Apple Still Working on 10.4.11

[Amdahl]

Why wouldn't you expect memory, kernel, and file system improvements? All the previous OS updates had them, and all the previous updates ran a little faster on the same hardware. This is an OS in progress, it continues to be rewritten and optimized further. The slowest machines are often the ones that benefit most from these OS updates, I don't see why this would be any different.

Those items are not something you can harvest over & over. Yes, the previous versions of OS X improved greatly, but that speaks more to how badly implemented they were in 10.0, rather than Apple's ability to defeat the laws of computer science.

Leopard is adding features and graphical woohoos, and those features are going to impact the memory bus and cache of weaker systems tremendously more than they are going to hurt the newer systems, especially the Intel systems with 4MB of cache per processor.

 

[72930]

Apple wants people to buy new machines. Those machines are like 5 years old.

Longevity is a good reason (among many) to buy a Mac...abandoning machines that many still own turns owners and their friends a little against Apple...

 

[milo]

Those items are not something you can harvest over & over. Yes, the previous versions of OS X improved greatly, but that speaks more to how badly implemented they were in 10.0, rather than Apple's ability to defeat the laws of computer science.

Not "over and over" but you can continue to benefit from them until things are as optimized as possible. You're not seriously suggesting that apple has optimized the OS and finder as much as they possibly can, are you? I'm not saying they can defeat the laws of computer science, I'm saying that 10.0 had tons of room for improvement, and they've only covered some of that so far.

They have had graphical extras added in the past, and still the OS versions have gotten faster in spite of that. I'd be surprised if that isn't the case again overall.

 

[Amdahl]

Not "over and over" but you can continue to benefit from them until things are as optimized as possible. You're not seriously suggesting that apple has optimized the OS and finder as much as they possibly can, are you? I'm not saying they can defeat the laws of computer science, I'm saying that 10.0 had tons of room for improvement, and they've only covered some of that so far.

They have had graphical extras added in the past, and still the OS versions have gotten faster in spite of that. I'd be surprised if that isn't the case again overall.

I am suggesting that once you 'optimize' something, you can't go back and 'optimize' it again. In order to believe otherwise, I would have to believe that Apple half-assed it in 10.0, and then three-quarter-assed it when they re-did components in 10.3 and 10.4, and that in 10.5 they full-assed the same components again. There is no evidence of that. The major under-the-hood improvements in Leopard are for multi-core, and those improvements work AGAINST single core performance. The 800mhz- systems happen to be systems that had very limited memory bandwidth (and some, like PowerBooks, had unusually large L2 or L3 cache). The increase in graphical woohoos and more threads to hop between is going to eat that cache up and expose the pathetic memory bus. Especially if you don't have the cache to start with.

Take the Early 2003 iMac: 800Mhz, 100Mhz bus. only 256kb of L2 cache. That is pathetic. If the cache foot-print of Leopard is increased, (how can it not?), that machine is going to feel it more than a G5 with 512K or 1MB of cache and a blazing system bus will.

If nothing else, the increasing multi-threadedness is going to slowdown older systems. Hence, the new features on top of that are going to have a cost.

But take heart in this, at least it is only a minor increase in minimum requirement. Compared to Vista, Leopard is probably going to win next year's Prize in memory of Alfred Nobel in Economics.

 

[ABM]

Does it come tonight?

 

[FJ218700]

I anticipate downloading it as I stand in line tomorrow.

 

[Chafka]

Bootcamp?

Unless bootcamp has a time limit, don't suppose this will be the update to make it stop working, huh? I thought I read in another thread that bootcamp itself will stop working all together when Leopard is released...Just a thought.

 

[Eidorian]

Unless bootcamp has a time limit, don't suppose this will be the update to make it stop working, huh? I thought I read in another thread that bootcamp itself will stop working all together when Leopard is released...Just a thought.

Define "stop working."

 

[Chafka]

I was thinking it would stop working (ie. not bootable) but I noticed that someone pointed out in another thread that the license expires when Leopard is released - not necessarily that it will stop working. So maybe it will - guess we will be at the mercy of apple (I am sure they could do what they want in an update...)

 

[Eidorian]

I was thinking it would stop working (ie. not bootable) but I noticed that someone pointed out in another thread that the license expires when Leopard is released - not necessarily that it will stop working. So maybe it will - guess we will be at the mercy of apple (I am sure they could do what they want in an update...)

Apple isn't going to make it unbootable unless they modify the firmware.

 

[CWallace]

Unless bootcamp has a time limit, don't suppose this will be the update to make it stop working, huh?

You will no longer be able to create new Boot Camp partitions after tomorrow, I believe. The software will no longer work for that purpose.

However, Apple has publicly stated they will not disable any existing BootCamp partitions. But if you need to re-image or you corrupt your existing BC partition, you are now out of luck.

So if you do not plan to go to Leopard in the near term, either image your HDD now (so you have a backup) or just plan to run Windows virtually via Parallels or VMWare.