[awcopus]

Big fan of OS X. Running it on a 933 Quicksilver with 1.5 GB of RAM. Thrilled with the stability, thrilled with the Aqua interface, dealing just fine with the new file hierarchy.

However, when I have been forced to reboot into 9 (I don't run Classic because the control panels flake out) simply to do the occasional Quark job, I am blown away by the speed of the old operating system.

OS X will eventually be as fast as9, right? Any idea when?

[Xeo]

Originally posted by awcopus:
Any idea when?

None of us can possibly answer this question.

[Mr. Blur]

1) your thread subject line is a bit inflammatory and just begging for some snarky replies

2) this subject really has just about done to death in countless other threads

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

[solitere]

Originally posted by awcopus:

OS X will eventually be as fast as9, right? Any idea when?

Speed is relative ? Try to print a 200+ pages image rich document in OS 9 and meantime doing something else!!

[Graymalkin]

It will be fast once Apple removes all the debug code. Duh.

[Gee4orce]

Go and load System 7 on that same machine (if you could), and you'd be blow away by how fast it is...of course, you'd loose all the functionality that you've grown to rely on in Systems 8 and 9.

I prefer to think of X not as slow in comparison, just more feature rich There's certainly more functionality in X than in any other OS available.

[macmad]

Speed is relative ? Try to print a 200+ pages image rich document in OS 9 and meantime doing something else!!

Exactly! OSX is doing a hell of a lot more at any given time and never (very rarely) falters, OS9 is pretty much a one app at a time deal. When an app dies in OSX it doesn't bring down the whole system: this is a BIG deal. As for 'snappiness', I'm sure this will improve.... when processors get faster!

[Xeo]

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:

Anyone know why Safari only plays the animation of one instance per page of any given GIF?

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Xeo:
Anyone know why Safari only plays the animation of one instance per page of any given GIF?

To make it less annoying maybe?

[Graymalkin]

It's the beta code in Safari, when Apple removes it it will be ten times snappier and run every instance of an animated GIF.

[BTP]

Your topic is poorly written.

That said you haven't give this much thought. OS 9 has had over a decade of refinements. The interface feels fast, but there are so many issues with OS 9, that any speed reduction is acceptable.

The lack of mutli-thread was annoying. Ever click on a menu and everything stops until you make a selection of let up on the mouse? Or how about being able to burn a CD, surf the web, listen to music all without the system choking and dying? Sure OS 9 is faster, but it doens't have the functionality X has. And X will get faster, 9 won't.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by Xeo:
Anyone know why Safari only plays the animation of one instance per page of any given GIF?

Ooooh, lets report it!

[Don Pickett]

Originally posted by solitere:
Speed is relative ? Try to print a 200+ pages image rich document in OS 9 and meantime doing something else!!

Exactly. Try, in OS 9, making PDFs (in Classic), surfing the web and playing mp3s, simultaneously, without having the machine skip a beat.

[Zadian]

Big fan of OS 9. Running it on a Performa 5200 with 64 MB of RAM. Thrilled with the functionality, thrilled with the Platinum interface, dealing just fine with the new file hierarchy.

However, when I have been forced to reboot into 7.5 I am blown away by the speed of the old operating system.

OS 9 will eventually be as fast as 7.5, right? Any idea when?

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by solitere:
Speed is relative ? Try to print a 200+ pages image rich document in OS 9 and meantime doing something else!!

You couldn't have picked a worse example. Try printing 200 pages of PDF's in OSX - the system will choke.

Go on, do it.

And BTW - OS9 has no problem doing that. Ever heard of background printing? No? Heh, funny that. Maybe if you had, your point wouldn't bave been idiotic.

[juanvaldes]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
You couldn't have picked a worse example. Try printing 200 pages of PDF's in OSX - the system will choke.

Go on, do it.

never choked on me, but it was only a mear 158pages.

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by Don Pickett:
Exactly. Try, in OS 9, making PDFs (in Classic), surfing the web and playing mp3s, simultaneously, without having the machine skip a beat.

I used to do it every day... except rather than making PDF's I was using Photoshop or Final Cut Pro or something... heh.

Never skipped a beat.

To me, interface responsiveness is the most important thing there is.

I managed to make my OS9 system perfectly stable. I could put up with the system stalls. Since OSX, mind you, I have much less tolerance for them, but still...

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by juanvaldes:
never choked on me, but it was only a mear 158pages.

Printing PDFs from Acrobat takes hours for me.

