[effgee]

God lord - this one is driving me insane. Got my new PC all set up* and have actually managed to get some work done on it as well (whoda' thunk). One thing that is pi**ing the living hell out of me though, is the fact that there doesn't seem to be any graphic apps (or any other kind of utility, for that matter) that you can use to quickly open and view a bunch of files (psd, png, jpg, etc.).

Every single app that I've taken a look at so far is so convoluted that they make Photoshop look like Text Edit in comparison (ACDsee (sp?) anyone?).

So, I'm hoping that some of you PC-using/-knowledgeable Mac folks (who actually know what "Preview" is/does) can point out an app or two that I could give a spin. The only thing it needs to do really is open a wide variety of graphics file formats as fast as possible - conversion à la "Preview" or "Graphic Converter" would be nice but speed is way more important to me.

Also, please refrain from asking the obvious** question.




* - Took me almost a week to find a "visual theme" that will give Windows a halfway usable interface - I have never seen so much sh*t in my life. It is unbelievable what crap passes for a "theme" with them PC folks.

** - No, it wouldn't be a good idea to ask this question in a PC forum - simply because the majority of PC folks I know wouldn't be able to tell a simple and elegant app from a hole in the ground if it bit them in the face.

[CD Hanks]

In XP, when you open a JPEG, it should go straight to the "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer", which is the closest thing you'll find that resembles Preview.app.

Have you installed any programs that could change the file type associations that would hinder this?

[effgee]

Ugh - "Picture and Fax Viewer". Aside from the fact that you never know what ratio it chose to scale the image, it also doesn't do psd's - and those are a must for me. I hate that thing - it might be alright to look at one's photo collection but it certainly won't help you get any work done



I frequently have like 20 or 30 files in a folder (png's, jpg's, mostly psd's, etc.) that I need to take a quick peek at - that's why I was looking for a fast "one-app-solution". Oh, btw - QuickTime's "Picture Viewer" doesn't do the trick either (won't open layered PSD's*) - opening that makes me feel like I'm back in OS8 - just worse.

* - unless you saved a composite image along with your psd file, and I'm not about to re-save thousands of psd's.

[CD Hanks]

In that case, let me introduce you to IrfanView.

[effgee]

Originally posted by CD Hanks:
In that case, let me introduce you to IrfanView.

That's better Still doesn't open layered Photoshop files, though. I'll take another peek at Tucows ...

[Luca Rescigno]

IrfanView is great but what I'm really looking for is a non-sucky PDF viewer. I can't believe Adobe, who owns the friggin' format, can't make a PDF viewer that isn't as slow as molasses! On a Mac of course it doesn't matter because Preview is like a hundred times better, but I don't know of a good PDF viewer for Windows.

Ah well, I guess I shouldn't expect much. And I agree that it's very tough finding a good WinXP theme... most of them are just terrible, they look like they were made in five minutes using MS Paint or something.

[CreepingDeth]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
IrfanView is great but what I'm really looking for is a non-sucky PDF viewer. I can't believe Adobe, who owns the friggin' format, can't make a PDF viewer that isn't as slow as molasses! On a Mac of course it doesn't matter because Preview is like a hundred times better, but I don't know of a good PDF viewer for Windows.

Ah well, I guess I shouldn't expect much. And I agree that it's very tough finding a good WinXP theme... most of them are just terrible, they look like they were made in five minutes using MS Paint or something.

I don't want to sidetrack, but let's see some of em!

[Mediaman_12]

Originally posted by effgee:

* - Took me almost a week to find a "visual theme" that will give Windows a halfway usable interface - I have never seen so much sh*t in my life. It is unbelievable what crap passes for a "theme" with them PC folks.

There are quite a few 'usable' XP themes around, you just have to know where to look.
The NeoWin Theme forum seams to feature most of the best (some quite smart Aro/Longhorn inspired ones around at the moment). There is a wide selection of Aqua inspired and ports of OSX ones over at AquaSoft (you may have to register to see the full forums).
using Longhorn Alternative light at the mo, but used Deanach - Washed and Opus for ages.
In fact AquaSoft's Forums may be a good place to ask this question, as some of those guys are obsessed with getting total OSX 'look and feel' on XP (there are lots of threads about transforming Firefox in to a perfect Safari clone).

