Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!polyslo.UUCP!dorourke From: dorourke@polyslo.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.windows.news Subject: Re: NeWS on the MacII - Finder version? Message-ID: <8805070838.AA11025@polyslo.UUCP> Date: 8 May 88 00:36:45 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 50 Thank your for the additional information. Having worked with A/UX I can symapathise with the problems that you have outlined. I realize that A/UX is not perfect. But then Unix is not all that great to begin with. I have had few problems porting my C code between compilers, although once I move my code into Unix I abandon all hope of moving it back and forth between enviroments. As far as only running one application at a time, I didn't feel that was the purpose of my original response. As I understood it the person I responded to was unaware of the fact that Apple has in fact choose a windowing system for it's Unix. It has selected X-Windows. Now that X-Windows in "standard" for A/UX that should clear the path for them to implement a "friendly" shell to Unix. If you want to run Mac Binary code, then do it under the Mac OS. Running it under Unix doesn't seem to be a bright idea. I am not a big fan of running different enviroments at the same time. Although it's a good idea it's not always what it's cracked up to be. I am aware of the problems with doing Multi-tasking right now on the Mac. And I also find it stupid that you can't have more than one task out-putting to the screen at once. Although, Unix is Multi-tasking and you can still fork processes off that don't do screen I/O. Addmittidly this is a Kludge, but it's not completely unworkable. When working with Ada on a Vax/11 750 it did allow more than one process to do output at the same time, but that normally screwed up the screen so much that I only had one process doing output anyways. So you can't say that this problem is unique to the Mac. A/UX has problems, I'll admit that. But given the task that Apple had to do they didn't do too bad in my opinion. It's a start and I'm looking forward to seeing the progress that the product makes. But in my opinion if you want a Unix workstation you should go with a Sun anyways. But if you want my real opinion, I dislike Unix and can't understand why someone would want to take a beautiful machine like the Mac II and handicapp it with an OS from the late 60's and early 70's who's major accomplishment was the advent of character bases I/O so that you could tie up a CPU to do I/O all day long. Many of the systems today running Unix are now triing to get away from that character based model, and "improve" performance by doing the character I/O at the workstation, and simply sending messages after the workstation has already dealt with the User. Seems kinda of a funny modification to an OS who's claim to fame is how well it handles characters from the terminal. Anyways, thank you very much for the information. I will keep it in mind when/if I make future postings regarding A/UX. Let's hope Apple keeps making progress to the point that I can say I like Unix. David