Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Leopard performance better than Tiger? Better than Windows at least???

C

chelsel

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 24, 2007
514
298
I 'switched' from Windows to Mac about two months ago using a Macbook Pro 2.4GHz that I upgraded to 4GB of RAM... however some things are extremely pokey for no reason... for example, typing the word 'extremely' paused for half a second!!!! It's like the multi-tasking (it just did it again) on Mac OS X is terrible compared to Windows... (yes I've reboot, no I don't have anything else running)...

Does anyone know if performance on Leopard is better than this? All I see are announcements about improvements in the OS that I find minimal, essentially prettifying the interface and adding a backup routine...

Thanks,
Cliff.
Spell Checker
 
There should not be any pauses during typing. Something is unusual. Have you examined Activity Monitor? What about the System Preferences for the Keyboard? You have plenty of memory, so lack of it is not the cause.
 
Mine occasionally pauses during typing but not for very long. I usually haven't finished the word by the time it kicks in again. It happened twice in writing this (both times on a space actually).

Macbook pro c2d 2.16 if that matters.

It doesn't really bother me. It is never anywhere near as long as half a second.
 
Bow Rekk said:
Mine occasionally pauses during typing but not for very long. I usually haven't finished the word by the time it kicks in again. It happened twice in writing this (both times on a space actually).

Macbook pro c2d 2.16 if that matters.

It doesn't really bother me. It is never anywhere near as long as half a second.
Click to expand...
Are you kidding!? Pauses in typing text would be absolutely unacceptable!
 
I have the new SR MacBook Pro with 4Gb and that NEVER happened to me. This thing is a flying beast and I use it to encode video and photography and I never saw any blink or pauses. It most definately shouldn't pause when you're typing. It's not a 386 with 2 Mb of RAM we're talking about, here!
 
Yeah, I hate to say it but somethings wrong with your computer. It's probably only a software problem though, not a hardware one.

I'm currently using an ibook from early 2004 and it *never* pauses when I'm just typing.

Go download onyx.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582/onyx

Use it to run a clean up on your system, just let it do it's automated thing.

After that restart your computer, turn it back on, and see if there is still a problem.
 
Mr. B said:
Yeah, I hate to say it but somethings wrong with your computer. It's probably only a software problem though, not a hardware one.

I'm currently using an ibook from early 2004 and it *never* pauses when I'm just typing.

Go download onyx.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582/onyx

Use it to run a clean up on your system, just let it do it's automated thing.

After that restart your computer, turn it back on, and see if there is still a problem.
Click to expand...

Woah. Wait before you do that.

If you're typing in Word, it's probably just because Word is not Universal; it's being run through Rosetta. A few random, small pauses are probably normal in Word.

Do you have Pages? Does the problem replicate itself there?

What about just TextEdit or Safari?
 
First, definitely not normal--it's something specific to your situation, not the OS in general.

Second, as said, if it's Word that's probably not unusual, and it's not necessarily Rosetta's fault, either--Word is just funky that way, and seems to periodically spaz out for no apparent reason.

Third, a question: If you're in a quiet room, do you hear a little "ker-kilck" from the hard drive when the pause happens? I ask this because my MBP (first-gen 17", 100GB 7K Seagate drive) has something funky going on with the hard drive--it periodically seems to park the heads for a second, which (depending on what I'm doing) can cause brief (maybe half-second or so) pauses.

This is not the OS's fault, though--it's either a hardware problem with the drive (which I should really get checked, but since it's otherwise behaving fine and I'm way too busy, I haven't yet) or some odd interaction.

Regardless, even if this is what you're seeing, it's not normal--mine is the only laptop I've seen that does it--and you should probably call tech support and get it fixed.

If there isn't any little clunk from the hard drive, then ignore all that and pay attention to the suggestions of others.
 
I see frequent pauses and delays that don't exist at all in Windows. The Mac is enjoyable but it's dog slow on even the latest and greatest hardware. That coupled with annoying GUI bugs and random reproducible application crashes makes me believe that the Mac is MUCH less stable than Windows. It's really unfortunate because I really like the user interface of the Mac, I just don't think it's ready for anything mission critical.

FYI, this thread is ranked #3 in Google if you search for Leopard Performance... imagine that.
 
The GUI for windows is much much faster than the GUI for OSX. This is because OSX uses Open GL to render the GUI.... ick.

I also currently own a SR MBP. Windows XP is much "Faster" while navigating around it. But Performance in Applications is the same.
 
chelsel said:
I see frequent pauses and delays that don't exist at all in Windows. The Mac is enjoyable but it's dog slow on even the latest and greatest hardware. That coupled with annoying GUI bugs and random reproducible application crashes makes me believe that the Mac is MUCH less stable than Windows. It's really unfortunate because I really like the user interface of the Mac, I just don't think it's ready for anything mission critical.

FYI, this thread is ranked #3 in Google if you search for Leopard Performance... imagine that.
Click to expand...

OK, you've had many people in this thread tell you that what you are experiencing is not normal behavior.
Are you willing to detail your troubles, troubleshoot a little, and answer some of their questions, or are you just trolling?