[effgee]

Originally posted by CreepingDeth:
I don't want to sidetrack, but let's see some of em!

you want ugly? I'll give you ugly!

how about this or maybe that one? Need I say more?

But in all fairness, there's also a few (very few) nice ones.

[Luca Rescigno]

Yeah, there are quite a lot of themes. But like many things in the Windows world, there's more quantity than quality. Overall the number of good themes is probably the same for each platform, there's just a lot more crap on the Windows side.

Some examples:





Observe the cruddy looking gradients and lack of fine detail. If they look bad in these screenshots, they look much worse when you actually try to use them. BTW, here's the one that I use:



And it's by this guy: www.everaldo.com

No wonder it's a great theme!

[effgee]

Originally posted by Mediaman_12:
There are quite a few 'usable' XP themes around, you just have to know where to look.
The NeoWin Theme forum seams to feature most of the best (some quite smart Aro/Longhorn inspired ones around at the moment). There is a wide selection of Aqua inspired and ports of OSX ones over at AquaSoft (you may have to register to see the full forums).
using Longhorn Alternative light at the mo, but used Deanach - Washed and Opus for ages.
In fact AquaSoft's Forums may be a good place to ask this question, as some of those guys are obsessed with getting total OSX 'look and feel' on XP (there are lots of threads about transforming Firefox in to a perfect Safari clone).

Well, the problem - or better my problem - is that there's a hefty difference between "pretty" and "usable". Some of the Longhorn themes (stefanka's Inspirat in grey and blue, for example) look kind of nice at first - but you can't get any work done with them. 50 pixel toolbar buttons, windows with contrasts of light grey and pitch black. Looks polished at first but after a few hours, they'll burn your eyes out just like the nasty ones.

As far as the "OS X" themes are concerned - I tried a few (studio28 or whatever that dude's site is), most of them suck d!ck (and that's putting it nicely) - bitmap errors, inconsistencies, etc., etc. Sort of like slapping a Porsche logo on a Neon - gross! And - to a certain extent - a sacrilege.

[yukon]

I made my own theme. Or rather, appearance style, something OS X should be able to do IMHO....Mine's somewhat ugly, yet functional.

And that default system image viewer is crap. Something that has the drawer with thumbnails, or a simple way to scan through multiple images, that would be handy. IrfanView is much faster than Quicktime's image viewer, but that roadkill racoon icon is really ugly....

[macaddict0001]

Just to rub it in your face, Why don't you just close the document and leave the app open, then it doesn't matter how long it takes to open, oh wait you can't.

[Steve]

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
Just to rub it in your face, Why don't you just close the document and leave the app open, then it doesn't matter how long it takes to open, oh wait you can't.

Why would he want to have an app running when it's not being used? Seems stupid to me; a waste of resources.

[olePigeon]

I bet Thorton Lemke could make a killing in the Windows market with GraphicConverter.

But I like to see Windows users suffer.

[effgee]

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
Just to rub it in your face, Why don't you just close the document and leave the app open, then it doesn't matter how long it takes to open, oh wait you can't.

why don't you participate in a thread where people discuss a topic that you actually do know something about?

expl. - working on a rather large doc in photoshop:

- active/foreground: 500mb ram, 45% processor
- minimized/background: 5mb ram, 0% processor

kids ...

[Oisín]

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
Just to rub it in your face, Why don't you just close the document and leave the app open, then it doesn't matter how long it takes to open, oh wait you can't.

Err... why not? I normally don't have problems with leaving applications open after closing documents...

Or are you referring only to the Picture and Fax Viewer? In that case, you're right, you can't keep the Picture and Fax Viewer open without having a document open in it - but then again, it takes approximately 1/3 of a second for this tiny little app to open, so that doesn't really matter that much.

Originally posted by effgee:
expl. - working on a rather large doc in photoshop:

- active/foreground: 500mb ram, 45% processor

A rather large document? 500 MB? I've had 15 different .psd documents open at the same time (all not too big, but not exactly tiny either) and Photoshop still didn't take up more than about 390 MB!!! I'd hate to see what you'd call a huge document!

