multitasking

[Info-Mac]

Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 UW 5/3/83; site uw-beaver
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!info-mac
From: info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac)
Newsgroups: fa.info-mac
Subject: multitasking
Message-ID:
Date: Mon, 6-Aug-84 20:33:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-beaver>.1413
Posted: Mon Aug 6 20:33:05 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 8-Aug-84 19:09:24 EDT
Sender: daemon@uw-beave
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 26

From [email protected] Mon Aug 6 17:32:29 1984
Two issues: 1) the mac could really use multitasking, and,
2) to do this, the mac needs at least 512K and
probably a good fast hard disk too.

In reverse order, the problem with upgrading to 512k is that
it makes the bit about "uniform address space" sound a little
silly- what I heard suggested, and what I hope apple will do,
(any Apple folks listening???) is to offer the memory upgrade
to everyone at a price such that anyone can afford it... or better
still, make the upgrade available free to everyone, so there will
really be a uniform address space among all macs.

Now, the problem of multitasking. How should the process-switching
be handled? Seems to me it would be nice if there was a list of
process handles under the apple menu, with a checkmark alongside
the current task. Select a process handle, and some sort of a
process-handler menu could appear to allow you to modify process
characteristics for the process you selected, or make it the current
process, etc.

Seems like a nice clean way of extending the finder to handle multitasking.
Anyone know what the current thought at apple is about these subjects?

Nick Caruso,
Rael@Cmu-Cs-Spice