[Gul Banana]

Well, there's the problem.. of course, if you need to use Acrobat for some reason (support for whatever) you're still stuck, but from Preview it's very fast indeed. The OS X version of Acrobat is very badly done in my opinion, I far prefer other PDF solutions now.

[ambush]

Originally posted by Graymalkin:
It will be fast once Apple removes all the debug code. Duh.

Shut up with your debug code already.

[MacGorilla]

"There is Operating System I use. Its called Mac OS X and its okay and all with great sta-bi-lity, and, and the new Aqua interface is like the bomb, never mind the file system which I am doing just fine with, thank you, ma'am.

"But when I boot back into o-ess-nine to do the occassional Quark job, y'know, because thats why I own a Mac, Quark, and using it in Classic is a major bummer, like, beeeep, beeeep and the control panels vanish, I am blown, I mean absolutely, hang on to my Miller Lite for dear life, blown away by the speed of the old operating system, y'now. Its like a donsaur from the 80's, with co-oper-a-tive multi-tasking and if I try to burn a Britney Spears CD and print like a 500 PDF it freezes, gives me a bomb, which is not The Bomb, if you know what I mean.

"O-ess Ex will be eventually as fast as os9, right? I mean, please, does anybody know when? I mean, I know there is debug code in there, but really, I don't want to go back to System 6.0.8 because that would like suck."

"My name is awcopus and I have no ****ing clue what I am talking about"

[awcopus]

If OS X has to be as slow as it is to do everything it has to do to maintain its extraordinary level of stability, then that's that.

Of course, if OS X is this slow because it's offering a bevy of functionality options that I'm not accessing, that there is a problem that it would be great to resolve.

Back in the *old days*, I used to have control panel sets for DTP, for gaming, for going online. In OS X, might there be things that are being activated that slow down the system but aren't necessary. Anyone have any insights into squeaking more speed out of the OS? Or if these have been collected in one place, where is that place? Would be much obliged.

***

Given iMovie, iDVD, Final Cut Pro (Express)... you would think that Apple would be at the forefront of film and video editing. Apple still sort of is... certainly as an innovator. And FCP truly was/is revolutionary.

However, as a professional videographer, it is has been my poignant observation that many Mac-only peers have begun adding less expensive and faster PC cutting stations to their workflow. Apple's going to see significant erosion of their professional user base this year if they don't release *significantly* faster hardware and *significantly* optimized versions of OS X.

[Millennium]

"Responsive", you mean, not "fast". OSX is already faster than OS9, though it is not as responsive. That is to say, its GUI isn't as snappy.

The answer is, probably never. The reason for this has to do with some of the ways OSX works, and Quartz itself isn't really to blame for it. There are other factors which cause problems. The problem is, going back is not an option, simply because it would involve throwing away most of OSX's architectural advantages.

That's always the tradeoff you make, unfortunately. OSX will certainly get more responsive over time. But it can't catch up to something which is faster simply because it didn't do as much.

[awcopus]

MacGorilla, it is one of those peculiar anomalies of many Apple fanatics that they extol the virtues of technology (1) for its own sake and (2) because Apple's behind it.

The reality is that the typical end-user who upgrades from OS 9 to OS X, will notice that it's way more beautiful, more versatile, and much slower.

You and I will both be happier when the OS X finder is a whole helluvalot snappier than it is now. What's next, QUARTZ REALLY EXTREME?

And for pro-users, Apple's fastest hardware now significantly lags single processor PCs in Photoshop and Video Compositing slug fests. Apple's pro-desktop situation is emergent and has been for at least a year already. Properly configured, PCs can be as stable as Macs in a video-editing environment, but dramatically faster (150%+) at rendering. I've seen this, I know what I'm talking about.

It's taken years to go from 733MHz to 1.2 Ghz. If we still have another year to go before Apple releases significant hardware upgrades, the pro-user base will dwindle. This is where Apple makes its high margins, I hope for all Mac users sakes, even those of us who have lame-ass movies as our sigs, that this doesn't happen.

Year of the laptop? Fine, just as long as it's not JUST the year of the laptop.

[awcopus]

Millenium, do you think eventually the speed of hardware will make OS X more responsive than OS 9.... or by then will we be into a whole new computing paradigm?

[MickS]

Originally posted by awcopus:
OS X will eventually be as fast as9, right? Any idea when?