[effgee]

Originally posted by Oisín:
A rather large document? 500 MB? I've had 15 different .psd documents open at the same time (all not too big, but not exactly tiny either) and Photoshop still didn't take up more than about 390 MB!!! I'd hate to see what you'd call a huge document!

it was an example of one doc i was working on at the moment. if you consider a 200 x 100 cm, 300dpi file with about 25 layers a large doc then yes, you could say i work with large docs quite often. and just to make sure - nobody claimed xp's memory management was better than os x's - judging from my experience it's abysmal, actually.

[yukon]

Why don't you just close the document and leave the app open, then it doesn't matter how long it takes to open, oh wait you can't.

I can, and I do in preview.app. But on the windows machine, the port of Quicktime is so crappy that it takes three to five seconds to open an image.....I used to think MS made WiMP on the Mac crappy to discourage use of Macintoshes, it's obvious now to me that it's payback.

You didn't think I would defend Windows though, did you? If the Macintosh or Linux had the functionality that Windows has (gotten through monopoly power), my fast PC would run Linux because fast PC hardware is cheap, the entire thing was about the cost of the cheapest G4 CPU upgrade available. Until then, my desk has a G4 running OS X, an Athlon XP running Windows, and a K6-III or PIII running Linux (I'm upgrading it ATM).

I hate using Windows, I dislike the window-centric model of programs, but you have to know about what you argue against. Research ".dll"s, Windows doesn't unload them from memory, once used.

[macaddict0001]

Originally posted by Steve:
Why would he want to have an app running when it's not being used? Seems stupid to me; a waste of resources.

Just ram zero cpu, heck it will be just virtual memory, so what does it matter.

Originally posted by OisinOr are you referring only to the Picture and Fax Viewer? In that case, you're right, you can't keep the Picture and Fax Viewer open without having a document open in it - but then again, it takes approximately 1/3 of a second for this tiny little app to open, so that doesn't really matter that much.

I was refering to the original question and pointing out that acrobat and other pdf readers take about ten seconds to open and that in windows when you close all windows the app quits.

[Steve]

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
I was refering to the original question and pointing out that acrobat and other pdf readers take about ten seconds to open and that in windows when you close all windows the app quits.

Like it should. When I close all of the windows to an application, I want the app closed too, since I'm not using it anymore.

I always Apple-Q when I'm finished using an application in OS X. Having it still open is pointless, and a waste of resources.

[lavar78]

Originally posted by Steve:
Like it should. When I close all of the windows to an application, I want the app closed too, since I'm not using it anymore.

I always Apple-Q when I'm finished using an application in OS X. Having it still open is pointless, and a waste of resources.

But the whole point is that you can leave it open when you aren't "finished" with it (i.e., you may need it again soon).

[Krusty]

Originally posted by Steve:
Like it should. When I close all of the windows to an application, I want the app closed too, since I'm not using it anymore.

I always Apple-Q when I'm finished using an application in OS X. Having it still open is pointless, and a waste of resources.

Cool ... see with OS X you have that choice .. just close the window if you want or Command Q if you prefer. I keep lots of apps open most of the time. Looking at Actvity Monitor ... they only think using cpu right now are Safari, Window Server (that I can't shut off), and ... well, Activity Monitor. The rest (about 12 apps) are using 0%. They are using some memory .. but I just attacked that problem with the blunt instrument of having 1.5 gigs of RAM in my eMac.

I honestly prefer the Mac way of keeping document windows and applications as logically discreet processes. With Windows .. the logic is muxed and the close box is an "overloaded" control ("Close window = close window ... um, unless your on the last window and then it means Quit App"). WTF ?? All sorts of bloat has been added to Windows over the years to address the deficiency in this illogic. Now in XP, multiple doc windows will "stack" in the task bar and give you a right-click option to close them all. But of course, there is no corresponding menu item for this behavior so you are at the whim of the system as to when this option is available to you (If you have more things in the task bar, they will stack sooner, if you have a higher res monitor, it will take more open windows of a certain app before they stack, etc ). The Mac way allows for simple and precise control of exactly what you want ... close window or Quit App. Works the same way when there is 1 window open or 20. If anything, I'd prefer to see this distinction maintained in more than just document based apps.

