From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Subject: Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 16:54:20 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 <1avro0INNdl0@matt.ksu.ksu.edu> nan@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Nan Zou) writes:

>>>>* Support for "live copy and paste" between applications that aren't 
>>>>running
>>> Don't know what that means.

>>If you change something in document A that you've pasted into document B,
>>the changes get updated in B.

>Hmm, sounds like DDE, no?

No.  DDE requires both applications to be running when the update
takes place -- a significant limitation that publish and subscribe
does not have.

Plus, publish and subscribe is so imple to use it doesn't even 
*need* a three-letter acronym. 


>>commonplace in the Mac market, and some Macs have this built in. I haven't
>>seen the same for the PC market.

>All the 24-bit video cards have Windows drivers, if they don't, they
>can't expect to stay in business.

But not all Windows drivers are compatible with all Windows programs.
"Device independence" on PCs is a joke.  Even programs that don't *use*
the video display, like network drivers, won't work with some video
drivers and displays. 


>>> HIG in IBM world is CUA (Common User Access), current spec is CUA 92.
>>A) is it any good? and B) is anything written to support it)
>Good?  That's a very subjective term, each person has his/her own tastes
>and opinions, I personally think it's quite intuitive, your milage may
>vary.  

Yeah, well, you see, that's the problem.  Everyone in the PC world
thinks that human factors issues are entirely subjective, each
person has his/her own tastes and opinions, it's simply a matter
of aesthetics, etc., etc., etc. 


>Specific hardware?  Not necessarily, you can run multimedia apps with
>existing hardware, even digitized sound from the internal speaker/
>beeper.  

You can play digitized sound using hardware that can't synthesize
waveforms and can only play a single note of fixed duration?  You
really haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about here,
have you?  This is just as silly as the time you told me that two
PC sound boards produced files that were 100% compatible, despite
the fact that one was an 8-bit digitizer and the other 16-bit. 

>But QuickTime also needs specific hardware, for starters, you
>need a Mac, ;-) also you need the ROMs with 32-bit QuickDraw in them.
>Right?

Why?  32-bit Quickdraw loads just fine from disk if it isn't in ROM.


>>doesn't, although it fully supports additional hardware. 
>And so does Windows and MMPM (Multimedia PM), why is it considered an
>avdvantage of QuickTime when it supports additional hardware and a
>disadvantage of Windows and OS/2 when they can do the same?

Please pay attention, Nan.  He said that Quicktime *supports* additional
hardware, but Windows Multimedia *requires* additional hardware.  It's
the difference between a car that allows you to buy a new engine and
a car that requires you to buy a new engine.


>>Important hardware issue. Hardware is part of the system.

>But that's not what we're talking about here, we're supposed to talk
>about features of System 7 and OS/2.

An OS generally requires hardware to run on.  You can always
claim that your OS would do wonderful things -- if only it
ran on different hardware.


>Bill, you keep saying that features like preemptive MT have negligible
>benefit to the user and therefore are a nonfactors, I disagree, maybe
>users are just not aware of the potential of preemptive MT, 

Or maybe they are aware of what a dog preemptive multitasking
really is.

>when I was running Windows I was very conscious about how many apps 
>I have running (I usually keep the number below 10, around 5), with 
>OS/2, I don't even think twice about starting another process, since 
>I know I can switch between them instantaneously and no one program 
>can bog the whole system down.

Ten programs under Windows?  Hah!  Maybe if you're talking little
toy applications.  I've seldom managed to get five programs to run 
without crashing the system.  And if I start Ventura Publisher, I
can't start any more programs until I quit that.

On the Macintosh, however, I can open as many programs as I have
memory for.

Bog the whole system down?  Yes, if I pick up a brush in a paint
program and start drawing with it, it may "bog down" those poor
background applications.  In return, I get a nice, smooth drawing.
When I'm done with the brush, the other applications get control
for a while.  

On a preemptive system, if I pick up the paintbrush, the OS,
being completely blind to what is going on, continues to give
the background apps their fair share of CPU cycles.  As a result,  
the brush paints unevenly, and the drawing has ugly gaps in it.

Oh, you say I can increase the priority of the foreground process?
Okay, I do that.  Now, my brush paints evenly because the foreground
process gets plenty of CPU cycles, while the background processes are
bogged down -- not just while I'm actively painting, but all the time.


>As to the benefit of memory protection, I think lots of Mac users here 
>would disagree with you.

I don't think someone who apparently knows so little about the
Mac should speak for Mac users.

Even with perfect memory protection, Windows would not be any
better than the Mac with no memory protection at all.  Why?
Because the Windows applications I use crash at least 10 times 
as often as my Mac applications do.  So if one crash on the
Mac brings down 10 applications, I'm no worse off than having
10 crashes under Windows, each of which affects only a single
application.  However, most programs that crash on the Macintosh
do not bring down the entire house.  I can almost always Force
Quit the offending application and continue with the rest of my
work.

The real solution to program crashes is not memory protection.
It's for programmers to write applications that don't crash.