System 6 - Limitations

Limitations

System 6's Apple menu cannot be used to launch applications. The current application icon in the upper right-hand corner of the menu bar cycles between open applications; it is not a menu. System 6 supports 24 bits of addressable random access memory (RAM), which allowed a maximum of 8 megabytes of RAM with no provision for virtual memory. These limitations were fixed in System 7. System 6 also has a hard drive capacity limit; it supports up to 2 gigabytes (GBs) and 65,536 files on a drive. This is a limitation of the Hierarchical File System it used, which was not increased until System 7.5 which first increased the limit to 4 GB.

The Trash (or "Wastebasket" in the British version) empties when the Finder terminates. If MultiFinder is not running, this occurs as soon as an application launches. Icons on the desktop in System 6 are not organized into a single folder, as in later operating systems. Instead, the system records whether each file is on the desktop or not. This is inefficient and confusing, as the user cannot browse to the desktop in applications besides the Finder, even within the standard Open and Save As dialog boxes. Furthermore, these dialogs are primitive, mostly unchanged since 1984. The lack of aliases, shortcuts to files, was another limitation of file management on System 6. Custom file and folder icons are also not supported. These problems were all remedied in System 7.

A maximum of 15 Desk Accessories may be installed at one time, including the Chooser, Scrapbook, and Control Panel. System 6 uses the Control Panel desk accessory to access all the installed control panels, which imposes severe user interface limitations. Desk Accessories cannot be installed or removed within the Finder; this requires the Font/DA Mover utility. System 7 also fixed this. Control panels, however, are contained in separate files.

Few methods exist for interface personalization. The Finder allows each icon to be assigned a color, but the desktop background is limited to an 8x8 pixel color tiled pattern (color patterns were introduced in System 5), and standard window frames are all black and white. However, many "INIT" extension files existed to add color and customization. System 7 later allowed the user to change the color and various other aspects of the user interface. By 1989, the System 6 user interface was in need of a change. In comparison to the NeXTSTEP operating system of the time, System 6 did not make use of sound, and its user interface presented several limitations in terms of file management and the way windows were displayed.