A First Look at Windows 95 Shows the New PC Operating System to Be a Big Step Forward for Windows Users, a Small Step Back for MAC/PC Connectivity.
John Rizzo
BY NOW, YOU MAY HAVE HEARD that you don't need your Mac anymore. "Throw away that Power Mac 9500," the folks at Microsoft say. "Windows 95 is here!" According to the powers behind the Great Northwestern Hype Machine, Windows 95 is a technical achievement akin to the one that brought Neil Armstrong's Kevlar boots in contact with lunar dust.
If the brouhaha is getting to you, relax -- you're not missing much. Now that Chicago/Win 4/Win 95 is finally here, we can see that although it's no Apollo 13, it's still far from the perfect operating system. And in spite of Microsoft's best efforts, Windows 95 is still not as easy to use as the Mac OS.
You may, however, have to connect your Mac to it, and that brings us to what Mac users will see as the immediate problem with Windows 95, which is that many of the best Mac-to-Windows connectivity products don't yet work with it. In theory, Windows 95 is compatible with all Windows 3.1 software. In practice, some software either doesn't work or runs poorly, particularly when the software is a network application not designed by Microsoft.
So before you succumb to the hype, get a few of the facts that aren't included in those expensive commercials.
A Mac View of Windows 95
On a superficial level, Windows 95 is very Mac OS-like. You can drag files to the desktop, create aliases (called Shortcuts), and drag text from an application window to the desktop to create a file. Spend some time with Windows 95, though, and you'll find that things aren't quite up to a Mac user's standard.
For instance, Win 95 doesn't provide as straightforward a view of what's on your hard disk as the Mac OS does. As in Windows 3.1, there are still two ways of viewing what's on the disk. Windows 95's innovation is simply to offer new ways to get at these views. The Start button now gives you access to the group icons of Windows 3.1's Program Manager, and the DOS/File Manager directory view is now accessible via three sources: the Windows Explorer (Win 95's version of the File Manager); the Disk icon, which you access by clicking on the My Computer icon; and the MS-DOS Prompt window. Likewise, simple tasks tend to require more steps than on the Mac. Emptying Windows 95's Recycle Bin -- to cite a well-known example -- is a two-step process (for more on Windows 95's shortcomings, see "Trash Talkin'," August '95, page 21).
What Windows 95 has that System 7.5 doesn't is preemptive multitasking, a feature also found in UNIX; OS/2; Windows NT; and in next year's Copland (System 8), from Apple. Preemptive multitasking allows multiple applications each to reside in its own memory space, so that when one crashes, the system keeps running. The Windows 95 version of preemptive multitasking is limited, though -- it works only with applications written with the Win32 API, not with today's 16-bit apps.
DOS Legacies
The reason for this "semipreemptive" multitasking is that Windows 95 still contains remnants of 16-bit DOS and Windows 3.1 code, which Microsoft kept to ensure compatibility with existing Windows applications -- and which perpetuate the limitations of the older operating systems.
One such remnant is a routine known as USER.EXE, which displays windows and sends messages between applications. USER.EXE has a 64K memory limit -- if an application uses up the 64K, it crashes. Remnants on the user-management side include the old DOS configuration files, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, plus SYSTEM.INI and WIN.INI. A new database called the Registry keeps some of the information from .INI files in one central place and is supposed to make editing .INI files a thing of the past. However, the Registry works only with new software for which the developer has chosen to use the Registry APIs.
You can usually ignore .INI files -- unless you're deinstalling software manually, a task that's just as much fun in Windows 95 as it was in Windows 3.1. When I tried to remove all traces of an application that was causing error messages in Windows 95, the procedure included searching for and deleting files from the Explorer and the Startup folder as well as removing lines of code from AUTOEXEC.BAT and SYSTEM.INI by hand.
Connecting with Windows 95
Unfortunately, deinstalling Windows 3.1 software by hand is something you may have to do if you use one of the current Mac-to-PC applications that doesn't yet run under Windows 95. Here's the scoop on the best Mac-to-PC packages and how they work with Windows 95:
Personal MACLAN Connect 5.0. Miramar Systems' AppleTalk-based Mac-to-Windows file- and print-sharing application doesn't work in Windows 95, which can't load the AppleTalk stack. If MACLAN Connect was installed under Windows 3.1, it won't crash Windows 95 but it will cause error messages -- and the deinstaller doesn't run in Windows 95. Miramar plans to release a Windows 95-compatible version this fall.
AppleShare for Windows 1.0. The current version of Apple's file-sharing client software doesn't work with Windows 95, and neither will the next version, expected later this year. Apple is planning a Windows 95 version for spring 1996. As with Personal MACLAN Connect, the deinstaller feature won't remove the old version, so plan ahead.
DataViz's Conversion Plus. This Mac-to-PC file-translation utility is the Windows version of MacLinkPlus. You can use the Conversion Plus 3.0 file translators in Windows 95, and you can access a Mac floppy disk from within the utility. However, if you want to mount Mac floppy disks in Windows 95, you'll need the new version of Conversion Plus, expected by October. In that version, Mac floppies will behave just as PC disks do and will display the full names of Mac files.
Farallon's Timbuktu Pro for Windows 1.0. This package, which communicates by using TCP/IP protocols, works with Windows 95, but in only one direction: You can remotely control a Mac from within Windows 95, but you can't control Win 95 from your Mac. At press time, Farallon was planning to ship a fix (version 1.1); it should be available now.
Apexx PCTalk and EtherChain adapters. The PCTalk parallel-port-to-LocalTalk adapter (available from Apexx in a bundle with MACLAN Connect 5.0) does not yet work with Windows 95. However, the PCTalk will work with Miramar's Windows 95 version of MACLAN Connect, as will the EtherChain, a parallel-port-to-Ethernet connector (the EtherChain works with current Windows 95 NDIs and ODI network drivers).
Who Gets the Last Word?
With PC-software vendors salivating at the thought of selling new Windows 95-savvy applications to 70 million PC users, you haven't heard the last of the hype. As a Mac user, you won't be able to beat the forces Microsoft has rallied, so be prepared to join them -- as soon as connectivity packages catch up to the latest OS. But remember, it won't be too long before Copland widens the gap between Mac and PC with new ease-of-use, automation, and customization features; better preemptive multitasking; and possibly even better stability than Windows 95. And where operating systems go, connectivity software follows. Of course, Microsoft still has Cairo, its next version of Windows NT, to promote. But then, Apple has Gershwin up its sleeve. But then . . . oh, forget it. It's time to go play Myst.
John Rizzo, formerly MacUser's technical editor, is a freelance tester and reviewer of Mac and PC products.
