From: raist@rmece02.upr.clu.edu (Ricardo Hernandez | 802-36-4453)
Subject: Re: A-MaxII+ ?
Organization: UPR-Mayaguez--ASEL Lab
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 20:58:18 GMT

In article <mike_steiner-141092124141@192.35.50.131>, mike_steiner@qm.claris.com (Mike Steiner) writes:
[stuff deleted]
|> > >Well, if all you want is a game machine....
|> > 
|> > ....then BUY A NINTENDO.
|> > 
|> > If you want an OS which supports <real> multitasking (read: pre-emptive), 
|> > then buy an Amiga, NeXT, Sun, Unix box of some type, or...(snicker snicker...)
|> > an IBM w/ OS2 (Baww ha hahahaha!!! yeah, right). If you want to do serious
|> > video work with a more affordable budget, buy Amiga. If you want to do a lot
|> > of work in DTP, buy Mac or NeXT. Different platforms have their own strengths
|> > and weaknesses. It just happens that the lack of pre-emptive multitasking is
|> > a weakness of Mac which has not been fully addressed (YET).
|> 
|> For the 10e100th time, co-operative multitasking is just as real as
|> pre-emptive multitasking.

   Major BS.  When you have a cooperative multitasking OS, things do not
run as "smoothly" as in a pre-emptive multitasking.  And from the programer
point of view, it is a nightmare since his applications HAVE TO KNOW
that they are in such environment and don't TAKE CONTROL over the
execution of the system.  This is not like this in Preemptive.

   Another thing is with priorities.  Preemptive multitasking will
intercept the program properly, with cooperative you have to pray that
the applications "behave properly" so that they comply with any 
priority scheme.  Imagine you are writing a ray-tracer, and you as a
programmer have to REMEMBER to pass control to the system.  BLAGH! 

   This all translates to POOR PERFORMANCE and OVERHEAD.

  And say, for example,
can you on a Mac FORMAT a disk while continue working?

    Answer NO.

  What happens when you are donwloading through the modem on a Mac and
try to access the disk drive at the same time?

  What happens when you are copying a file to disk and you write on 
MS Word very fast (like I do)? - the copying temporarily stops
   
  So NO, it ain't better (cooperative vs preemptive).  If not, then why
apple is taking steps towards preemptive?

|> 
|> > It is obvious to me that you have no clue about Amigas if you only think of
|> > them as game machines.  That's as ridiculous as saying that a Mac is a game
|> > machine. Just because Amigas have some graphics facilities which make it
|> > relatively easy to make "killer" games does NOT make it a game machine. Does
|> > a clone's ability to make a great boat anchor mean that it has no other 
|> > purpose? err, well, this may be a bad example... 
|> 
|> Sheesh.  Please reread the original message, and my reply.  Does every bit
|> of humor require an emoticon for people to get it?  If I had been serious,
|> I would not have ended with an elipsis; it would have finished the
|> sentence.

   Ok, so if it was humor, I'll make a humouruos comment:

   Mac - If you only want DTP....

|>  
|> +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
|> |Now that I have a reader that can do .sigs, I can't think of a witty |
|> |one to put here, so I won't.  All normal disclaimers apply.          |
|> +---------------------------------------------------------------------+

-- 

- Raist

Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy