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A Multitasking GUI, Circa 1982
autospa points out a post (with video) showing off the multi-tasking abilities of the Blit terminal, developed in 1982 by Rob Pike and Bart Locanthi. Before Windows, before X, and before the Mac (but somewhat later than the Xerox Alto), the Blit terminal provided a multitasking, mouse-driven graphical interface; it took a Unix server on the other side to do the heavy lifting, though.
Contrary to TFA, multitasking existed before 1982
Does it run linux?
I don't care so much if it were the first or not. It was still cool for it's time. In my mind, this one being among the first was still quite an achievement.. because if you think about it, not much has changed since then. It really hasn't. Sure the boxes are faster today, and the applications more sophisticated... but the basics of multitasking are more or less the same today.... we stand on the shoulders of giants.
On another note, I like the look of the portrait oriented monitor. It looks to be so much better suited to documents, and probably coding, than the mostly landscape orientations that came later.
Huh?
... Linux runs it!
In 1985 the Amiga brought "real" multitasking to the home computer using masses, many years before it was available in Windows or Mac environments.
Of course multitasking was around long before that, but I think the Amiga 1000 is what made it available to Joe Sixpack, who wasn't going to be using heavy duty Unix workstations or what ever.
I had one of these on my desk while it was being tested in the Labs before the commercial product was released. When you got up after an afternoon staring at all that monochrome green, the rest of the world looked slightly pink :^) Test users had to provide regular feedback. One consequence was that every few weeks they came around and replaced the keyboard with an improved version. The last one was easily the best programmer's keyboard I ever used: all keys in the right place, wonderful touch.
It wasn't useless and did multitask. True it was via special applications referred to as 'accessories'. However, if you used a wedge you could stick any application in as an accessory and as long as it didn't need to write to the screen to keep running while back grounded, it worked rather well..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'll say. Try 1968. December 9, to be precise:
Check out my novel.
If only I could run that on my iPad, I'd be able to multitask on it, too!
The CB App. What's your 20?
My A500 shits on your ST
. .
[The Atari ST's TOS/GEM] wasn't useless and did multitask. True it was via special applications referred to as 'accessories'. However, if you used a wedge you could stick any application in as an accessory and as long as it didn't need to write to the screen to keep running while back grounded, it worked rather well..
Let's put this in context. That somewhat stretched, certainly limited and somewhat kludgey version of "multitasking" might sound passable compared to MS-DOS-based PCs of the same era. Not that big a feat given that mid-80s PCs were running MS-DOS, an early-1980s ripoff, er.... *port* of the 1970s 8-bit-microcomputer-era OS CP/M.
However, the ST's main rival, the Commodore Amiga (which hit the streets at almost exactly the same time as the ST- mid-1985, and not 1984 as you state) featured full pre-emptive multitasking as a standard part of the operating system. No silly restrictions or workarounds for what was basically a single-tasking OS required, because multitasking was an integral part of the OS. You simply ran two or more programs at once and they worked- period.
And this was "proper" pre-emptive multitasking, not the more primitive co-operative multitasking (which relied on well-written programs yielding control themselves) that even Windows 3.x was still using in the early 1990s.
Thing is that although the Amiga was generally a more advanced computer than the ST, it had the same basic CPU- the 68000- running at similar (actually, slightly slower) speed- and to the best of my knowledge its multitasking (and other aspects of the OS) weren't reliant on the Amiga's custom hardware. So I'm pretty sure the 68000-based STs *could* have run a more advanced multitasking OS in theory, even a port of the one that the Amiga had(?!)
But the fact was that they didn't, at least not back then, and the "multitasking" you describe was at best a restricted hack that clearly *wasn't* the best that could be done at the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS9
OS9 was a wickedly cool operating system, which could multitask surprisingly well on the Motorola 6809. While never quite what you might call "mainstream", it was popular with some hobbyists. A friend of mine showed off his TRS-80 running OS9 once, and I was suitably impressed, even though I had an Amiga and an 80386 PC running OS/2, both of which were obviously more advanced. It was a very powerful, sleek system that probably should have caught on more than it did.
Of course, there was also GEOS, the Amiga OS, the Atari ST, and OS/2, but those came a bit later than OS9 (which dates back to 1979!). I still have fond memories of my Amiga, the massive flamewars of Amiga vs Atari, and the poor Apple fanboys with their black and white OS that barely even multitasked.
I loved my STs, but let's be realistic here. TOS was a singletasking operating system. The first real multitasking OS on the ST was probably MiNT, which was for a long time really an "experts only" option. Multitasking on the ST line that was usable by the masses didn't really exist until MultiTOS, which was, what, 1992?
I was definitely an ST fanboy back in the day, but you've got to admit, the Amiga was simply a better system.
DesQview had multitasking for dos in /85. IBM had topview a year before but it failed.
Many a long talk since then I have had with the man in the moon; he had my confidence on the voyage. Joshua Slocum
The Blit was commercialized into the DMD5620 using a 32 bit WE32000 processor. Sadly, this made it prohibitively expensive. To make it more price competitive, it was redone with a 68000 processor as the 630MTG. This was ironic, as the original Blit was also based on the 68000. Later a network interface, supporting both OSI and TCP/IP, was added along with additional memory and a faster CPU as the 730MTG. The 730MTG could also run X-Windows.
They were remarkably productive over a serial line.
I miss Gebaca!
Another fork off the Blit design was the Not. It was based on a 68020 processor, and was the original graphics workstation for Plan 9. The origin of the name is amusing, it looked like a 630MTG with a DMD5620 keyboard and mouse. When asked if it was a 630, the answer was that is was Not. A name was born.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "