Will OSX ever be as fast as XP?

[glbronze]

I'm no Windows, PC guy, but I use Windows XP quite a bit, and on my own computer I use OS X (10.1.5), and Windows XP is faster in pretty much every area.
Mac: PowerBook G4 (550)/Radeon
PC: Pentium 3 (700)/Geforce 2

That PC is in no way a superior machine to my Mac, but it sure runs its OS like it is. Scrolling is faster (this is a biggie), Window dragging resizing is faster, OS launch time is faster, Application launch time is faster, the GUI is faster.

I know Jaguar promises greater speeds, but will it be enough to be as fast as Win XP?

[phatsharpie]

Yes.

[Koelling]

I'm going to forgive you because it's your first post but honestly, I was about to snap seeing another post with OS X and XP in the title. Every thread comes to one conclusion: you can't really compare. I would consider my 266 iMac faster than XP because I'm more productive on it. Other people would say that Macintosh is slow because they play games that only play at 65 fps rather than 100 (The eye sees at 24? 32?).

[rowcroft]

A lot of the speed differences could be related to hardware, not the OS. If you are running a laptop, hard drive speed is a big factor. If it's the original hdd for the pbook, it's 4200rpm, the PC is most likely a 7200rpm but at least a 5400rpm if it is a tower (I am assuming it is). Also, RAM is another factor in gaging speed. I am a primary XP Pro user and it is fairly fast, but I find myself more productive in OS X. Hope that helps.

Rowcroft

[azosx]

I think this is a fair enough thread and a legitimate question.

Before I got a Cube, my only experience with a Mac was the ones setup at CompUSA or Frys, we didn't have a local Apple Store then. I'd pass them, play around with them for a bit and came to the conclusion that with OS X, they were tediously slow. The Dock would catch/freeze, windows would resize terribly slow and sporadically, applications would take what seemed forever to launch, loading and scrolling web pages with IE was a joke and the viewing PDF files was next to impossible. Now this is when OS X first came out and as much as I wanted to love it, I just couldn't. It was beautiful but severely flawed in my opinion.

Keep in mind spending 10 minutes with a machine that feels terribly slow compared to Windows performance wise is no measure of the productivity value between the two. That in which I believe OS X wins hands down.

Those who stuck with OS X in it's early days are truly the loyalist of Mac users. I know though many didn't, and even when the new Macs shipped with X, many would never boot into it. So it wasn't just the opinion of Windows users that OS X was some what unuseable.

OS X.1 has improved leaps and bounds over X. Everything has been speed up ten fold but even with newer hardware such as my PB 667 DVI, it still feels as if I'm fighting the GUI at times. Window resizing is still a little jerky and browsing PDF files is not exactly quick.

With Jaguar's Quartz Extreme hardware acceleration, I think a lot of speed issues concerning Aqua will be coming to an end. From what I've heard, even those without 3D accelerated video cards will benefit greatly over X.1.

Is OS X as fast as Windows on comparable hardware? No, not even close. Does it hold potential to be as fast as Windows or other GUIs? Absolutely.

As for the human eye not being able to perceive more than 24-30 FPS, that is a misconception. It is believed the human eye can see some where around 200 FPS. The misconception lies in that theatre movies are displayed at 24 FPS and TV at 30. The reason this seems normal is due to motion blur. It gives the effect that the picture is moving faster and more fluidly than it actually is. Computer video games can not reproduce that affect. That's why 24 FPS seems slow and fragmented compared to 60 or 100.

[Javintosh]

24fps?!?!

I hate to break the news, but...
Charlie Chaplin is dead.
They have this new movies called "talkies." You should check them out...
and oh yeah, 24 fps has been dead for a loong time....

I think movies display at 60 fps, but I am not sure.

[toast]

I'm more productive on OS9.22 than my friends on XP .

PS: using PS7 AI10 Quark 5 ATMD Distiller 4.

[phatsharpie]

Originally posted by Javintosh
24fps?!?!

I hate to break the news, but...
Charlie Chaplin is dead.
They have this new movies called "talkies." You should check them out...
and oh yeah, 24 fps has been dead for a loong time....

I think movies display at 60 fps, but I am not sure.

Umm... Nope. Film projections are still at 24fps. At 24fps, our brain can merge all the indvidual frames and give us the perception of fluid motion. When the "talkies" were introduces, the film speed didn't change. The only thing that changed is that part of the film stock has either embedded mangetic strip or circles that carry the sound information.

The 60fps reference is probably about television. NTSC tv signals are broadcasted at 29.97 frames per second and displayed at twice of that in terms of fields per second (interlacing). For convenience sake, it's just referred to as 60 field per second.