[misnomer]

Try something like Adobe Reader SpeedUp. It disables a lot of the useless plugins the latest Acrobat Reader loads on startup. You can easily reenable any weird ones you might need, but you most likely will never need to.

It should get Acrobat load times to a fraction of a second on any semi-recent system.

[misnomer]

As for free Image Viewers, here's a couple:
Google's Picassa
XnView

[JHromadka]

Originally posted by CD Hanks:
In that case, let me introduce you to IrfanView.

Is there a Mac equivalent to IrFanView? Graphic Converter just doesn't do it for me, and I don't like its slideshow features.

[macaddict0001]

Originally posted by Steve:
Like it should. When I close all of the windows to an application, I want the app closed too, since I'm not using it anymore.

I always Apple-Q when I'm finished using an application in OS X. Having it still open is pointless, and a waste of resources.

What "resources" are they using 0% cpu no graphical horsepower, maybe a bit of ram, probably mostly virtual memory, because it isn't being accessed that frequently, and if you want to use the app again you don't have to wait for it to launch. Where is the problem in that? you can always quit it if you want.

[Mediaman_12]

Originally posted by misnomer:
As for free Image Viewers, here's a couple:
Google's Picassa
XnView

Unfortunately one of the file types the original poster noted was PSD, Photoshop files. which neither of these apps open (or 'import'). The great thing about Preview is that it just opens lots of different files, without transforming them into something else. e.g. if you open a Illustrator ai file the vector parts remain vectors, it doesn't do any 'rasterisation' when opening the file.

[Steve]

Originally posted by misnomer:
Try something like Adobe Reader SpeedUp. It disables a lot of the useless plugins the latest Acrobat Reader loads on startup. You can easily reenable any weird ones you might need, but you most likely will never need to.

It should get Acrobat load times to a fraction of a second on any semi-recent system.

Sweet sassy! Thanks for the link.

Originally posted by macaddict00001:
What "resources" are they using 0% cpu no graphical horsepower, maybe a bit of ram, probably mostly virtual memory, because it isn't being accessed that frequently, and if you want to use the app again you don't have to wait for it to launch. Where is the problem in that? you can always quit it if you want.

Like you mentioned, RAM.

Originally posted by Krusty:

Cool ... see with OS X you have that choice ...

[snip]

True, but I still don't see the point of leaving an application open when it takes no time to open it to begin with. Waste of resources, like I said earlier.

[hayesk]

Originally posted by Steve:
Like you mentioned, RAM.

Any significant amount of RAM (more than a couple K) will swapped out to disk when another app needs the RAM.

STrue, but I still don't see the point of leaving an application open when it takes no time to open it to begin with. Waste of resources, like I said earlier.

It's really bad UI to quit the app when you close the windows:
- as explained earlier, it is not wasting resources. You may be used to Windows "running out of resources" but that typically doesn't happen on MacOS X. It's not wasting anything and it's not taking up CPU time.
- you claim it takes no time to open the app. That depends on how busy your machine is. It always takes less time to switch to an already open app than to launch it when it is not running.
- close means close, not quit. Controls should change function. By having two functions the user often has to stop and think whether they really want to close the doc.
- if you close a document and then realize you want to work on another, you have to wait for the app to launch again.
- what if you thought you had another window open but didn't. The app would close when you don't expect it to.
- what if you thought you closed all your windows but didn't? The app would stay loaded and you might think something is wrong and would waste time looking for open documents
- what if you want to copy data from one document and paste it in another. Why should you be forced to have both documents open at the same time? It's an artificial restriction. By leaving the app open, you can choose either way, both open - or one then the other.

The only time it's ok if the app has only functions that can only be performed in a single window. System Preferences is a good example of this.

[Spliffdaddy]

Those weren't very compelling points.

[Steve]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
Those weren't very compelling points.

Exactly.

[hayesk]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
Those weren't very compelling points.

