Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!bloom-beacon!husc6!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: System 8.0: no more DA's.
Message-ID: <33613@think.UUCP>
Date: 16 Dec 88 21:07:27 GMT
References: <1988Dec14.223739.16280@cs.rochester.edu> <321@internal.Apple.COM> <6692@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>
Sender: news@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@kulla.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 25

In article <6692@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU> dorourke@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (David M. O'Rourke) writes:
>In article <321@internal.Apple.COM> goldman@Apple.COM (Phil Goldman) writes:
>  The only point at which preemptive multitasking is
>>more useful to a Mac end user is when he is using a buggy app.
>  As an example start Smartcom downloading and stuffit uncompressing, stuffit
>doesn't make these calls fast enough and causes Smartcom to timeout on the
>download.

Stuffit is a "buggy app" according to Apple's (or at least Phil's)
definition.  Applications are supposed to call into the system
frequently, even if they aren't looking for an event for themselves.
Stuffit isn't calling often enough.  Mac programming has always
required more attention to these kinds of details than programming
other systems, so these kinds of bugs are pretty common.  But is it
Apple's fault that the application developers have trouble getting
this right?  This requirement has been in Inside Mac since day 1,
long before there was any significant amount of multitasking (it was
needed for DA's that ran in the background, such as BackDown and
background print spoolers).

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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