Broken Windows

Daring Fireball ^ | 6/4/2004 | John Gruber

[adam_az]

What's your point? That CNN should report on Linux vulnerabilities, so that hackers attack Linux more than Windows, taking the heat off windows?

Actually, I find very little report of any computer news on CNN

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/

look yourself

[Bush2000]

You're either not trying very hard -- or you're incompetent. Which is it?

http://search.cnn.com/cnn/search?Coll=cnn_xml&QuerySubmit=true&Page=1&source=cnn&sites=cnn&query=Microsoft+Windows+worm

[antiRepublicrat]

The APIs went through a thin "thunking" layer between 16- and 32-bit code.

And in Classic, the APIs go through a thin "thunking" layer between Classic APIs and OS X APIs.

Apparently, you've never tried the "Run As..." capability built into XP.

I use it all the time. Runas only allows you to run an application as a different user with various aspects of that user's network environment and credentials. It is a very old UNIX feature that's been in Windows since 2000.

[antiRepublicrat]

But even if I did, the thunking layer that I described above ran a helluva lot faster than your emulated crap.

You must still be thinking of VirtualPC, with Windows running on a Mac. In that case the Mac has to emulate x86 hardware for the PC. That's slow. Classic doesn't do that since it can already run natively on the hardware.

Once again, THERE IS NO EMULATION!

You actually run full OS 9 inside the Classic environment, with OS X handling the API calls.

[Bush2000]

Once again, THERE IS NO EMULATION!

From Wikipedia:

Classic is an application for Apple Computer's Mac OS X that emulates Mac OS 9.x and so lets users run older, pre-Mac OS X, un-Carbonised applications within Mac OS X, rather than having to dual-boot.

[antiRepublicrat]

Wiki is wrong. To run Classic, you need an actual installation of OS 9 on the machine, which is modified by OS X to be able to run as Classic mode. You can even boot into it instead of OS X, but if you want to run Classic and native apps side by side, you need to use Classic within OS X. Instead of accessing hardware directly, Classic now makes calls to OS X, which processes things. It is not emulation, but another OS layer (like thunk16). The Classic environment even gets a couple advantages from this mode, like better memory management (you can set preferred memory extremely high, which you couldn't do before, and OS X handles the allocation to Classic, making virtual and actual memory look the same) and better printer management.

The better memory management can actually make a Classic application run faster than booting straight into OS 9. Here's a link for you for some comparison tests. But remember, these were done using 10.1, and OS X is a lot faster now, so results now would probably weigh even more heavily towards Classic.

There's a funny side-effect of setting your preferred memory so high to take advantage of OS X's memory management -- if you boot straight into OS 9 you'd better lower them back down before running applications or things will get rough.

[Swordmaker]

If you ran OS 9.2 on the same hardware and compared the perf of native apps to those running in "Classic" mode under OS X, the latter would run slower. Emulation is slower than native execution. Don't fight reality.

Excuse me, Bush, but the ORIGINAL OS for the G3 architecture was Macintosh OS 8.6. The original OS for the G4 archictecture was OS 9. BOTH will dual boot into OS 9 or OS X, so it is easy to compare the performance of native applications in both environments... literally on the same hardware. With the improvements in the routines that are handled by the OS X from the Classic Mode, it RUNS FASTER. I speak from experience and knowledge, unlike YOU who speak from ignorance and no experience on the platform in question. So your statement is just so much bovine excrement!

[Lael]

BTTT!!!

[antiRepublicrat]

Did you like the speed test I linked to in 146?

[Swordmaker]

Did you like the speed test I linked to in 146?

Good find. The tests seem to have shut Bush2000 up.

I had not seen those tests before. I was speaking from personal experience on the apps that I use in Classic... the speed up was extraordinary.