They are more compelling than the non-existant "wasting" of resources. DO a bit of UI study and you will realize they are compelling points. Each point can affect the user in a real way.

Of course, you are free to disagree. Feel free to argue against every or any point I have made.

[macaddict0001]

Originally posted by Steve:
Exactly.

cough*windows fanboy*cough.

So why do you have 8 megs of ram in your xp machine, no really I'm wondering.

[RGB]

Is the Photoshop file browser not an option?

[Luca Rescigno]

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
cough*windows fanboy*cough.

So why do you have 8 megs of ram in your xp machine, no really I'm wondering.

No. Saying this makes you sound like a Mac fanboy.

I use Windows as well... sometimes the convention of closing a window to quit an application gets on my nerves, for example in Photoshop. But it's really not a big deal. I'm much more annoyed by Windows' disk management. It seems like if I have a large transfer going, I simply cannot do anything else. It slows down both the transfer and the other activity WAY more than it does in the Mac OS. But I don't transfer huge files all that often so... meh.

[OreoCookie]

Try iView MediaPro. It's available for both, Mac and Windows. Not sure if it displays .pdfs on Windows, though.

[Steve]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
No. Saying this makes you sound like a Mac fanboy.

I was wondering if anyone else was thinking the same thing I was

I use Windows as well... sometimes the convention of closing a window to quit an application gets on my nerves, for example in Photoshop. But it's really not a big deal. I'm much more annoyed by Windows' disk management. It seems like if I have a large transfer going, I simply cannot do anything else. It slows down both the transfer and the other activity WAY more than it does in the Mac OS. But I don't transfer huge files all that often so... meh.

I've noticed that too, but moreso with transfer over the network. I may transfer large files only 1 or 2 times a week, but it's something that I have to plan out so that I can be "leaving" when I do the transfers...

[macaddict0001]

You can close the app if you want, but the point is that the option to leave it open is there.

[Steve]

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
You can close the app if you want, but the point is that the option to leave it open is there.

Like I've already said, when I close all the windows to an app, I want the application to close as well, like it does on Windows. It's a better UI design FOR ME, and just because it's not the same as your osxisbetterthaneverythingelseeveriloveitsomuch doesn't mean it's wrong.

This thread has been derailed enough. Back to the topic at hand...

[itai195]

Originally posted by Steve:
True, but I still don't see the point of leaving an application open when it takes no time to open it to begin with. Waste of resources, like I said earlier.

I disagree. I think the main problem with the Windows approach is that it makes applications like Photoshop, which manage their own document windows, have to really stretch the whole window metaphor. Sometimes the close button closes a document, sometimes it closes an application and all its documents, sometimes it doesn't close the application until all the documents are closed, etc. And then there are apps like Word 2003 that can both manage multiple child document windows or can have multiple instances open with their own document windows. It makes no sense, and I think most people don't use the child document windows in Word 2003.

Besides, I close the window on Mac programs all the time when I don't need a window open but still need the application to run. Some applications can and should continue to run even with the window 'closed.' For example, Microsoft finally realized with Outlook 2003 that people don't need Outlook to take up a huge space on the taskbar all day. They let you now minimize the app to the system tray, but the ability to simply close the window would make a heck of a lot more sense IMO.

I still use Windows heavily and am pretty open minded about the platforms, as I defend Windows pretty regularly here. But this is one area where the Mac implements a fundamental design concept well, while Windows doesn't.

[hayesk]

Originally posted by Steve:
Like I've already said, when I close all the windows to an app, I want the application to close as well, like it does on Windows. It's a better UI design FOR ME, and just because it's not the same as your osxisbetterthaneverythingelseeveriloveitsomuch doesn't mean it's wrong.

Yes, but the only reason you stated you want it was refuted. It does not slow your computer down or waste resources to leave an app open. That was the only reason you said you preferred if the app quit.

[Spliffdaddy]

Of course it wastes resources to leave an app 'open' compared to exiting the app. Were those resources being used to do anything else at that moment? Probably not. But until you have limitless resources in your Mac, leaving apps 'open' does, indeed, use resources.