No. It will never be as quick as OS 9 on single CPU systems for fundemental architecture reasons. In the beginning there was System 1 this allowed you to run one program at once. You quit from that one program to run another. With System 6 you got Multi-Finder this let you switch between programs. Wow! However only one program was running at once. With System 7 Multi-Finder was built into the OS and you essentially got the system used up until OS X. An OS which would multi-task but only if the running program let it. So if you are running a single program that doesn't have to give way to anything else classic Mac OS is faster. OS X distributes time slices to all running processes, including some that you don't see, which steal clock cycles from the one program you are running. The net result it's slower.

[Westfoto]

Stability is the name of the game!

Why do we all run OSX? It is stable, so much more than OS 9. That is why I use it.

[chabig]

Imagine how fast DOS runs on a 4GHz pentium! It's so much more responsive than Windows.

[awcopus]

Originally posted by MickS:
OS X distributes time slices to all running processes, including some that you don't see, which steal clock cycles from the one program you are running. The net result it's slower.

I appreciate this fact. But wouldn't the fact of brute-level increases in processor speed and memory bandwidth and GPU technology, combined with OS refinements, lead us ultimately to an operating system that is at least as responsive as OS 9, if not faster in every respect.

Of course, the fact that Apple will make it impossible to boot new machines in OS 9 will make head to head comparisons difficult. Anyway...

The idea that a modern operating system will simply never match the speed of an old OS is ludicrous. I was an early adopter of OS X, promptly purchased the Beta and every version since. I know and love its advantages, but I have always considered the performance trade-off a temporary reality, hopefully a very temporary one.

P.S. I just purchased a 23" HD Cinema Display for $1999 at MacMall. Get'em before they're back-ordered! Can you imagine being someone who purchased this for $3499 last week? Ouch.

[CheesePuff]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Printing PDFs from Acrobat takes hours for me.

Same here, but in Preview it doesn't thankfully.

[MacGorilla]

I, for one, think the benefits of Mac OS X far out weigh any speed issues, period.

[snerdini]

Originally posted by MacGorilla:
I, for one, think the benefits of Mac OS X far out weigh any speed issues, period.

And I, for one, agree with you.

[mitchell_pgh]

Why beat a dead horse...

We all know OS 9 is being put out to the pasture, and I'm OK with that. It doesn't mean that it's dead and gone, but the days of new OS 9 updates and enhancements are over.

It was/is still a good OS. I'm still not ready to upgrade all my systems as I have 2 year old scanners that are just fine, and classic doesn't work for everything... The speed thing isn't an issue, but OS X could use faster CPUs. Give Apple another year or so...

P.S. Many people wouldn't even be able to do their work on a Mac without OS X. I just hope they get the debug code out <that was a joke>

[piracy]

[jyvin563]

OS 9 maybe faster, but OS X is much more stable. OS X is simply the most stable consumer operating system on the market. XP is more stable than ME but either are not as stable as OS X. I guess you have to take the good with the bad when it comes to OS 9 and OS X.

[xMetal]

all I know is that since I swtiched to OS X (at the original Beta), the amount of time I have saved by not having to reboot *10 freaking times a day in OS 9* makes up for a second or two of extra waiting here and there in OS X.

I've been using macs for well over a decade and OS X is more stable than any system I've ever used.

System-wide crashes =

OS X =

[KidRed]

I thought this thread was about windows at first.

[awcopus]

I've only ever used Macs. Since 1987. When I booted into OS 9 the other evening, after using OS X for about 6 months straight, I was absolutely blown away by the speed difference. It's not just noticeable. It's really a wake-up call about how OS X feels lethargic by comparison.

I posted this thread in the midst of what can only be called an emotional tantrum. Sorry.

Yes, I don't miss restarting my computer at least once a day. Yes, I don't miss the far less sophisticated networking features. Yes, I don't miss the limitations of the Finder.

Yes, I wouldn't trade OS X for OS 9, but man I do hope that hardware improves to the point that the Mac is at least as responsive someday as it once was.

Now, I will drink that cup of shut the
up and be on my merry way.

[Adam Betts]

awcopus, whining about OSX's speed isn't going to help anything

[edit: toning down my voice )

[Jan Van Boghout]

Originally posted by piracy:
[Image]

You really can't stand Debug Code® , can you?
But I do agree with other posters, once Apple removes the debug code, the OS will run tons faster. I've done some testing with my own programs, and I've come to the conclusion that Mac OS X without debug code will be at least 100% more Snappy®

[awcopus]

Mr. Adam Betts,

Granted, I mistitled this thread, and have reaped the whirlwind. Should have simply made a straightforward inquiry into speed optimization tricks for OS X.

