OS X--incredibly slow

[tonbo]

I know I'm just inviting a world of hurt flame-wise, but it just has to be said--OS X is incredibly sluggish.

I have four (4) Macintoshes. There's a Tangerine iBook (266 mz). There's a white 500mz iBook. There's a G4 733mz. And now there's an iMac 17-inch 1GBmz.

Of course you know that these later iMacs can't boot into OS 9. Thus, the iMac, which I just bought, is the only computer running OS X. All the others are on OS 9.

I have nothing against OS X--well, maybe there is the whole password hassle for someone who is the only one using the computer (why can't we have an option to turn off all password requirements? I am not a bank. Nothing is at risk to be compromised on my computer. Why do I need a password for my own property?)

But everything is as slow as molasses on the moon. Launching any app takes at least twice as long as its equivalent in OS 9. Launching MacHelp took so long that I thought the machine had frozen, and I tried to force-quit--to no avail. (I discovered afterwards that having System Preferences open at the same time was the culprit--after I force-quit that, the damned colored spinning wheel disappeared.) I had to force-restart--three times.

I wanted to change my user name. But oh, no--I had to actually create another user to administrate my original username, then delete the second user (all the solutions for this problem I encountered on the Web and Apple TIL described some arcane command-line script to do this. I just used good old OS 9 thinking muscle to do it.) Just hitting the command-F keys seems to wake up a very sleepy FindFile app. Everything seems half-asleep.

I tried to summon the iMac over my local area network from my OS 9 G4 (via Airport) so I could transfer files. But I received the dreaded "have lost connection to this server" screen of death. Apparently to fix this I have to learn Networking 101 or Elementary UNIX Command-line Scripting. That ain't gonna happen. Rebooted the G4 into OS X (it came with OS X pre-installed) and still couldn't establish a network connection from the G4 (it works fine from the iMac).

But what is with this PowerMac Centris speed hit? This computer is 266mz FASTER than my fastest computer, yet it performs at least 266mz SLOWER than my 733.

And I haven't even tried Classic yet *shudder*

I have been a Mac user since 1986--only ever had one Windows machine, which I bought out of curiosity and sold about six months later--and I have never seen a Mac OS actually take a step--maybe several steps--backwards.

I am not a Macintosh neophyte. I have messed around with OS X for more than a year and a half, but have always turned it off in favor of 9--but now I am forced to use it full-time.

Why have I been bombed back to my Mac Plus 512E?

--Nick (hastily donning his firefighter garb)

[Urbansory]

You really can't compare X to 9. I felt that way when i first moved to X, but once the benefits out weighed my complaints, they seemed less troublesome. X is more stable, well should be, and you can multitask more. I need to switch between apps and do all kinds of stuff, in 9, I was stuck in a app until it allowed me to move to another at times. I'm use to X now, it's not slow to me, but 9 is faster, I mean that OS is older and has been more polished over the years. X will get better and has since i first got it over a year ago. You have a new machine, there shouldn't be any speed problems that bad. I assume you are running Jaguar, anything less, yes, there will be a decline. Since you are forced to use it, you may see the benefits sooner than later.

I can change my user name and i have only one user, "ME." You must mean the short name, I see that does stay grayed out after you enter the password. I never used airport, but i send my files from here and access them on campus all the time with no problems. MacHelp doesn't take long here, it searches all my apps, then access there help files.

[wyvern]

Are you running the latest version of OS X? 10.0 was very slow. 10.2.4 is not. It's snappy on my dual 800.

[toast]

I think it must be admitted OS X is slower than OS 9. Come one.

However, criterii of comparatibility between both systems are thin. One points at the past, at the G3's, at the alone Apple Inc. The other one is a futuristic OS, built for G4's, which represents UNIX compatibility and network facility.

I use both

[symphonix]

There are reasons for all things.

Passwords and accounts are an integral part of Unix, and no real provision is made in Unix for changing a user's name. Apple have gotten around this by providing a fantastic front-end for setting up accounts and passwords, and even allowing for it to automatically log you into an account at startup.

The help browser speed problem was a bug in the early releases of Mac OS X, and has since been fixed.

As for speed, there is a significant performance hit running Mac OS X ... the system itself uses over 300mb of memory when running in its most basic configuration, and if you have less than that then you will be using virtual memory a lot. There is a lot more going on under the surface than in 9, and it does run slower.

For all that, it is worth it, as long as you keep software up to date.

[mr. k]

I don't know about anyone else, but I ran os 9 (it was years ago) on an iMac 300mhz with 256mb of ram, and it was relatively slow. So I got a new iMac, this time it was a 600mhh with 256mb ram. I started with up the machine and there was a pretty little screen to set up my internet connection. The machine automatically booted into 0S X, and although it is not the fastest OS ever, it's easily the best. If you don't like the speed, drop OSX alltogether and boot in yellowdog with KDE or something. That should solve your problem. X really isn't slow, it's just not incredibly fast.

[jocknerd]

Please don't compare OS 9 with OS X. It would be like putting Windows 3.1 on a Pentium 4 machine and then comparing its performance with Windows XP. Of course OS 9 is faster. There's less stuff working in it. OS X rocks. I come from a UNIX/Linux environment, so I never was a fan of OS 9 or below. They were "toy" OS's in my opinion.

My mother just bought an iMac 1Ghz. It seems slow to me with the 256MB of memory compared to my iBook 700mhz with 640MB of memory. So memory is the key. Put as much as you can in your systems. OS X loves memory.

[tonbo]

Hmmm . . . I appreciate your comments (and am glad I didn't get flamed! I guess the OS X crowd is a more affable bunch than the 9 crowd )

A friend of mine who runs OS X came over this morning and confirmed that, "for a one gig processor, this is slower than my 500." He checked all my settings to make sure I wasn't running something unnecessarily and confirmed that everything was "lean and mean."

He asked whether I had enough RAM or not, and I said I had 256MB--what it shipped with. He thought that might have something to do with it . . . and now you've confirmed it. No doubt the System is struggling with that little RAM.

Which leads to the next question: how can Apple ship a machine out whose RAM quotient isn't even enough to run the System? What's going to happen when I boot Photoshop and start work on those 40MB files?

And the last question: where's the cheapest place to get more RAM for the new 1G iMac?

--Nick