Storing an 'open' but unused app out of main memory and onto the hard drive (virtual memory) sounds really great and all....until you discover that it's the same damn place the app would be if you had simply closed it to begin with (the slow hard drive).

I swear. Some of you Mac users act like Apple invented decent multitasking with OSX and the rest of the world is unaware of this magical thing. "Oh my God, a computer can do many things at once!"

Welcome to Windows95. The other 95% of desktop computer users have already been there and done that, and we're aware that our machines can run multiple applications simultaneously. Even if our brains cannot.

What you called "bloat" when Windows had it, is now called 'convenience' when it shows up in OSX. Yes, let's leave everything turned on! Like a house absent of light switches.

Close it if you aren't using it, folks. If nothing else, you'll save some electrons from participating in a pointless endeavour.

[RGB]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
Of course it wastes resources to leave an app 'open' compared to exiting the app. Were those resources being used to do anything else at that moment? Probably not. But until you have limitless resources in your Mac, leaving apps 'open' does, indeed, use resources.

Storing an 'open' but unused app out of main memory and onto the hard drive (virtual memory) sounds really great and all....until you discover that it's the same damn place the app would be if you had simply closed it to begin with (the slow hard drive).

I swear. Some of you Mac users act like Apple invented decent multitasking with OSX and the rest of the world is unaware of this magical thing. "Oh my God, a computer can do many things at once!"

Welcome to Windows95. The other 95% of desktop computer users have already been there and done that, and we're aware that our machines can run multiple applications simultaneously. Even if our brains cannot.

What you called "bloat" when Windows had it, is now called 'convenience' when it shows up in OSX. Yes, let's leave everything turned on! Like a house absent of light switches.

Close it if you aren't using it, folks. If nothing else, you'll save some electrons from participating in a pointless endeavour.

Crap! No new mail! Time to close Mail until it's time to check again...

Uh oh, haven't gotten that .psd file from the client yet, better close Photoshop now since I'm not using it. Once I get the file I can wait for Photoshop to launch again before working on it.

Well, not browsing any webpages right now, I should really close Safari to save resources. When I want to look something up later I can wait for it to launch again, no problem.

I'm not looking up anyone's contact info from address book at this very moment, I should close it so it doesn't hog resources...

I keep things open so that I have them quickly available when I do need them again. If my computer can handle it, why quit everything and have to wait?

All programs I commonly use are in my dock anyway, it's not like their eating up space like they would in the taskbar.

[itai195]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
Storing an 'open' but unused app out of main memory and onto the hard drive (virtual memory) sounds really great and all....until you discover that it's the same damn place the app would be if you had simply closed it to begin with (the slow hard drive).

It seems like we are making mountains out of mole hills here. Who cares if the app stays open or closed? It barely uses any resources if it's open, as Spliffdaddy just described. It barely takes any longer to open if it was closed, as he also just described (with some notable exceptions, like Photoshop and Office apps). There are, however, some benefits to closing the window on an app that you don't have to have open all the time (eg Mail). The problem, IMO, is just that Windows garbles up the UI metaphor. That doesn't make Windows unusable and it's not a huge problem, but it's a fact.

(BTW, I wouldn't go around bragging about Win95's implementation of pre-emptive multi-tasking if I were you )

[Spliffdaddy]

Just checking to see if I could still work the crowd like I did back in the old days.

Actually, it doesn't much matter either way. My Task Manager window shows 44 active processes, currently, with nothing much going on from what I can see. The machine has averaged a +98% idle time over the last 69 hours. Out of the 44 active processes listed, only 17 have accumulated more than 10 seconds of CPU time.

Whether I close Outlook or not, it won't make a noticeable difference.

Still, it's more difficult for an app to crash and bring down your OS if the app is not open. heh.

The argument in favor of leaving apps open continuously would have a lot more merit if apps took a long time to open after they were closed. As it stands, I see little difference between .001 second response time and .5 second response time for an app to open. It works faster than I do, either way you slice it.

The only apps that seem slow to open on my Windows machine are Adobe Acrobat Reader, VLC, and Firefox. And even these are still no worse than 3 seconds or so. On a old 1GHz peecee.