Tens of thousands of companies (more?) use Macs and OS X everyday for "mission critical" tasks.
 
iBunny said:
The GUI for windows is much much faster than the GUI for OSX. This is because OSX uses Open GL to render the GUI.... ick.

I also currently own a SR MBP. Windows XP is much "Faster" while navigating around it. But Performance in Applications is the same.
Click to expand...

Rendering in OpenGL is better than the windows way. That's why Linux uses it in XGL and Vista uses DirectX for rendering Aero.

XP is just faster for navigating around because the finder on OSX is really bad. Everyone knows this. Google for "FTFF" :)
 
iBunny said:
The GUI for windows is much much faster than the GUI for OSX. This is because OSX uses Open GL to render the GUI.... ick.

I also currently own a SR MBP. Windows XP is much "Faster" while navigating around it. But Performance in Applications is the same.
Click to expand...
You should let ID software know about that. You know considering they haven't figured out how to make a high performance,highly scalable opengl game engine yet.
 
For some reason the OP is coming off as a troll. He was asked several times what he was doing and what applications he was using, yet he keeps dodging the question. The only thing consistent among his posts is the fact that he claims that OSX is unstable and slow, more so than windows XP.
 
Blubbert said:
For some reason the OP is coming off as a troll. He was asked several times what he was doing and what applications he was using, yet he keeps dodging the question. The only thing consistent among his posts is the fact that he claims that OSX is unstable and slow, more so than windows XP.
Click to expand...

Agreed. He doesn't seem to mind making criticisms about the operating system, but will not answer questions to solve his own problems.
 
OP here... the only thing I'm doing is typing into a textbox, e.g. this reply box using Safari. I type over 60 wpm and sometimes up to 100 wpm. I do not have ANY OTHER applications running. There are no errors in the Console. There are no high CPU system processes running. I just find that I consistently get unexplained pauses when running OS X, something I'm not accustomed to with Windows... I'm not saying OS X isn't a nice operating system, I'm just saying it makes me think the whole OS is written in Java and the garbage collector is kicking in :)

My question was, is Leopard performance better? Tiger is tolerable, but Leopard must deliver the goods.
 
chelsel said:
OP here... the only thing I'm doing is typing into a textbox, e.g. this reply box using Safari. I type over 60 wpm and sometimes up to 100 wpm. I do not have ANY OTHER applications running. There are no errors in the Console. There are no high CPU system processes running. I just find that I consistently get unexplained pauses when running OS X, something I'm not accustomed to with Windows... I'm not saying OS X isn't a nice operating system, I'm just saying it makes me think the whole OS is written in Java and the garbage collector is kicking in :)

My question was, is Leopard performance better? Tiger is tolerable, but Leopard must deliver the goods.
Click to expand...

We've all already suggested that this is not normal behavior.

However, to answer the question: Tiger is currently a 32-bit operating system. Leopard will be 64-bit, so on an Intel mac, I imagine that the performance will be better.
 
chelsel said:
OP here... the only thing I'm doing is typing into a textbox, e.g. this reply box using Safari. I type over 60 wpm and sometimes up to 100 wpm. I do not have ANY OTHER applications running. There are no errors in the Console. There are no high CPU system processes running. I just find that I consistently get unexplained pauses when running OS X, something I'm not accustomed to with Windows... I'm not saying OS X isn't a nice operating system, I'm just saying it makes me think the whole OS is written in Java and the garbage collector is kicking in :)

My question was, is Leopard performance better? Tiger is tolerable, but Leopard must deliver the goods.
Click to expand...

You are typing pretty fast but certainly nowhere near fast enough for the computer not to keep up. It is either a problem with Safari or perhaps the spell checker is having problems. Try right clicking the text box and turning off spell checking. Macs haven't performed like that since the Mac 128K.
 
I don't think Leopard will help your problem because it isn't normal under Tiger (or Panther, or any version of the OS).

It sounds like it's pretty easy for you to duplicate the problem, so maybe some experimentation will help: Get activity monitor open and set to the CPU tab and sort by % so that high percentages are at the top. Put this on the right and have a Safari window open on the left. Start typing in a text box in Safari while watching the Activity Monitor window. Do you see anything pop to the top when the pauses occur? You can also try sorting by memory usage and watch for any large changes as you type.

Another possibility is a spotty network connection or external device connection. Try disconnecting everything and turning off Airport or other network connection and try duplicating the problem. If it goes away, start putting stuff back to normal one at a time, checking to see when the problem comes back to determine which thing caused the problem.
 
possible solution

While tweaking unrelated System Preferences I came across a setting "Put hard disk to sleep when possible"... turning this off (ie disabling the checkbox) has resulted in significantly fewer pauses using the system... I think the Mac was aggressively sleeping the disk...

As of right now I'm a much happier camper wrt my MBP performance.

Cliff.
 
chelsel said:
While tweaking unrelated System Preferences I came across a setting "Put hard disk to sleep when possible"... turning this off (ie disabling the checkbox) has resulted in significantly fewer pauses using the system... I think the Mac was aggressively sleeping the disk...

As of right now I'm a much happier camper wrt my MBP performance.

Cliff.
Click to expand...

Glad to see you figured it out. Shame on us for not coming up with the solution earlier. :eek:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back