MultiFinder
MultiFinder is an extension for the Apple Macintosh's classic Mac OS, introduced on August 11, 1987[1] and included with System Software 5.[2] It adds cooperative multitasking of several applications at once – a great improvement over the previous Macintosh systems, which can only run one application at a time. With the advent of System 7, MultiFinder became a standard integrated part of the operating system and remained so until the introduction of Mac OS X.
History[edit]
Background[edit]
The first Macintosh was released in 1984, and Apple's developers made an early decision that the machine's 128 KB of RAM was so limited that they must abandon the application multitasking functionality that Apple had developed for the Lisa. As the successive Macintosh hardware models were released with much more RAM being the key feature, new programming techniques were developed as workarounds to allow users to run concurrent applications. Desk Accessories became a staple through the lifespan of System 6; and the Switcher would give way to the MultiFinder, which then became directly integrated into System 7.
Reception[edit]
Upon MultiFinder's 1987 release, PC Magazine noted it for beating IBM's competing OS/2 multitasking operating system to market, and said the System with MultiFinder "isn't a true multitasking operating system, though it's much more than a context switcher".[8] Jerry Pournelle of BYTE in 1989 said that "while MultiFinder doesn't work very well yet, DESQView on a big 80386 machine certainly does".[22] In 1990, InfoWorld tested the four mainstream desktop multitasking options: DESQView, OS/2 1.2, Windows 3.0, and System 6 with MultiFinder. MultiFinder was viewed overall positively for speed, ease of use, and value. Its presence halved the speed of file transfer and printing compared to the single-tasking System 6 without MultiFinder, but this was still comparable to Windows and DesqView and much faster than OS/2. These tradeoffs were seen as typical of contemporary add-on multitaskers compared to the natively architected but less friendly OS/2.[16]