[Mediaman_12]

I swear. Some of you Mac users act like Apple invented decent multitasking with OSX and the rest of the world is unaware of this magical thing. "Oh my God, a computer can do many things at once!"

It's just that in day to day use, I can't have more than one 'main' app open at a time on my PC at work. Years back I worked in a print shop using Gen 1 and 2 PowerMac's (without vast amounts of RAM), I opened Photoshop, Illustrator & Quark up in the morning when I started, spent all day working, on often huge print quality files (copy and pasting between the 2 Adobe apps), and often didn't Quit anything until I was ready to go home. I my current web design job using P4, XP service pack 2 PC's (with more than half a GB of RAM) the concept of running Photoshop & Illustrator at the SAME TIME is some sort of dream, and this is with MUCH smaller web files. I admit some of this is probably down to App bloat, but it REALLY annoys me that I was MORE PRODUCTIVE on a sub 500mhz Mac with LESS than 100mb of RAM than I am with this modern PC.

[lavar78]

Whether I close Outlook or not, it won't make a noticeable difference.

But IIRC, it will let you know you have new mail when it's open. It can't do that when you quit the app.

[hayesk]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
Of course it wastes resources to leave an app 'open' compared to exiting the app. Were those resources being used to do anything else at that moment? Probably not. But until you have limitless resources in your Mac, leaving apps 'open' does, indeed, use resources.

Virtual RAM effectively gives you limitless resources - well unless your hard disk is almost full.

Storing an 'open' but unused app out of main memory and onto the hard drive (virtual memory) sounds really great and all....until you discover that it's the same damn place the app would be if you had simply closed it to begin with (the slow hard drive).

No, it's not the same. Putting an app in the background basically maps the application's memory to disk in a big chunk. While in the background it just sits there doing waiting for a "bring to foreground" event - almost zero CPU time is used. Launching an application involves reading and processing preference files, creating data structures, etc.. It takes much more time to do this than simply move a chunk of memory on disk to RAM. You'd have to leave the app in the background for months to use the same amount of CPU time to relaunch the application.

The only exception, of course, is applications that actually do things in the background with no docs open (e.g. a mail application checking mail). They'll use some CPU time, obviously.

I swear. Some of you Mac users act like Apple invented decent multitasking with OSX and the rest of the world is unaware of this magical thing. "Oh my God, a computer can do many things at once!"

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Apple's multitasking is based on UNIX which had more development and refinement over the years - it's far more mature. And at least up to Win2K, performs a lot better.

Welcome to Windows95. The other 95% of desktop computer users have already been there and done that, and we're aware that our machines can run multiple applications simultaneously. Even if our brains cannot.

Except Windows95's multitasking didn't work nearly as well as MacOSX or any other UNIX. I used Win2K on a daily basis and it doesn't work as well either, though it's a lot better than Win95, but not as good as MacOS X. I still get apps blocking the use of others. Just today I was doing a Find and Replace in Word, and I couldn't switch to Firefox - the Find and Replace dialogue in Word wouldn't go to the background. I never see this on my Mac. Maybe XP is better. I don't know.

What you called "bloat" when Windows had it, is now called 'convenience' when it shows up in OSX. Yes, let's leave everything turned on! Like a house absent of light switches.

Uhm... no. Windows95 had pointers and allocations to code in DLLs which were managed so poorly that you actually did run out of "resources". I'm not sure what "resources" entailed in Windows, but MacOS X and UNIX has never "run out" of them. I can only assume that they are a limited number of handles to OS code that is either not reentrant, or has a hard limit on how many processes can use the code at once. Regardless, UNIX doesn't work that way.

The only limits in UNIX would be code that has to be hardwired into hardware RAM. As long as you have a decently configured machine (e.g. more than 128MB in MacOS X) you can leave your apps open without affecting the performance of others. It manages hardwired code properly and pages and releases code properly,

This isn't a "Mac-zealot" thing. It's a UNIX thing that has been refined and improved over many more years than Windows has been around.

Close it if you aren't using it, folks. If nothing else, you'll save some electrons from participating in a pointless endeavour.

If you want. But it doesn't really matter.