Originally posted by AppleMatt
I didn't know the UI was all QE now. I think I'll fire up Panther and have a poke around. Does that include the dock? If you look back in threads on this site you'll see people saying they experienced bigger speed increases on older hardware rather than newer, I can't verify this as the two machines with Panther are QE anyway.
I don't know if it's all QE, but I feel Apple have leveraged QE to do more things... they might as well, it is faster where it's possible to use.
QE will have a great effect where the CPU isn't brilliant but the Graphics Sub-system is up to QE. Those with fast CPUs will likely not notice a great deal of difference. Benchmarking finds my iMac 800 (17") with Panther to be up to par with a dual 1Ghz with Jag. Not bad, no matter how they've done.
I just want four things to greatly improve;
- nVidia graphics drivers (and of course ATi, but they've never been as bad as nVidia's)
- OpenGL > currently shocking in Panther
- Graphics, that's everything, Quartz subsystem etc etc
- Remove OS 9 code from QuickTime (and anywhere else it may be hiding)
I agree with OpenGL. It seems to be getting slower, first through the 10.2.3 to 10.2.6, and now in Panther.
Lastly, Quicktime. Have Apple forgotten about it? As far as I can see, the player is very different in 10.3 seeds. At least in terms of the options in Movie Properties (I can no longer turn on High Quality); and it appears to be more responsive. However this may just be the player. I seem to remember better support for Quicktime in Cocoa APIs in Panther, but I may have just made that up.
I'd like a Finder that really is multi-threaded. I can't bear having to wait with a spinning ball when browsing my iDisk (remotely). I know this probably comes down to WebDav, but I see it a lot when the spinning ball appears and that's that. Multi-tasking OS my arse.
Other than that, I'm really happy with Panther, things appear to be getting better. Now I'd love IBMs new compiler to make an appearance with compilation, get some more speed out of it, or is that going to happen with 10.4 (hey, it's faster again and worth the $129).