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Why is OSX so much slower to launch apps than Windows?

Oh, and if I were to guess ... some major apps are likely given more attention on the Windows side than the OS X side. Would you do more for the 1 billion people or for the 100,000,000? Given that there are a certain number of workers you can hire, you have to prioritize.
 
ls1dreams said:
Thank you for proving I'm not insane. Microsoft apps launch faster even running in a fricking Virtualbox on my laptop in Windows XP than they do in native OSX.
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Why is this surprising? Apps developed to run on windows are running faster on windows.....shocking. I don't understand why this is even a discussion....

Now if you have proof that applications developed to run on OSX are running faster on windows, that would be interesting....any specifics here?
 
ls1dreams said:
Thank you for proving I'm not insane. Microsoft apps launch faster even running in a fricking Virtualbox on my laptop in Windows XP than they do in native OSX.

It's not just MS apps though. Lots of smaller apps would instantaneously snap open in Windows, while in OSX they require at least one bounce. While one bounce isn't really that slow, it's a noticeable delay that makes the entire OS feel laggy compared to Windows for me.

A good example is Cyberduck (FTP client). On my 2011 sandy bridge w/ the stock 5400rpm hard drive, it takes nearly 10 bounces to load. Any ftp client in Windows would open immediately.
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Okay, now you're reaching. And you still didn't answer my questions about data to support your claim.

Bootcamp is not virtualization of Windows. It's Windows running natively.
 
Irishman said:
Okay, now you're reaching. And you still didn't answer my questions about data to support your claim.

Bootcamp is not virtualization of Windows. It's Windows running natively.
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Hey Irishman - this has bothered me for a while, so let me see if I can get video of various apps launching. I only have a macbook at home right now, but I'll swing by a Best Buy at some point and try to get video of similar apps launching on OSX vs Windows 8 on machines with similar specs.

I have no "dog" in this race. When I switched to OSX I just always felt there was a significant delay in launching apps but couldn't find much about it after googling.
 
ls1dreams said:
I have no "dog" in this race. When I switched to OSX I just always felt there was a significant delay in launching apps but couldn't find much about it after googling.
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It could be that you're right. But for me, one of the main reasons I switched (back) to Mac is that I could get tasks done faster. One extra bounce opening an app means nothing to me if I'm not having to deal with device driver conflicts with audio cards, etc. I would suggest buying more RAM and just keeping the apps you use often always open. No more delay! ;)
 
Why is OSX so much slower to launch apps than Windows?

The apps used to test in this thread and really bad choices. Of course apps made by Apple and Microsoft are going to perform better on their native OSs.

You should use a large and diverse (including apps made with more of a focus on one OS and with a focus on both OSs equally) collection of well made, modern third party apps.

VLC is a good one, but how about Chrome, Google Earth, Handbrake, some CAD apps, Open Office, Sublime Text, Team Viewer, Adobe's apps, Spotify, Skype and Evernote. This isn't the biggest list, but I try to avoid Windows as much as possible so I don't use many cross platform apps, this is just what I came up with off the top of my head. :p
 
The slowest App for starting up is Final Cut Pro X for me,4 bounces before it loads my libraries.

All others are at most a single bounce. The likes of VLC open instantly when clicked.
 
jahall05 said:
I used Windows for many moons before switching to a Mac. While you are correct that some applications open a second or two faster on Windows than on Mac...it is 1 second, WHO CARES.

If it is HONESTLY that big of a deal to you, then bootcamp Windows or go to a PC. Good luck with installing 45 updates upon shutdown and the inconsistent performance across the board.
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So just think about what you are saying here... 1 second, who cares? why do you think anything gets faster in the world today? be it cpu's, cars, athletes or boot times on OSX/ Windows?

EVERYONE cares about that 1 sec, speed / time is everything, if you can cut off 1 sec anywhere in any production you make more money. If the movie industry cuts off 1 sec per frame they render on a feature film, they save months of rendertime and millions of dollars. A good bunch of modern sports these days is all about that 1 second, or often way less. Being faster, let alone the fastest should not be underestimated.

Yes my post is slightly trolling as the topic of this thread was slightly silly and probably dead before it even started, but saying that no one cares about 1 second difference is simply just wrong.

that's all.
 
The reason is that windows uses prefetching. That means that, when the computer starts up, it loads all the programs that are commonly used into the ram just in case you need it later. OSX handles this differently. You can open programs and then close the windows. When opening the window again to an open program, it'll be just as fast.

For more info, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_technologies#SuperFetch
 
Hm.

What Mac is being used?
What processor?
What hard drive?
How fast is the platter?
What size cache?
How much ram?
What is the ram speed?
Is the drive an SSD?

All of this has an effect.

Comparing apples and oranges doesn't really give you a great comparison.
 
aliensporebomb said:
What Mac is being used?
What processor?
What hard drive?
How fast is the platter?
What size cache?
How much ram?
What is the ram speed?
Is the drive an SSD?

All of this has an effect.

Comparing apples and oranges doesn't really give you a great comparison.
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I've seen Sempron 3400 machines (ancient by today's standards) running Windows XP and using a 5400rpm hard drive open MS Office apps faster than i5 haswell chips with SSD's.

As stated previously, I'm not a fanboy of either platform. I use both, and am pretty sold on Mac laptops because the hardware is so much better.

Here's a test: After a fresh reboot, how long does it take people to open Cyberduck, a common FTP client? I'm getting 13 bounces on my 2011 Macbook pro w/ 5400rpm hard drive. My ftp clients in windows (flashfxp, filezilla, etc), opened instantaneously.

EDIT: I just installed and tried Filezilla, and it took around 3 bounces. Much better, but still not instantaneous.

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Freyqq said:
The reason is that windows uses prefetching. That means that, when the computer starts up, it loads all the programs that are commonly used into the ram just in case you need it later. OSX handles this differently. You can open programs and then close the windows. When opening the window again to an open program, it'll be just as fast.

For more info, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_technologies#SuperFetch
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I suspected that something like this is probably the main reason. I intentionally have removed the old "MS Office" startup item for quick loading, but I'm guessing that the OS is doing a bit of caching itself.
 
ls1dreams said:
I've seen Sempron 3400 machines (ancient by today's standards) running Windows XP and using a 5400rpm hard drive open MS Office apps faster than i5 haswell chips with SSD's.

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I suspected that something like this is probably the main reason. I intentionally have removed the old "MS Office" startup item for quick loading, but I'm guessing that the OS is doing a bit of caching itself.
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I can open Mail and Calendar instantaneously yet it takes eons it seems to launch Outlook 2010 and get it to a useable state comparatively (with both launching off the same ssd with the same memory and other hardware involved, just one using OS X and the other using Windows 8.1, both .0 releases do a pretty fair comparison).
 
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I'm not an expert by any means, but I imagine that having a centralized registry helps a bit with the load times. (yet also makes Windows more vulnerable)
 
i don't know about specific load times for apps, and it's probably something that's going to be hard to test on a wide enough array of apps to be able to make a solid argument

but as far as overall OS experience, the window management, interface, reliability, etc, OS X spits in the face of windows every time for me. not having to deal with drivers, registry errors, apps that get stuck in limbo from not installing/uninstalling properly, and myriad other things, i'll wait the 1.5 seconds for an app to open.
 
I will argue that it's not as big a deal to "launch" fast on a Mac. The reason is that you launch apps much less frequently. This is because Windows and Mac have different philosophies about how to handle an application that closes its last window.

On Windows, when you close the window, the application typically terminates. However on a Mac, closing a window and "quitting" the app are very different things.

For example let's say you do a lot of work in Excel. On Windows, when you close your spreadsheet, the Excel.exe process terminates. Then, if you want to open a new spreadsheet, Excel launches again. On Mac, if you close your spreadsheet, Excel keeps running unless you explicitly quit it. So when you go to open a new spreadsheet, it doesn't have to launch, it just draws a new window. Therefore in the course of a normal day of real work, you "launch" Excel many times on a Windows machine, but I only ever "launch" Excel once a week at most on my Mac (after a boot up).

When I am not using my MacBook Air, it goes to sleep. I very rarely shut down or boot up. And therefore I very rarely have to "launch" apps like Excel, and thus care very little about app launch speed, boot up speed, shut down speed, etc. What I DO care about are things like memory usage and power management, two areas where OSX blows Windows out of the water.
 
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I understand where the original poster is coming from. My impression too is that things are slower in MacOS X. Early versions of MacOS X were even worse. I find that interface speed in general is bad in OS X; a prime example I struggle with frequently is how awful OpenOffice (or its clones) are on OS X.

And now, with Mavericks, even clicking on a menu results in a noticeable delay. What a bog! It feels like a real _effort_ to use. (Yeah I think there's something wrong, but I haven't been able to find what it is, yet).
 
ls1dreams said:
EDIT: I just installed and tried Filezilla, and it took around 3 bounces. Much better, but still not instantaneous.
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On my rMBP I get the following:
Filezilla 1 bounce
Excel 1 bounce
MS Word 1 bounce
MS Powerpoint 1 bounce
iTunes 2 bounces
iMove 3 bounces
Keynote 3 bounces
Numbers 2 bounces
Pages 1 bounce
 
petsounds said:
One bit of OS X which is far older than NeXTSTEP is the damn filesystem OS X uses, HFS+, which is not much different than the original HFS we used on Macs in the 80s.
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NeXTSTEP came out in 1995. HFS+ came out in 1998. NTFS came out in 1993. If anything is outdated, it's NTFS and the equally old NT kernel.
 
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Intell said:
NeXTSTEP came out in 1995. HFS+ came out in 1998. NTFS came out in 1993. If anything is outdated, it's NTFS and the equally old NT kernel.
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HFS+ is just HFS 2.0, and HFS came out in 1985. HFS+ was basically created to support larger volumes, and has gained features over time, but it's basically still HFS. That's why the area of the disk that label colors are written to is still the same as it was when System 6.0 came out.
 
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