

Mac OS gets multi-tasking - jpablo
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Switcher.txt

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bryanh
This story is especially notable for the little tidbit about both Bill Gates
and Steve Jobs. I'm always impressed by their business acumen.

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swannodette
Also notable as an early anecdote on the development of user
interface/experience. It's funny how complicated simplifying the user
experience can be from the engineering perspective.

Another interesting tidbit was Microsoft's habit of storing bytecode (to be
interpreted) making the developer's life much, much harder. Hmmm, sounds like
curiously similar to more recent news...

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teilo
I don't think it's really fair to call this "multi-tasking". Curtainly a
predecessor, though. A more accurate description would be "task switching",
whereby each application had reserved memory, but only one application ran at
a time. At the user's request, another application would take over and run.
There was no CPU time-slicing. That came later, when Apple introduced the
Multifinder extension in System 7.

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joshu
Andy rocks.

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bho
awesome story. thanks for posting it!

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chbarts
Can I be the first to say, "About time!"

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thewileyone
Hmmm ... wonder if the Memory Shift guys ever sued Apple for IP/copyright
infringement ... fast forward 25 years, you know Steve definitely would ...

