From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Subject: Re: First Taligent Won't Run Existing Apps
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 19:49:03 GMT
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In <ajross.714324371@husc10> ajross@husc10.harvard.edu (Andrew Ross) writes:

>Um... Taligent is a JOINT venture.  Apple is, and will be, making
>precicely the same mistakes as IBM.  

Taligent is a joint venture to *develop* a new operating system.
It has little or nothing to do with marketing decisions (such as
whether to release the OS with or without a compatiblity layer),
whcih will be made by the two respective companies.


>You're reading too far into this.  Guarino's statement was that Taligent
>is/will be marketed to the University sector where BSD Unix currently
>dominates.  You seem to take this as a statement that Taligent is looking
>ONLY at the university sector.

The context of Guarino's statement concerned encouraging software 
developers to write for code for Taligent (thus obviating the need
for an initial compatibility layer).  Guarino does not seem to realize
that while little UNIX toys like emacs may come from universities,
real software is developed by profitmaking companies in the private sector.


>Oh please.  Does System 7 have Built in TCP/IP?  

Oh, no!  System 7 can't possibly be as good as Windows NT.  Why,
it's builtin networking doesn't have snazzy initials!

>Pre-Emptive Multitasking?

No, thank God!  I don't want an OS that can come along and hit
an application over the head while it's doing something critical
like updating the screen or interacting with the user.  Preemptive
multitasking only works well for noninteractie, batch-oriented
systems or interactive systems with multiple processors.  

>Memory Protection?  

Apparently, yes.  This is discussed in Inside Mac Vol VI, although
few details are given.  Not that I care very much.  Memory protection
is a poor substitute for programs that work properly and don't crash,
and there aren't many Windows programs that I can say that about.

>Threads?  

No?  I guess the threads package on my Developer's CD is a figment
of my imagination, then, huh?

>Process Ownership?  

Again, see Inside Mac VI.  You'll find an entire chapter on process
management.

>Symmetric Multi-Processing?  

I'm not even sure what this is.  If it's anything more than
marketing speak, I'd like to hear more.

>The list goes on.  

Yes, you forget aliasing, publish-and-subscribe, AppleEvents,
Quicktime... all of Windows NT no doubt implements, right? ;-)

>There is a Pre-Beta release already available (for $69) that 
>has all of these features ALREADY IMPLEMENTED. 

There's a big difference between implemented and working.
The final release of Windows 3.1 also has a lot of nifty
features in it which, alas, never work.  For example, ALT-SHIFT-DEL
to kill a hung process.  But after trying that after, oh, 50 or 60
program crashes, I've come to the conclusion that, like Bullwinkle's
hat trick, it never works.

>Please do some fact checking the next time you want to claim that NT is
>just a bad System 7 clone.

Okay, I checked.  It still is.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc