From: johnsd2@vccsouth10.its.rpi.edu (Daniel Norman Johnson)
Subject: Re: Mac OS just sucks -- "ease of use" = "lack of freedom" ?
Reply-To: johnsd2@rpi.edu
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 03:56:19 GMT

In article <800@starnine.UUCP>, mikeh@starnine.UUCP (Mike Haas) writes:
|> In article <z3vtr5_@rpi.edu> johnsd2@rpi.edu writes:
[deletia- joy's o WaitNextEvent, actually..]
|> >|> 
|> >|>   And you end up with jerkyness.
|> >
|> >Well, *I* don't end up with jerkyness. Perhaps YOU do, I wouldn't know.
|> 
|> >But some of the things being said [like that "jerkyness" bit above]
|> >made me think that some people here had only a shakey understanding
|> >of what it is, and how it works.
|> 
|> Oh, make no mistake about it... the Mac is VERY prone to jerkiness.
|> 
|> I sit at a 25 MHz 030 mac every day...many's the time I click on a window
|> or double-click something and there is absolutely NO RESPONSE from
|> the system for several seconds!  Often, I double-click again, maybe
|> several times.

There is something SERIOUSLY wrong with your ci, if it does it
as you describe! Check out the config- do you have any evil INITs
installed that could do this? Try holding down teh shift key as you
start up. Does that help?

If not, try your nearest Mac Guru or repairman. Something is wrong
with it.

|> 
|> It really peeves me...

It would peeve me too, if it happened to me.

[deletia- more symptoms of this]
|> It's insane.

That's it! Your Mac is insane! It's out of its mind! Everything's
explained. Get yer mac to a mental institution!

[yes, I took that out of context. Could not resist.. :)]
 
|> All it takes is some network activity or having the right (wrong) app
|> doing something "in the background".

R u using File Sharing? That is a CPU hog when somebody
is accessing you. I'd turn it off except when you want
to use it. That frees up memory too.

One of the concequences of Co-operative Multitasking is that you write
(and people do write) apps that hog CPU. This is real, I know it.
I try to get better apps, myself.

|>  (some "background"!  keeps
|> things from happening in the foreground!).
|> 

With rotten apps, yes indeed.

|> 
|> Now, the mouse usually MOVES smoothly, 'cause it's movement generates
|> interrupts which don't have to wait for GetNextEvent().

It should be waiting for WaitNextEvent. :) That's been around long
enough, I'd expect most developers to use it. (nitpicking,
I know...)

|>  However, try
|> moving the mouse on a Plus or SE while it's reading from the floppy...
|> You'll witness the very definition of JERKINESS!

That's because the floppy driver is a CPU hog too.

|>  It's smooth on the
|> accelerated machines 'cause they have the bandwidth to handle their
|> interrupts quickly.

It's not that smooth on my cx. hmmmmmmm wonder why this is smooth
for you.

|> I am an Amiga fan, but I'm not blowing smoke here.  The system
|> response of the Mac on ANY processor is horrible.  As soon as
|> stuff starts going on in the background.

Your blowing SOMETHING, cuz this aint always true as you
seem to imply.

Indeed it usually isn't true, but that's because most mac users
use multitasking for task switching (with little or no
background processing, because most programs do not support
this from what I have seen); It works well for that. But
if you try to process something in the background you are relying
on the programmer to do the switching for you, and to do it right.

|> 
|> It's cause the MacOS is so poorly designed for background processing that
|> there are many situations it has to lock out every thing else...due
|> to it's lack of re-entrancy.

This is quite beside teh point w/ co-operative multitasking. The
situation cannot come up ('cept for interrupts, but that's
annother issue)

|>  Many, many restrictions on times when
|> applications can allocate memory, do I/O.
|> 

They can't do these at interrupt time (most apps don't
run at interupt time anyway); I cannot think of any others
right now. Care to let me in on them?

|> System 7 seems to further aggravate the problem with system response.
|> Just turn on "calculate folder sizes" and watch how it runs.

I run this way. Does not seem to affect my performace much (a little,
tho).
I suspect its the problme with YOUR ci cropping up again.

|>  To
|> get absolutely nothing done, enable VM at the same time.

I do. No difference. [it has to be USING the VM, ya know?]

|> 
|> Now, the amiga's not perfect, but I can honestly say that no matter
|> how cpu-bound the machine is, the responses to clicks ALWAYS seem
|> instantaneous.  If it's busy, it may actually do work slower, but
|> the system ALWAYS responds immediately to the mouse.

That's very cool.

-- 
			- Dan Johnson
And God said "Jeeze, this is dull"... and it *WAS* dull. Genesis 0:0

These opinions have had all identifiying marks removed, and are untraceable.
You'll never know whose they are.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy