[G4] Dual Booting

[Alex]

On Wednesday, Mar 3, 2004, at 22:12 Canada/Eastern, Mel Krewall wrote:

> [...] Low level access to hardware is intentionally isolated in favor 
> of overall system stability. [...]

Low-level hardware access is isolated due to the microkernel nature of 
OS X. Increased stability is only one of the several advantages of this 
type of architecture.

>  The current generation of disk tools for OS X don't have all the 
> functionality that some of the earlier ones did. That was a tradeoff 
> Apple made when it adopted Unix for the base system.

A dubious proposition, on more than one counts. First, I don't agree 
with the premiss; Disk Utility, for instance (which, at its core, is 
essentially fsck in sheep's clothing) is much more powerful than the 
late unlamented Disk First Aid. Second, hard-core tools are plentiful 
in the Unix world -- and how!

>  It's a tradeoff that I am pleased with, but as always, different 
> users have different needs.

That's not the point.  The issue is the statement, "I have yet to find 
an application that will not run just fine in Classic." There are 
applications which simply can't run in Classic, because of the 
architecture of OS X; and with OS X representing less than 2.5% of the 
market, one can't expect to find in short order native apps to replace 
them. Hence the importance of dual-boot machines, in business terms, 
for Apple.

f