[FreakyT]

They really were, though; astoundingly, System 7/8/9 didn't even support preemptive multitasking[1] which Windows 95 did have.

[1] http://forums.macnn.com/64/classic-macs-and-mac-os/44121/wha...

[awfgylbcxhrey]

And the Amiga had preemptive multitasking in 1985. :-)

(It didn't have per-process memory protection, though, but it was a huge point of pride for Amiga users back in the early 90s)

[cr0sh]

Microware's OS-9 Level 1 had preemptive multitasking IIRC - this was late-1970s, early-80s - it was distributed by Radio Shack for the TRS-80 Color Computer line, which ran the 6809 8-bit processor, at something like .89 MHz (pretty f'in amazing when you think about it).