🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <jragosta-0809950828450001@ppp-1013.dca.net>,
Joe Ragosta <jragosta@dca.net> wrote:
>In article <DEJ81J.2JK@frobozz.sccsi.com>, kevin@frobozz.sccsi.com (Kevin
>Brown) wrote:
>
>> I'll certainly agree that preemptive multitasking isn't as much of an
>> improvement over cooperative multitasking as protected memory is over
>> unprotected memory, but it's nonetheless an improvement that has the
>> potential to be rather significant.  PMT on a Mac would mean that my
>> fiancee could have run her statistical analysis on her data and
>> continued to work on her thesis at the same time, instead of waiting
>> hours for the analysis to complete.
>
>Re-read your paragraph. You admit that PMT isn't much of an improvement
>over CMT.

Errm, perhaps *you* need to re-read my paragraph.  I said that PMT
isn't *as much* of an improvement over CMT as protected memory is over
unprotected memory.  It's still a significant improvement.  Perhaps I
should put it another way.  Unprotected memory versus protected memory
is like the difference between night and day.  CMT versus PMT is like
the difference between sunrise and noon.

> Then you state that your fiance can do her work with PMT but not
>with CMT. Isn't that a tad inconsistent? In fact, there's no reason she
>can't send her statistical analysis into the background and work on her
>thesis with cooperative multitasking. 

She can't send her statistical analysis into the background if the
statistics package wasn't written with that capability.  That's the
nature of CMT: the *program* has to do the task-switching.

>> It's not like PMT is groundbreakingly new technology or anything.
>> It's been around a long time.  There's no good excuse for any modern
>> OS to use CMT over PMT.
>
>If both work adequately, why not? Apple has had more important things to
>work on.

Like balloon help?  Come on...I'll be the first to admit that in the
beginning, they may have been better off concentrating on the user
interface, but at the point where they implemented CMT to begin with,
they were obviously putting effort and resources into the multitasking
problem.  It was stupid of them to not implement PMT at that time.

> Now that they've gotten the PowerMac transition behind them,
>they'll work on PMT. I just don't think it's that big of a deal that it
>hasn't been done yet.

Tell me...why work on PMT *now* when they surely have "more important
things to work on", like improving the user interface, eh?


-- 

				Kevin Brown
                      SGI Customer Support Engineering