From: wgsohne@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (William Guido Sohne)
Subject: Re: Author's reply: re: The sin of MicroSoft
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 10:22:12 GMT

In article <1993Jan20.002859.891@aspentec.com> tto@aspentec.com writes:

[stuff deleted]

> 
>  I have never said that MicroSoft does not provide these features (and
>  let's not quibble over how well MicroSoft has implemented them features).
>  I have only said that MicroSoft put the importance of these features
>  below the GUI, and has delayed offering them to the public until they
>  got their GUI done.
>
>  Companies like PharLap disagree with MicroSoft's philosophy and offer
>  these operating system features (in the form of a DOS extender) without
>  bundling it with a GUI.  These companies are quite successful and DOS
>  extenders are used by many popular end-user type programs (e.g., 123R3).
>  However, DOS extenders would have been entirely unnecessary had MicroSoft
>  decided to put these features in DOS.
>

	The problem with that approach is that DOS is too simple and is just
not designed to have those features. Sure, we all want an object-oriented file
system, multitasking, a built in DOS extender and all that stuff. The problem
is that if we put those in DOS, many, many programs would be broken. Even
DR-DOS while offering the same features as DOS, is probably incompatible with 
certain programs like it was with Win 3.1. Microsoft made multitasking and a
GUI and DOS compatibility possible with much less overhead than that of OS/2 2
(an important factor when dealing with a huge base of installed machines).
	They created the demand for OS/2 2.0 by incrementally increasing the
features available to PC users and thereby increasing the number of machines
bought that were equipped to handle the new operating systems coming in.
	That's why they removed real mode from Win 3.1 - so that people would
be forced to upgrade either their memory or their machines.

[more stuff deleted]

>- Joe Discar (discar@nosc.mil) wrote
>
>  >My opinion on why so much has been focused on GUIs is that multitasking
>  >is not as important without a GUI.  Case in point, Unix has had
>  >multitasking abilities for years--but unless one was a programmer,
>  >programs were more or less run "serially"; and multitasking was
>  >basically used by a novice user (if one could say Unix _had_ any novice
>  >users) for drudgery such as pipes or servers
>
>  Unix is a time-sharing system.  It makes use of multi-tasking so as to
>  serve more than one user concurrently.  Even if no individual user is
>  making use of multi-tasking features, the operating system itself is
>  still doing multi-tasking all the time.
>
	
	That's exactly right. UNIX  is a time-sharing system. *But* the PC is
not. Multitasking on a PC is for the purposes of a single user (most of the
time). That's why PC multitasking needs a GUI as a front end - so that
multitasking is actually a useful feature, not just a cool gizmo that one has
but doesn't use. Witness how much easier multitasking is under Windows as
opposed to on the Mac - with the Mac you can't have two programs running
side by side with access to both their menu bars.

[more stuff deleted]

>- William Guido Sohne (wgsohne@phoenix.princeton.edu) wrote:
>
>  >Don't rail at Microsoft for making things easier.
>
>  I have never said that a GUI was not useful; but they are not more
>  important than things like virtual memory.
>
>  >Rail at them for not including more power and for procrastinating on NT.
>
>  The lack of power is precisely what I am complaining about--like the
>  inability to use a different GUI :-).
>
>- Would NT redeem MicroSoft?  Well, I'll wait and see.
>

	Taken out of context, my remarks do seem to reinforce your argument.
But as I said in my posting, the point is that powerful features have been
made available to a whole lot of people at minimum pain.
	I just wished the feature set would be more complete.

>Tak.

Guido