Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Jim Manley]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 4:16 PM John Foust via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:

> At 04:40 PM 10/22/2018, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote:
> >As for multitasking, even Windows 10 can easily get bogged down where the
> >GUI becomes essentially unresponsive to user actions.  MS has never
> grasped
> >that it should never be possible to wind up in a situation where the user
> >is stuck watching a rainbow-colored wheel spin, while some set of tasks
> >consumes pretty much every clock cycle on every core, and the user can't
> >even shift context away from whatever is hogging the system.
>
> There are lots of reasons why that can happen in any OS with a GUI
> You've discovered some computer that doesn't ever crash?
>

These aren't crashes, because if you wait long enough (sometimes days), you
eventually get control back.  The system has been allowed to divert
resources to purposes the user doesn't want, away from what the user is
trying to accomplish.  They have no way to change the precedence, short of
getting an OS command prompt and running something akin to *n*x "nice" to
modify the precedence level of a process, or killing processes outright.
Yes, _if_ you can get the Task Manager up, you can do the latter, but a
typical user isn't going to be aware that they can, and very likely would
have no idea how, especially without blowing away something they shouldn't.



> >The Woz was then challenged about Commodore 64 sales far exceeding those
> of
> >Apple ][ and //e models, and he replied, "At Apple, we were always in it
> >for the long haul.  What has Commodore sold lately?"  Commodore, of
> course,
> >had long since gone bankrupt.
>
> CBM didn't do that until 1994, right?
>

Yep,  April 29th, 1994.  The Woz's comment was made December 10th, 2007,
so, that was 13 years later.  That means the celebration was for the 25th
anniversary of the year of the launch of the C64, not the 30th anniversary
- my bad.  Warning to the young people out there: DO NOT UNDER ANY
CIRCUMSTANCES GET OLD!!!  It may seem like a great idea now, but once you
start down that path, THERE'S NO TURNING BACK!!!

All the Best,
Jim