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At 16:40 +0100 2003.09.08, Simon Wistow wrote: >Now, the interface to MacOS 9 is nice and I have to admit that I do like >that fact that, in general, stuff just works. But I loathe the fact that >it's not pre-emptively multitasking. And has no memory protection. I >know that Apple did have a project to try and fix this (Copland?), and >eventually went with the beast known as Mac OS X, but still. My fucking >ST had pre-emptive multitasking back in 1990 or so. > >I've heard people say that they don't notice. Those people are either >lying, stupid or kidding themselves. It's not that you don't notice the multitasking, it's that it is *not important* for most users. When you are browsing the web or reading email, it simply didn't matter. Sure, if you are trying to do both at the same time and your browser is loading in a plugin or something it is a problem ... but then again, that's a problem on Mac OS X too. For single-user machines -- and I was a power user on Mac OS, doing many things at once -- cooperative multitasking simply wasn't a problem for most users, including me. Memory protection, that was a problem. Everyone noticed that, because everyone had single apps take down the whole machine. But on Mac OS X it is still a problem, because all your GUI apps rely on processes that tend to crash (SystemUIServer, for example), which in turn causes them to crash. >Networking seems to be particularly braindead. True the point and drool >interface works aslong as it's working but when it doesn't fixing things >seems to be a pray and reboot situation. Maybe you're the one who is stupid. ;) It was rare I ever had a problem in Mac OS networking that I didn't know precisely how to fix. Not that I expect everyone else to know ... >And what's with not having a >button to refresh or apply the current settings. It means that if I want >to update my DHCP or experient with settings then I have to go into >network setting, select another network interface, hit ok (which closes >the dialogue) then go into the network setting again and turn it back to >the interface that I want. > >Gah. Yes, that is certainly hate-worthy, though only a mild inconvenience: when you need to make a lot of successive changes, those little things add up. >And if I close the lid then it drops all my network connections. >Instantaneously. Yeah. I was shocked that in Mac OS X, that DIDN'T happen. :D >Grrr. > >And takes a fricking age to wake up again when I open it again. That's more of a function of your hardware, in my experience (I've had just about every laptop Apple's made since the Wall Street, and the newer hardware + software [including a Lombard/500 with Mac OS 9.2.x]) that woke up quite speedily. >If I then fire up Internet Explorer and try and go to a page then >ineveitably my machine locks up. Hard. Dead. If I wait a bit before I do >anything, or fire up another app (such as MacSSH) before I fire up IE >then it seems to work. But if I forget then there's nothing I can do but >reboot. Because there's no 'kill process'. Did you try force quit? Cmd-opt-esc. >And how do I reboot? Ctrl-Alt-Delete? Nah. Hit the pwoer button. Umm, >no. Apple+power button. Sometimes. But generally I just have to pop the >battery and pull out the power cord. You can hold the power button in for a few seconds to force-reboot any modern Mac. Usually, though, ctrl-cmd-power will work instantaneously. It is very rare that the holding-in-the-power-button trick will not work. >Of course half the time the Mac then does the blinking question mark >thing until I leave it for half an hour and try again. You could always try to reset your PRAM or OpenFirmware, but we won't get into that. :) -- Chris Nandor pudge@xxxxx.xxx http://pudge.net/ Open Source Development Network pudge@xxxx.xxx http://osdn.com/
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