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Why does the leopard dock suck so hard?

decksnap

decksnap

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 11, 2003
3,085
93
Just noticing recently after my Leopard drive died and I am back to Tiger... why is the Leopard dock so choppy compared to previous OS's's? I have never met a Leopard dock as smooth as a Tiger dock, on any system.

I manage a lot of systems, and have noticed that, without fail, the smoothest, most buttery dock is on the eMacs, running Tiger. Much smoother than Power Macs or Mac Pros. Strange indeed.
 
decksnap said:
Just noticing recently after my Leopard drive died and I am back to Tiger... why is the Leopard dock so choppy compared to previous OS's's? I have never met a Leopard dock as smooth as a Tiger dock, on any system.

I manage a lot of systems, and have noticed that, without fail, the smoothest, most buttery dock is on the eMacs, running Tiger. Much smoother than Power Macs or Mac Pros. Strange indeed.
Click to expand...

Please define "smooth" vs. "choppy". Are you talking about the zoom effect? In that case I see no reason why better hardware would not have a direct correlation with "smoothness"...
 
Can't say that I have any issues with mine either

I guess we need more clarification

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
Running Leopard on iMac G4. The dock is working acceptably, a bit slow when viewing my Downloads folder in Grid view but what to expect from such an outdated Mac :eek:
 
I prefer the look of the Tiger dock. I really wish their was a way to get my Leopard dock to look exactly like the ol' Tiger dock, but from what I've seen there isn't. :(
 
Just noticing recently after my Leopard drive died and I am back to Tiger... why is the Leopard dock so choppy compared to previous OS's's? I have never met a Leopard dock as smooth as a Tiger dock, on any system.

I manage a lot of systems, and have noticed that, without fail, the smoothest, most buttery dock is on the eMacs, running Tiger. Much smoother than Power Macs or Mac Pros. Strange indeed.
Click to expand...
It's kind of like saying "feature X is smoother on Windows XP compared to Vista". Of course it's better on an older version of the OS. The newer one has more features, more eyecandy and consequently requires more powerful hardware a.k.a. works slower on less powerful hardware.
 
OK let me clarify - when you run your mouse through the dock, the magnification seems to be less fluid visually. Like the Tiger dock is rendering a lot more frames per second.

The hardware should have a correlating affect on the dock smoothness, but it really doesn't. They must have really retooled how the dock is rendered in Leopard because it is just a lot less fluid.
 
Hm. Mine is very smooth and it never jitters or gets jumpy.. I've since switched to the 2D dock just because of my personal prefs but magnification was never an issue.
 
decksnap said:
OK let me clarify - when you run your mouse through the dock, the magnification seems to be less fluid visually. Like the Tiger dock is rendering a lot more frames per second.

The hardware should have a correlating affect on the dock smoothness, but it really doesn't. They must have really retooled how the dock is rendered in Leopard because it is just a lot less fluid.
Click to expand...

I've got a 2.4ghz Macbook Alu and there is no lag or jerkyness whatsoever on the dock itself. Opening in "fan" view a folder is also perfectly smooth, however, opening my Applications folder in grid view looks crap and *is* very jerky and not smooth to open. I'm yet to see a Mac where opening a large folder in grid does look good.
 
when i have 3D dock on, and don't disable beamsync, then enable from terminal, it is very sluggish. When I have 2D dock on, or do the terminal command to turn on beamsync after disabling form quartz debug, it's veryy smooth.

But when I'm doing a time machine backup, or there's an adium animation going on, the magnification and genie effect are choppy, always. The cpu is only being utilized 25% during the backup. Coverflow and cooliris are always very smooth for me.

I've heard many people with older powerbooks say leopard runs smooth as butter for them, but soo many people with newer nvidia imac/macbooks say that it's choppy as hell. More than likely, it is the poor nvidia drivers that are being replaced with 10.5.7. Let's hope the new drivers will fix the poor performance issues.
 
Hmmm. Well, I have magnification turned off, so I really don't know / could care less how smooth it is.
And yes, the opening of a stack in grip format is choppy, but I tend to prefer list view anyway.

So, while this may or may not be a common issue and may be entirely undetectable to some and very much so to other, I throw my opinion in the "I don't give a sh*t" folder.
 
valdore said:
This should be linked to the thread of unintentionally humorous thread titles.
Click to expand...

I haven't seen anyone else's dock here so I couldn't tell you how smooth they are. ;)

But, a leopard dock just isn't as smooth as a tiger's, at least the ones I've come in contact with, and that's a lot. :D

But seriously, it's not a big deal, and I wasn't talking about slowdown or that type of choppiness. It's a subtle thing, but it's definitely there! It's like the difference between a 30 fps video and a 20 fps video. They both get to the end at the same time, but there's less frames displayed in between.
 
I keep my dock on the side, so it doesn't have the *gorgeous* 3D effect, but I actually can navigate that way.
SG :apple:
 
PaperMacWriter said:
I keep my dock on the side, so it doesn't have the *gorgeous* 3D effect, but I actually can navigate that way.
SG :apple:
Click to expand...

Yeah, I keep my Dock on the right side, and I'm running Tiger. I prefer the aesthetics of Tiger overall, but I'm a fan of the new 3D Dock in Leopard. And it is so confusing as to why Apple made the Dock in Leopard turn so ugly when placed on the side. I know it's supposed to be like a platform on the bottom and it wouldn't make sense to have icons "magnetized" to the side platform, but god, the vertical Leopard Dock is horribly ugly. They could have at least kept the glass Tiger dock for the sides if they weren't going to use the 3D platform.
 
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