However, a thread about OS X's speed issues, and my subsequent questions about any recommendations people have for speeding it up hardly belong in a Classic thread.

Anyway, thanks for being just another assh-le in a sea of assh-les who apparently have nothing better to do than be assh-les.

Though it is always good to see someone be good at something and you certainly are an excellent assh-le.

[Jerommeke]

Originally posted by Xeo:
Anyone know why Safari only plays the animation of one instance per page of any given GIF?

To have you press the bug button

[BTP]

A point that Millenium made seems to have gone overlooked. I tried to make the same point, but he did a much better job.

You are confusing system speed with responisveness. They are not equal. As for X never being as fast as 9, what do you know that everyone else doesn't? It will never be faster? Apple is not going to continue to improve X as they did for OS 6, 7, 8 and 9?

I can't say that the overall feel of X is as fast as 9, it's not. Despite what apologists might say, 9 is the past, despite having been a good OS. It is just that simple that X presents the userbase with a much greater functionality, even if there are a few things that are different or "not as good". 9 is gone and X is only going to get better.

[yukon]

actually, it seems pretty slow...can't think of any operating system that's slower, except if they made it in Java or something (flamebait, once again)

Apple conceded that some functions take twice as long under OS X as they did in OS 9. there's huge room for improvement there.

of course, as our systems get faster, OS X will be fast, just like system7 became. btw, i found system 8.6 lightyears faster than 8.1, partly the nanokernel I suppose

BUT, one thing I really notice is the crappy finder. there's almost no multithreading (eject a CD, connect to a server, organize by type), and other things are insanely slow (make a window longer, and try scrolling in list view, open a folder with items in it). where windows should open immediatly after doubleclicking, there's a full 1sec delay on my system. fading menus make it look really slow, and that won't be fixed by faster processors. seems like a finder window is slower when there are applications in it, and scrolling that is painful. then the CD spins up, and I have to wait a couple seconds until the finder can do anything.

I say the weak link in MacOS X is the finder itself. forget making it cocoa, make it assembly! ;-)

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by awcopus:
Though it is always good to see someone be good at something and you certainly are an excellent assh-le.

Seriously, I don't want to see you becoming like KellyHogan

p.s. I agree with Yukon. Finder is mostly to blame because of its poor multi-threading. Sometime, it would hog down computer because of one little task. Other than that, I'm pretty satisfied with MacOS X's speed.

[stew]

Originally posted by MickS:
OS X distributes time slices to all running processes, including some that you don't see, which steal clock cycles from the one program you are running. The net result it's slower.

Err...actually, no. (Unless your CPU usage is somewhere above 90%).
In a preemtive multitasking system like OS X, a program usually gets as much CPU time as it needs.

[barbarian]

All the posters who go on about how great OS X is at handling multiple tasks miss the point. 90% of the time users are browsing the web, reading email, or writing something or drawing something and are not doing anything else. Most people work one task at a time. The problem is that OS X still feels much slower than OS 9 when scrolling a document or moving windows around the screen. Even on newer machines. Even with 10.2. Until there are machines fast enough so that OS X doesn't feel sluggish doing basic tasks, the os will always be unfavorably compared to OS 9 speed wise. Everyone knows X is rock solid and can handle 10 things at once, but some of us just want it to be fast. As much as I love OS X, if I am going to be doing heavy photoshop work or tex editing in multiple windows, I always boot back into 9 because the sluggishness in X drives me bananas.

[dfiler]

Originally posted by barbarian:
All the posters who go on about how great OS X is at handling multiple tasks miss the point. 90% of the time users are browsing the web, reading email, or writing something or drawing something and are not doing anything else. Most people work one task at a time. The problem is that OS X still feels much slower than OS 9 when scrolling a document or moving windows around the screen. Even on newer machines. Even with 10.2. Until there are machines fast enough so that OS X doesn't feel sluggish doing basic tasks, the os will always be unfavorably compared to OS 9 speed wise. Everyone knows X is rock solid and can handle 10 things at once, but some of us just want it to be fast. As much as I love OS X, if I am going to be doing heavy photoshop work or tex editing in multiple windows, I always boot back into 9 because the sluggishness in X drives me bananas.

Maybe some users... but others look more like this ...

