Multitasking

What is it?

For the computer sciences multitasking is a method to permit multiples task in the same period of time. The tasks share the processing ressources of the computer. For resume multitasking OS is a system that is capable of running more than one program at a time.

Obviously multitasking is very common today, and we don't see this presence. The first viewed of a "multitasking" dates back to the 80s years.

1981 Xerox Star

1981 Xerox Star Without the advantage of hardware interrupts, its designers supported an event-driven interface by creating a multitasking architecture.

Apple Lisa

1983 Apple Lisa was developed to the same use of Xerox Star, for an office computing system, and the OS used a multitasking GUI to interacted with the user.

Apple Machintosh 128k

1984 Apple Machintosh 128k was the first Machintosh, with a graphical user interface rather than a command-line interface a multitasking.

IBM TopView

Top View

1984 IBM TopView is a text-mode PC DOS, multitasking and object-oriented.

Atari TOS/GEM

1985 Atari TOS/GEM, The TOS desktop uses icon to represent files and devices, and windows to display info. It also used the file to execute determined action, like a command-line.

Amiga 1000

1984 Commodor Amiga 1000 can even display multiple screens at different resolutions on a single monitor, all at the same time.

Windows 1.0

1985-87 Windows 1.0, in this version the multitasking was limited at the MS-DOS programs but with the version 2.1 the multitasking became really possible. It permits to several MS-DOS programs to run in parallel instead than suspend background applications.

NextStep

NeXTStep

1989 NextStep, developed by NeXT Computer is an object-oriented and multitasking os, it is notable to have been a preeminent implementation. The tool kits offered a lot of power and was used to build every programs on the machine. Because of this option and the used C language NextStep become quickly a reference for programming.