Re: APPLE LISA 2

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article hattonr@aug.com (Rick Hatton) writes...

>Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:
>>  Hm,
>> when you calculate the number of PC's out there, and figure in that
>> over 85% use Win95, you would be hard pressed not to call it main-
>> stream. We went over this before, Windows 95 supports preemptive
>> multitasking which is true multitasking.
>
>W95 is NOT installed on 85% of all PCs. its not even close.

    Actually that should have read 85% of all PCs uses Windows, that
scope covering Windows 95, NT and 3.1. However, that does not change
the fact that Windows 95 is widely in use and most definitely a main 
stream operating system. BJBear was trying to claim it was not (or 
that is somehow does not support true multitasking) which is pure 
nonsense.

>... and cooperative is true multitasking, its jsut a different form than
>preemptive.

    Cooperative is multitasking, but not true in the sense of it doing
several things simultaneously, performancing _more than one task_ at a
time. Cooperative gives prioritary to the main application and switches
to running the other task _only_ when there is free time (when the main
application pauses or the user is letting that application sit idle).
How much time there is between switching various on the type of program
and what it is doing. It can be several seconds, or in some cases, up
to a minute or more with *one* task using up all the resources. That is
more like a fancy/intelligent program switcher. A poor one at that I
might add, since I found background tasks tend to freeze or bomb on the
Mac, often bringing down the foreground tasks with them. I found myself
frustrated working on the Mac, it was hindering and slowing me down.

    Preemptive shares time equally between all applications, regardless
of what they are or what they're doing. If you were running four tasks
at once it would give each application 250 milliseconds of running time
in a 1 second cycle. It will always keep switching and sharing the same
time between your programs, so they all run at the same time (or at
least that is what they appear to be doing through our perception of
time). When I cannot perceive the "switching" anymore I consider that 
true multitasking; and I more than perceive it on the Mac, it is quite 
literally forced in my face. It is pretty mind boggling people debate
the MacOS vs Windows 95/NT considering the lack of true multitasking.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca