4 ms·
Both Macs and PCs of the time had a very limited ability to run multiple programs at once - Macs had Desktop Accessories (Calculator and Alarm clock, others lat
by zdw 2y ago
Both Macs and PCs of the time had a very limited ability to run multiple programs at once - Macs had Desktop Accessories (Calculator and Alarm clock, others later), and PCs had TSR programs that would you could invoke in various ways (Borland's Sidekick PIM being one example).
Later the ability to run multiple programs at once became possible - the Mac got Switcher in 1985, then Multifinder in 1987, and there were various methods on the PC for running multiple programs at once.
Even though these were not preemptive multitasking, these solutions were viewed as "good enough" at the time, so there wasn't really that big of a gap with the Amiga.
Also, popularity - it was the early 90's before I saw an Amiga hands-on as a primarily Mac user - the reaction then was more "why would you want this low resolution thing" when SVGA and higher resolutions were somewhat common on both Macs and PCs.
- amichail 2y agoDid Mac and PC users know what preemptive multitasking was in 1985?
- wmf 2y agoMostly no. People didn't have access to the Internet so most of their computer knowledge came from books or magazines but those tended to be siloed by platform. Even a "power user" who subscribed to PC World or MacUser wouldn't know much about Amiga or Unix.
- zdw 2y agoByte was probably the most cross-platform magazine at time, and even then there were only so many pages to cover things - it ended up being mostly PC, Mac, and Unix workstations, IIRC.
- basementcat 2y agoFor the PC, there was TopView, MS-DOS 4.00 (multitasking), DESQView and others. However, most people just adopted workflows that weren't reliant on multitasking (not unlike how most people currently use their phones). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_TopView https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_TopView https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_4.0_(multitasking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_4.0_(multitasking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview