Apple has announced the release of System 7 Tune-Up, a series of enhancements to system 7. Among the features of Tune-Up are better performance under low-memory situations, and improvements to printing, as well as a few bug fixes.
The System 7 Forum's Gene Steinberg (AFA GeneS) interviewed System 7 software engineer Greg Marriott (JusSomeGuy), a member of Apple's "Blue Meanie" team and a frequent contributor to the forums, about the new software package.
AFA GeneS : What's the purpose of the System 7 Tune-up? Is this a
bug fix or an upgrade—-or neither?
JusSomeGuy : System 7 Tune-Up is a response to user feedback for
7.0. We're offering users improved printing
performance, improved memory usage by the system
(meaning more memory available for use by
applications), and much better handling of low-memory
situations. Also included are a few bug fixes to
prevent some crashes and data corruption.
AFA GeneS : What is to be found on the Tune-Up disc? Can you
describe the purpose of each of the elements of this
package—-and how they're to be installed by the
end-user?
JusSomeGuy : System 7 Tune-Up comes on a single 800K floppy, with
an Installer on the disk. All of the new pieces can
be installed by hand, though, by dragging them to the
System Folder icon. The pieces include: a LaserWriter
print driver, a StyleWriter print driver, a File
Sharing Extension, a Chooser and an extension called
System 7 Tune-Up. The new LaserWriter driver will
improve the printing speed for TrueType fonts.
JusSomeGuy : The new StyleWriter driver doubles the speed of the
printer for most documents. The File Sharing
Extension fixes some data corruption bugs with shared
file access. The Chooser is much faster on large
networks than the previous version (about 8 to 16
times faster).
JusSomeGuy : The Tune-Up extension implements the new better
memory handling and a couple of features designed
to make the user experience better performance in
low-memory situations (especially 2Mb users). The
first of these involves printing. When the user has
background printing turned on, but there is not
enough memory to launch PrintMonitor. The system will
now offer to print in the foreground instead. The
user may still elect to print in the background if
they wish, but printing will not begin until memory
is made available (usually by quitting an
application).
JusSomeGuy : The second of these new features has to do with
opening applications. Many times novice users
will close their document, switch to the Finder, and
forget that their application is still running.
Opening a new application yields the "not enough
memory" dialog (affectionately known around here
as the "buy more RAM" dialog :). With Tune-Up
installed, the system will offer to quit any
applications without open windows when the user tries
to open an application when not enough memory is
available.
JusSomeGuy : <whew> ga
AFA GeneS : How did you decide what features to incorporate in
this package?
JusSomeGuy : To answer your question, I should mention the System
7 AnswerLine. We log every complaint in a database.
This was the main source we used to decide what to
put into System 7 Tune-Up. Many of the users who
called were sent a beta copy of Tune-Up, so we could
see if we were solving their problems adequately.
I want to encourage everyone to give us feedback
about what you like and don't like about the
system software. We're committed to giving you what
you need, but we have to hear from you to know what
that is!
AFA GeneS : Let's talk about the improvements to printing under
system 7. You refer to better TrueType printing with
the new Laserwriter driver. What about users of
Type 1 fonts—-will they find any improvement in
performance?
JusSomeGuy : Some general improvements were made to overall
printing performance in the LW driver, but most users
will notice little (if any) improvement if they're
not using TrueType fonts. In other words Type 1
performance was already pretty good and we weren't
able to improve it much.
AFA GeneS : What about reports by some users of frequent printer
errors under system 7. Is there any reason for these
errors and have you been able to find any general
cause for them?
JusSomeGuy : If you mean PostScript errors, we've noticed fewer of
these with the new driver, but we didn't set out to
specifically address that problem with this release.
If you're talking about PrintMonitor becoming
corrupted, we did fix a bug in the system which could
cause the PrintMonitor file to be trashed if the user
quit the application they printed from before
printing was finished.
AFA GeneS : The other complaint I hear in the System 7 forum
relates to floppy disc performance. Any improvements
in that area?
JusSomeGuy : A couple of things. We improved the Finder's copy
speed for large files (>200K or so) on both hard
disks and floppies. We also made a couple of changes
so that IN MOST CASES the system won't immediately
ask for a floppy disk right after you eject it.
AFA GeneS : Are there any specific system 7 bugs of any
importance that you are not addressing in this
release?
JusSomeGuy : The bugs we addressed are the ones we heard the most
complaints about. I don't know of any crashing..
or data corruption bugs that remain unresolved in
this release.
AFA GeneS : What about the issue of the handling of removable
disc cartridges when file sharing is on...where
you cannot eject a removable disc unless file sharing
is turned off, or you restart?
JusSomeGuy : Fixing this problem will involve some pretty
extensive changes, beyond the scope of this release.
We are working on a solution for a future system
release.
AFA GeneS : When Tune-Up is installed, does the 7.0 user end up
with 7.0.1—or something in between?
JusSomeGuy : System 7 Tune-Up does not bring 7.0 users up to
version 7.0.1. Tune-Up provides the same benefits to
both system versions, but does not make them the
same.
AFA GeneS : Is there any reason for a 7.0 user to upgrade to
7.0.1 (other than the needs of the hardware)?
JusSomeGuy : I don't think so. The much talked about SANE
improvements are inconsequential to most users. Some
applications that do intensive floating point math
will get a small boost from 7.0.1, but most apps that
do such calculations already directly address the FPU
chip, and so don't benefit.
AFA GeneS : Some published reports say there's a 7.1 in our
future? Are these reports true?
JusSomeGuy : Of course there will be a 7.1! But, we haven't
announced a ship date (and I won't do it here :)
AFA GeneS : Can you speak at this early date of what items you
want to address in 7.1?
JusSomeGuy : Sorry, but I can't. Be assured, though, that you'll
all want to upgrade! It's got some neat stuff.
AFA GeneS : Thank you for this very informative chat, Greg. We
look forward always to your valuable advice and
counsel on system 7 and other Mac software issues.
And we know that as users have additional ques-
tions on system 7 and the new System 7 Tune-Up, you
and your fellow Blue Meanies will be online to give
