# Multi-tasking



## Rhisiart (Sep 19, 2007)

Is Windows any better or worse at multi-tasking than MacOSX (obviously allowing for hardware specs)?


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## lurk (Sep 19, 2007)

Define your metric for "better"  it is defiantly more cromulent.


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## eric2006 (Sep 19, 2007)

OS X has a much better way of handling multitasking, UI-wise (IMO). Seems like Leopard will bring this over the top.
I find that I'm always multitasking with a PC. I usually run Firefox, antivirus, antispyware, registry cleanup, disk defragmenter, and Windows update. Seriously, though. I saw Vista running on a brand-new gateway, and it made a G3 look high-end.


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## fryke (Sep 19, 2007)

Viable. It made a G3 look viable.


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## symphonix (Sep 19, 2007)

Generally it is not that much of a difference these days. The Mac platform does have a few technical advantages (better caching and memory management) and a few interface advantages (Expose) but from a technical standpoint the difference is nowhere near as marked as it was in the 80s and 90s.


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## Lt Major Burns (Sep 19, 2007)

Windows had pre-emptive multitasking loooong before the mac.  bill shipped it in 95...


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## lurk (Sep 19, 2007)

Yeah but we are all running NeXT Step derived OSs on our Macs and those had preemptive multitasking back in 1988.  So neener-neener-neener


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## Mikuro (Sep 20, 2007)

Depends on your perspective. At the core, both use preemptive multitasking. The real difference is in the typical way applications are designed more than the OS itself. In ways Windows comes out on top here, and in ways OS X does &#8212; but for better or worse, Windows has been slowly becoming more like the Mac OS in this regard for years.

Preemptive multitasking only prevents processes from stalling other processes; it cannot prevent processes from stalling themselves. One advantage of Windows is that its applications tend to spawn a separate process for each window/document, so each window functions independently of the others. In OS X, a single application process will frequently control many windows, so a task in one window will halt any tasks in another, even if they are (from the user's perspective) unrelated. There are never duplicate application processes running in OS X.

A real-world example of this is web browsers. Let's say you open two browser windows in Safari. They're two windows, but they are part of the same application process, so when one is busy, the other will be unusable. On Windows, each browser window would likely be its own process, so they would be completely independent.

This also has many implications as far as usability goes. For instance, I very much like being able to quickly bring ALL the windows of one application to the foreground in OS X, but AFAIK there's no way to do that on Windows (correct me if I'm wrong). As far as how the user can actually manage multiple tasks, I much prefer OS X, but it's harder to judge this objectively.

Also, the advantage of Windows is dimninishing as application design is evolving to be more Mac-like. For example, all modern browsers use tabs, and any number of tabs in the same window will most likely be controlled by just one process (although I've never used IE7, so I can't say for certain how it works; maybe MS did something fancy). Whether this is good or bad is a matter for debate. I have certainly wished many times that loading background tabs in Safari would not prevent me from scrolling the foreground tab, but it does. This could certainly be fixed while keeping it all in one process, but clearly developers think it's too difficult to implement.

I've always felt that one of the Mac OS's great strengths is the way you can work with multiple documents and multiple applications at once without anything getting in your way. This was true even in the old days before OS X, even though the classic Mac OS lacked preemptive multitasking &#8212; again, usability is more about application design than technology. In System 7 through OS X, it is very rare for an application to even _try_ to take over the entire screen, for instance, whereas in Windows this is seen as so important that it's built into the OS itself in the form of the "maximize" button. It seems to me like Windows (or perhaps I should say "Windows culture") has never fully shaken the "one application at a time" paradigm of the 80s and early 90s.


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## hawki18 (Sep 20, 2007)

lurk said:


> Yeah but we are all running NeXT Step derived OSs on our Macs and those had preemptive multitasking back in 1988.  So neener-neener-neener



But only since OS10 so Mac has not had it since 1988


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## fryke (Sep 20, 2007)

"A/UX was first released in 1988", quote from Wikipedia about A/UX, Apple's UNIX.


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## bbloke (Sep 20, 2007)

I think Mikuro put it very well.  

I do find when using a PC, however, that if one window for a program locks up, when I try "End Task" it will kill all windows associated with that program.  Also, I find that one program can at times lock up the rest of the machine, although that does not occur too often, thankfully.

When burning CDs on a PC, I have noticed that if I do other things at the same time, it sometimes results in "burning a coaster."  I've found, through experience, that I should leave the PC alone when it is burning a disk.  By contrast, I have not had this sort of problem with my Mac, which is running OS X.  

I'm certainly not asserting that Windows does not multitask and OS X does, but I do feel like the multitasking is a bit more fragile when using Windows.


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## Giaguara (Sep 20, 2007)

Windows is a pain. 
PDF integration to browsers suck. When you open a PDF in FF, you need to move the mouse around, can't use any shortcuts for find, next tab, move, close, etc... and searching on a PDF of 4 pages takes as long as searching in a whole bible in OS X PDFs.
Dialogues are retarded. "Dismiss" a meeting in Outlook? No thanks, I want to IGNORE it, not dismiss. Are you sure you want to cancel? Yes, I hit cancel...
F9 and F10 keys as in Mac OS X, I need those. The alt tab gets annoying, I still need to hit 20 keys to move when I move to a certain window or to go thru the taskbar. When I hit an item on taskbar if it has multiple windows, the behavior is retarded again...
Plus all programs are in a slow to access start bar, smb default connection security was maybe good for 1940s standards, all services are in odd locations and most details seem very poorly thought. Including shortcuts. Hitting ctrl-something instead of cmd-something feels on the wrists after a full work day.
Search in Windows is ... poor. 

It's not really exceptional multitasking if you have too many things sucking on resources in system tray, task bar that isn't functional (when I click on an application, I want ALL its windows open), with the copy and paste annoyances... it's like trying to work in an office when something interrupts you every 30 seconds. And you can't close the door and unplug the phone. I just don't ever feel using Windows can get anyone do productive work, unless they are connected to their server and use PuTTy all day to get their job done via ssh on a console. Multitabbing.

I'm so happy that Windows is enough as a virtual machine at work if you want to use anything else...  Or could run Windows and get 60 % of the job done in whatever OS in Workstation.


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