You do need to keep some guardrails in place to help ensure that however. All of this is why Apple went through the incredibly awkward and painful process of moving the entire Mac ecosystem to the preemptive multitasking UNIX-based system called OSX.Īctually, considering the fragility of the entire principle the old Mac OS is based on, it's kind of amazing that it does work as well as it does. In the old Mac OS, memory allocation was fixed (by the settings in the "get Info" window) and it's easy to have an app simply run out of memory, thereby causing it to hang and therby causing the entire system to go belly-up.
Although it is now rarely used in larger systems except for specific applications, cooperative multitasking was once the only scheduling scheme employed by Microsoft Windows and Classic Mac OS to enable multiple applications to run simultaneously.Īs a cooperatively multitasked system relies on each process regularly giving up time to other processes on the system, one poorly designed program can consume all of the CPU time for itself, either by performing extensive calculations or by busy waiting both would cause the whole system to hang.Īlthough "one poorly designed program consuming all of the CPU time for itself" is a common cause of "freezes" it's not the only cause. This approach, which was eventually supported by many computer operating systems, is known today as cooperative multitasking. I've excerpted this from Wikipedia "Cooperative Multitasking":Įarly multitasking systems used applications that voluntarily ceded time to one another. I never liked those… turntable-tape deck-CD player-tuner combo stereos either. Please excuse my blabbering-on here if you’re already geared in this manner… some may not be aware of this “eliminate-the-variables” approach.
Here, trimmed down to the absolute bare necessities after many years, only the “internet portal” machine freezes, crashes or pukes around here anymore, thankfully. I use a much newer iMac for email & internet and “sneaker-net” to move files for upload or download. Again, with no unnecessary or extraneous un-needed “fat”. One for the raw sound files and “preliminary work” and a second Mac for additional “polish” (strings and other effects) before tweaks & final output or archiving… with back-ups written along the way as he progresses towards his finished piece. And all three are tied together over a LAN (each workstation has dual monitors for tool palettes, etc.).Ī friend of mine (DAW) operates in a similar fashion, only sharing between just two Macs. Another is for 3-D modeling & rendering (OS 9.2.2), while a third (OS 9.2.2 & 10.4.6) Mac is dedicated to Illustrator and the merging of images (and text) for final output. One is a scan & Photoshop station (OS 8.6). The “division of labor” ‘round here is placed on 3 different "older" Macs. And I do mean completely stripped down except for their intended specific use. No internet, mail, music, games, etcetera on my graphics workstations. Maybe common knowledge… or standard practice, but “trimming the fat” or “paring down” what apps, CPs or extensions (that you don’t really need) is optimal for stability on any “workstation” regardless of OS version or its’ intended duty.