Why is OS X a dog?

[atlascott]

All I seem to hear is G3 users complaining about how slow OS X runs on their machines, and about how you'd better have a G4 to run OS X.

Why is OS X a dog? Is the code optimized for Velocity Engine? If we wrote the OS from the ground up with an effieicnt Unix core, why should it be so slow?

 

[eyelikeart]

the more powerful G4 can run it more smoothly than the G3 can...

not saying it can't run efficiently on a G3, but one could say not as well as a G4 can...

 

[lera]

It runs just fine on my machine

Mac OS X runs just fine on my machine (iMac 350 mhz 512MB) A fragmented hard drive realy slows Mac OS X down because of the way that it does vutural memory. The G4's these people are compairing to probably don't have a fragmentation problem. It does make sense though with the 700Mhz imac at a quarter the speed of the 733Mhz G4 the OS isn't going to be as snappy on an iMac, but as I said it's not to shaby on a well kept up 350 iMac.

 

[reyesg4]

It is slow because Apple wants you to upgrade.

OS X has been in development for 5 years. Are you telling me that it was running at a snails pace until the G4 came around? Give me a break, NextStep ran on a processor slower than a G3!!! And I am sure that each beta running in a secret room at Apple has been running fast before they had a G4. I think that having so many layers of code and having so much unoptimized eyecandy is what is hurting us. Of course, this only affects the older machines, you know, the ones everybody owns. I think speed will be a mute point for anyone buying the amazing machines being introduced in 2002 and the next 2 years. And I also think that speed on pre 2001 machines will not improve until closer to the end of 2002, once most of the impatient people have upgraded. Just like they did with OS 9.2, my Mac is faster than I have ever seen it before in OS 9.2 but I don't run that OS anymore. Just like Apple planned.

 

[kiwi_the_iwik]

Feed Me...

I can only suggest that by giving OSX more memory, it'll thrive - even on a G3.

It's very hungry...

 

[dantec]

OS 10

Is faster on a G4 because Quartz is optimized for it. This means window resizing, pulldown of menu's etc. uses the velocity engine in the G4 chip.

 

[dantec]

Also

Like kiwi said, give it tons of ram... 192 won't do...

384 is the minimum

 

[atlascott]

ok, but WHY?

Ok, I will buy that a well-maintained G3 with tons of RAM wil run OS X fine. But WHY does it require tonds of RAM to run acceptably? I mean, Unix ran well on manframes with less computing power and memory than an iMac...and the fella who observed that OS X was developed on systems much slower than a 400 MHZ G3 is well taken--I am sure in previosu builds it must have been robust even on a 200 MHz 604 PPC.

So does anyone have a good reason WHY--other than the "conspiracy theory" (that Apple requires us to upgrade to new hardware--I can buy it to a certain extent, but that doesn help adoption of the new OS--buy requiring your user base to upgrade hardware to run the new, stable OS, that, because it was built from the ground up, has done away with the inefficient legacy code.) There appears to be no good reason why OSX should run almost as well as Linux does on low end PCs...

Any thoughts?

 

[j763]

Re: ok, but WHY?

Originally posted by atlascott
Unix ran well on manframes with less computing power and memory than an iMac...

As mentioned above all the quartz graphics are optimised for the g4. keep in mind that this isn't just the CLI - there's a UI!

 

[macagain]

I used Macs from 1987 to 1994, then switched to Wintel. I finally came back with a TiBook 550 w/ 768Mg. I still use a P3/600 hp omnibook at work w/ w2k.

After a month of switching back and forth between w2k at work and os x.1 at home, I started getting frustrated with os x.1 feeling "sluggish". So, for kicks, I downloaded Ie5.1 for os9 and tried it in classic mode. Lo and behold, it didn't feel "sluggish".

Apple really needs to do some work to speed up Quartz or whatever it is that is causing the "sluggish" feeling. In the meantime, give us the option to turn off some of the fancy eye candy (like shadows, fade effects, etc.) that looks good, but doesn't really add to actually doing work.

Try it yourself, download ie5.1 for os9, run it in classic mode, and watch the status bar as a page loads.

...perception is reality

 

[Catfish_Man]

In certain tasks OSX is slow. UI responsiveness is very slow, because it's calculating transparent dropshadows and all sorts of other crap. That takes a LOT of power, even when well optimized. Things that don't use the GUI (copying a file, or network performance) tend to go much faster on OSX. I noticed that my internet speeds dropped when I switched back into OS9 for a couple of minutes earlier today. (I'm running 10.1.2 and 9.2.2 on a beige G3 233mhz, 384MBs of RAM, 30GB 7200rpm HD. It runs just fine, considering how old the machine is.) I think that the core OS of OSX is much faster than OS9 because it's fully PPC native, better made, protected memory, etc.... but, the stuff they layered on top of it slows it down.

 

[oldMac]

Slow G3s and OSX

OS X is sluggish. No doubt.
There are really a few reasons for it.

1) Memory Bandwidth intensive
OS X is pushing around a lot more data with its gooey-candy GUI. Most G3s are sporting a 100Mhz bus (~1/3 slower) than most G4s. Also, because of the way Quartz windowing works, you're pushing around double the memory for every window in backing store.

2) Processor-intensive GUI
PDF ain't fast to render in Acrobat and ain't fast to render on your screen either. Look at the PDF spec and tell me how to parse and render that without a lot of processing power. (The drop-shadows and such only add to the issue.)

3) ATI RAGE chipset not optimized
Apple and ATI have spent no effort to take advantage of hardware acceleration features in the ATI RAGE chipset for OS X. These features *are* taken advantage of in OS 9. This is probably one of the biggest reasons for the sluggish perception difference between the G3 and the G4 under OS X.

4) Youth
OS 9 has had quite a few years of refinement. While Quartz and such borrow a lot from the Next, they are still pretty virgin and need a few years to get better.

5) Programmer Learning Curve
You don't just jump into a new OS and start coding efficiently. Learning how to effectively program for a new OS takes time and many lessons will be learned. This goes for people at Apple writing software as well as for the rest of the industry. Everything is basically 1.0 right now. And we all know that 1.0 software is typically crappy.


[Edited by oldMac on 01-04-2002 at 01:11 AM]

 

[dantec]

Also...

Windoze 2000 is not brand new either... It was just a rename of many years of NT!

I agree with Oldmac on his points.

Everyone must also remember, OS 9 has no eyecandy and has had 15years to mature... OS X is new...

If you look at win 2000 it's just a clean up of the ****** interface in NT. And trying to make stuff easier (which couldn't be harder on windoze).

 

[guest]

change the number of colors

Hey i am running 10.1.2 on a messed up, overused (less the 200MB available) iMac DV 400. What I did to make it go faster is i set in the system prefs for the comp to run at thousands of colors. This is diffrent from what i think the default is millions. there is DEFINATELY a noticeable speed diffrence. Also, try typing this without quotes "sudo update_prebinding -root /" into your terminal. It will clean things up. Hope this helps.

 

[dantec]

Yeah...

I've done it on my iBook before (change the amount of colors)... but I prefer to keep it at millions... Everything looks nicer... (dock, toolbars etc...)