Tom Halfhill's cover story on Apple (``Apple's High-Tech Gamble,'' December 1994) accentuated the negative. He repeatedly told us that Windows 95--which isn't even released yet--will have wonderful innovations, such as preemptive multitasking. In a passing comment he says, ``Mac users are fairly well served by the robust cooperative multitasking and crash recovery of System 7.x.'' However, nowhere does he remind us that the real reason ``innovations'' such as preemptive multitasking are critical to Windows users is because Windows is a fragile shell on an ugly and expert-tolerant (as opposed to user-friendly) DOS. Apple has ``delivered the basics sooner,'' and these are the real innovations, not limitations, detailed in the article's time line.
Jon Muller
Carbondale, IL
jmuller@siu.edu
Flexible C++
Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it
is
theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.
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Do We Overlook Apple's Innovations?
