More Evidence for Slowness of X

[mindbend]

This is not a troll, bait or flame, but I'm sure I'll get some flack anyway.

My position has been and continues to be that X overall is a sloth. I continue to buy X software because I love the interface and features and hope that one day the hardware and software will mesh into a beautifully smooth experience. My point is that it simply is not here yet (on my machines--G4 450, iMac 400 DV).

Evidence:

1. Finder resize totally sucks (yeah, I know, how often do you resize a window, blah blah blah). All I know is that it's slow and I find it annoying so I hate it and find it unacceptable.
2. Omniweb/Explorer totally kill the browsing experience even on a cable modem. It's a joke. Really. Explorer runs better under Classic. WTF!
3. Painter 7. Yeah, thanks for Carbonized app, now if you could just make it run in real time so I don't have to take coffee breaks to wait for the mouse to catch up.
4. Illustrator 10. Again, thanks for Carbonizing, but mother of god is this thing slow. It is barely usable in a professional environment. Shame.
5. Giants:Citizen Kabuto. I'm running a freaking Radeon on the G4 450 and still have to turn down most of the settings to run smoothly. This is insanity.
6. Could some scientist please explain why iTunes can't even crank out 30 fps on a G4 consistently?

I refuse to accept that I wil have to drop $2500 to buy a new machine to run X as fast as OS 9 runs now. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

I am still one of Apple's biggest fans from way back, but I have to be critical on this speed thing, especially since we're now going backwards. Some things are faster, like Firewire mounting and file transfers and some network activity, but all the important stuff that I do daily to make a living is slowed down under X. Argh!

What's amazing, is that even with all these speed issues, I love using X. It's just so clean, crisp and well thought out. Some day...

[fryke]

1. Finder resize totally sucks (yeah, I know, how often do you resize a window, blah blah blah). All I know is that it's slow and I find it annoying so I hate it and find it unacceptable.

Yup. It's quite slow.

2. Omniweb/Explorer totally kill the browsing experience even on a cable modem. It's a joke. Really. Explorer runs better under Classic. WTF!

Hmm... the browsing experience is not only fine, it *rocks* for me. So I guess this must be a 'personal opinion' thing and is not an objective point of view. Even less an 'evidence'.

4. Illustrator 10. Again, thanks for Carbonizing, but mother of god is this thing slow. It is barely usable in a professional environment. Shame.

Shame on Apple? I don't think so. Btw. it's running fine here and we'll use it for production. Maybe your computer's too old. Didn't it have its time? Try to use Windows XP with Office XP and Illustrator 10 for Windows on a similarly old PC. Flaming? No, I just want to state that *it just is like that* with the computer industry. Not just Apple.

6. Could some scientist please explain why iTunes can't even crank out 30 fps on a G4 consistently?

Scientists have other things to do than staring at funky pictures while listening to punk music (or whatever your preference is). Although while I think about this, I guess many scientists actually *do* look at quite funky pictures while listening to punk music. But maybe this just isn't that important. At least for me. I've got work to accomplish.

I refuse to accept that I wil have to drop $2500 to buy a new machine to run X as fast as OS 9 runs now. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

You do again what others did. You compare apples with oranges. While OS 9 may feel faster in use today, OS X actually works faster and through the process of *not* stalling half of the time and *not* crashing at the usual 'Hey, that's *MY* memory space...' it actually lets you accomplish work much faster. Operating systems should make users productive. OS X does that very well. Of course, this doesn't have to be true for you.

What's amazing, is that even with all these speed issues, I love using X. It's just so clean, crisp and well thought out. Some day...

Which, I guess, underlines my points. And I say: Today. I couldn't live with OS 9 any more. Because now that I've started living crash-free (operating system, not apps), I just don't WANT to start losing so much time any more.

[serpicolugnut]

If it's too slow for you....

1) Don't use it. OS 9 worked well for many years. It still works well for those who don't mind the occassional hard crash/freeze...

2) Get a dual800

3) Wait awhile and realize that the OS has surpassed your hardware. Continue to use OS 9 until hardware that runs X more to your acceptable level is released. The G5 is rumored to be here in January...

I've got three machines, G4/400, PB G4/500, and a dual800G4. Obviously , the dual800 is the fastest, but I would not consider the other two machines to be slow under X. Is X slower than OS 9? At some things (Window resizing, IE), yes. But some things go much faster on all machines under OS X.

Examples? Well, Quake III frame rates are 20% higher under OS X than 9. Also, Lightwave 7.0b renders much faster under X than 9. Freehand 10 redraws the screen much faster under X as well...

And for the record - on a dual 800

iTunes caps at about 29fps full screen, Illustrator 10 runs great (can't wait for my copy to ship next week!), and OmniWeb 4.1sp10 runs quite fast (even on the TiBook). Haven't played Giants, but Star Voyager, QuakeIII, Alice, and Oni all rock under OS X.

How much RAM do you have? I have noticed that my TiBook gets the SCUD more often than the other machines, due to it only having 384MB of RAM (the others have 896MB and 1GB).

[edX]

Just curious, but how much ram do you have? Since i went from 128 to 512 on my imacDV 400 and osx went 10.1/9.2.1 speed has not been a real issue. With the low cost of memory these days it is a shame not to boost your performance in this simple manner. For about $50-$80 you can get 512+ and install it in about 20 minutes or less. As for the web,discounting problems on the server side, Omni, i-cab, and usually opera, fly from page to page while netscape 6.2 still isn't as fast as communicator I will admit. Who cares how fast ie is or not!! This doesn't sound like apple's fault. There is little doubt in my mind that some developers have got the hang of osx better than others. (note - I am very familiar w/ all these browsers because I use each regularly for different purposes - none does everything on the web to my satisfaction yet). Browser window resizing is much faster and easier in osx.1 than it ever was in 9x with any of the osx browsers. Opening folders with large numbers of files in them is far faster in osx. I'm really not sure where you get the speed problem unless you are still running in 10.0.4/9.1 which were terrible for speed and why i didn't switch full time untill the upgrades.(running 9.2.1 should help improve speed even with 10.0.4 - it did for me) You also might try going to macupdate.com and picking up OptmizerX which helps with prebinding optimization of third party apps - just like when you install apple system software and have to wait for the system to optimize the install. I have found it helps with some apps and certainly doesn't hurt any. BTw my itunes handles 128 kps no problem w/dsl. there are one or two stations that seem to hang but most play flawlessly. perhaps its your connection speed or the choice of stations. But really, more memory seems key in all this.

[wyvern]

OK I would have to agree to the Giants bitch. I am on a dual g4 800 with gf3 and giants plays HORRIBLY slowly. wtf is up with that??

[Lazarus18]

I think you guys are discounting a lot of the valid points here. I've been using X exclusively since 10.0.4, and it hasn't been really fast. But I converted from the PC right at the end of 8.6 (got 9 in the second week I owned my mac) and never really fell head over heels in love with the MacOS... until X.

So like mindbend I will continue to use it for the sheer joy of the OS, but let's admit that there are speed hurdles still. My old PC with 1/14 the RAM and a processor only 100Mhz faster (which theoretically means it's much slower than my G4) still does some things much faster than my Mac. Web browsing comes to mind readily.

I don't think saying that the hardware is behind the times is valid. My machine is still more advanced than iMacs being sold with X installed, so Apple is making the claim that X should run on them, and so by extension it should run even better on mine.

I just have to hope that Apple doesn't think 10.1 is sufficient in the speed department and continues to push the envelope on that issue. It's good, and very usable, but there is still room to improve.

[mindbend]

As usual, people conjure up humorous excuses for "solutions" to the speed issue. My favorite is the old "Just use OS 9, then [dumbass]" as though I'm some sort of complete idiot who never bothered to take a rational analysis of all the options and never realized 9 existed. Duh. Of course I'm using 9 when I need to.

My second favorite is "Buy a DP 800". Brilliant. Why didn't I think of that. As I stated in my first post, I feel cheated in having to buy a machine of that caliber simply to catch up to OS 9 levels. Money is not the issue. If I thought it would be worthwhile, I'd have one already. I'm waiting until at least MWSF for a major G4 boost. If I don't see at least DP 1gig then I'm holding out for G5s.

I fully understand that my machine is getting long in the tooth and that a newer, more modern OS is more demanding as a tradeoff for its benefits. I just was expecting a little more zip on a G4. As for OS X productivity vs OS 9, I will not dispute that people can be more productive in X. I am still more productive in 9 overall. 9 does not crash for me, so stability isn't an issue. Programs with similar demands simply work faster in 9, therefore so do I. Classic is great, but too many critical limitations require me to boot to true 9.

RAM--1 gig on the G4, 512 on the iMac. Plenty to go around. Clean installs on both. It ain't the memory. Carbonized apps are simply too slow on a G4 450 with pooploads of RAM for my taste. That's all I'm saying. People running better machines should have better experiences. Those who find the performance satisfying, I have to admit I'm amazed that they aren't at least a wee bit disappointed. I mean, the first time you drag that vector around in AI10 and see how slow it is, don't you just get that sinking feeling? It can't be just me.

I'm glad to hear the success stories though. Quake rates sound good as does overall performance on the bigger machines. I still find it hard to believe, important or not, that iTunes maxes out at 29fps on a dp800. It doesn't matter that it's useless eye candy, it's a prestige thing. It's like the days of the old screen savers when you'd look at your buddy's PC and be pissed that his were smoother than yours.

wyvern, I believe, was also disgruntled by his "Giants" rates. Finally, someone else willing to be critical!

All in good fun.

[serpicolugnut]

I think there are three factors that can contribute to one feeling that their machine is too slow...

1) Memory. With it being as cheap as it is, it shouldn't really be that big of an isssue. Personally, I'd like to see Apple up the minimum to 256 on consumer machines, and 512 on pro machines, because in reality under OS X, 512MB is the minimum you would want to use with pro software.

2) Applications. Ed hit the nail on the head when he said that some developers have gotten the hang of OS X better than others. For instance, id Software hasn't had a whole lot of trouble optimizing their games (and quake engine) for OSX, to the point that it's outpacing every other platform. If Giants is as slow as you claim it to be, I'd fire of an email to the developer and request a fix, or demand they take the game back. Another example would be browsers. IE is acceptable in the speed department, but so far, the sneaky peeks of OmniWeb 4.1 are proving to be much much faster. iCab and Opera seem to be the fastest right now.

3) Perception. If you focus on all the things that OS X does do slower than 9, you're gonna frustrate yourself. If you can't get stuff done faster in 9 than X, go back to 9. Personally, I find that even though Window resizes aren't as fast as 9, with all the extras in X, I find myself more productive even using Classic apps. The one thing I don't miss at all is when launching an application you are stuck and can't do anything else. It may be only for a few seconds at most, but in those few seconds I can check my email or check a web under X.

So mindbend, if you haven't already maxxed out your RAM, that would be my first suggestion.