF-friendly.  Of course, it would be totally unreasonable to
not allow users to run the program at all anymore, thus the compromise of
forcing a reboot.  The reboot should not take that much longer than quitting
an app in the single-app world, unless you have 8000 INITs installed.

This was our thinking.  Was it unreasonable?  System software (including MF)
is released every 6 months so it is always possible to add/change features.
Are there other reasons for allowing MF to quit that I omitted?

-Phil Goldman
Apple Computer