Code:
Processes:  55 total, 3 running, 52 sleeping... 130 threads            20:34:54
Load Avg:  2.26, 1.37, 1.19     CPU usage:  65.9% user, 18.0% sys, 16.1% idl
SharedLibs: num =  130, resident = 51.4M code, 4.08M data, 17.9M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 6663, resident =  159M + 13.5M private,  205M shared
PhysMem:   121M wired,  137M active,  994M inactive, 1.22G used,  284M free
VM: 3.80G + 75.5M   33316(0) pageins, 36082(0) pageouts

  PID COMMAND      %CPU   TIME   #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE  VSIZE
 2646 ld          68.7%  0:02.01   1     9    81  2.93M+ 34.0M  6.26M+ 37.7M+
 2630 forty-two   29.7%  0:02.60   1    58   139  4.73M+ 23.3M+ 9.34M+  127M+
 2345 Window Man  26.7% 21:11.74   3   332   896  18.4M  45.7M+ 57.8M+  214M+
 2390 iTunes      16.0% 27:33.94   8   153   375  10.5M  25.9M  17.0M   147M
 2528 Project Bu  11.4%  0:11.66   5    97   243  7.67M  19.1M  13.8M   127M
 2648 top         10.6%  0:00.63   1    14    18   272K   388K   568K  13.6M
 2352 Dock         3.0%  1:28.29   2   122   120  1.01M  22.2M  4.26M   123M
 2397 CPU Monito   2.2% 22:18.62   1    55    85  1.25M  10.2M  3.49M   114M
    0 kernel_tas   1.5% 46:16.07  27     0     -      -      -   103M+  673M
 2364 Terminal     1.5%  3:32.90   3    68   823  1.73M  44.5M  9.29M+  151M
 2389 System Eve   1.5%  3:27.87   1    51   146  16.4M+ 12.5M  18.5M+  128M
 2527 Adobe Phot   1.5%  0:13.39   4    70   573  25.6M  36.0M  40.1M   192M
  173 ATSServer    0.7% 11:49.52   2    46   149   868K  18.7M  3.68M  59.9M
 2365 SetiChatSt   0.7%  1:01.64   1    64   137  1.96M  20.7M  5.54M+  121M
 2362 Safari       0.0% 11:09.14   5   249   577  38.4M  68.4M  53.1M   244M
[Darrin-Filers-Computer:~] dfiler%

[SpeedRacer]

This topic has been beaten dead many times before, but it's also important to revisit every few months so that we don't forget both how far we've come and how far we still have to go.

People who say "look how far we've come" often point to the 10.0 as a measuring stick while those that say "look how far we have to go still" point to OS 9.

IMHO, any reference to 10.0 are ludicrous. 10.2 was the real deal - the final product. 10.0 and 10.1 merely performance betas. Does anyone here remember how long it took to launch an application under 10.0? How could you possibly call a product of that final? Even now, app launch times are sub-par compared to both Classic Mac OS and (particularly) WinXP. Given the roughly 1/2 clock cycles the Mac is already running at, that's a significant performance problem - and it's been consistent across the last *2* years of CPU development on the Mac!

The only explanation i can think of is that Apple overestimated how far hardware developments would have come by now in their original plans with OS 10. Regardless of the obvious reference to CPU clock cycles, there was simply no reason to release as OS as hardware/graphically-demanding as 10 on hardware running 8MB Rage video cards. Apple's strength is consistently touted as the tight integration of hardware and software, yet what has the lesson of OS 10's release really shown us? Mac hardware cannot drive Mac software? We, as Mac v. Wintel users used to be able to claim the longest hardware life in the market. Would anyone here be willing to wager how useful a 3 year old, first generation iMac would be as a production machine running Mac OS 10.2? The qualitative "feel" of difference between newer Mac hardware running OS 10 and hardware released only 2 years ago is *dramatic*.

Arguments that emphasize only the fact that OS 10 is so stable ignore the fact that on older hardware it often takes longer to wait until you can FORCE-QUIT an offending app than it does to simply restart the entire OS and application under OS 9! Has anyone here had an older Mac crash hard under OS 10 and have to go through a complete disk check/repair process? It takes a good 5-10 minutes, 2 reboots, and offers absolutely no indication to the user as to where in the overall process of check/repair the machine is. This is only one type of example, but the fact remains... the worst crash under OS 9 takes 1/4 that time.

What's the point?

A company with as many brilliant people as Apple has can do better. We, as Mac users, can expect better. So when will OS 10 be as fast as OS 9? When Mac users such as the ones here, make it abundently clear to Apple that better performance remains Job #1.

Contact Apple

Speed