[skyman]

I have been a Mac user since the Apple II. I have been wanting to make the move from OS 9.2.2 to OS X. I could not initially make the move because a couple of the applications that I use would not run in either OS X or Classic. After purchasing comparable applications that were OS X native I have now been able to make the complete transition to OS X.

I am running OS 10.2.3 on a G3 400MHz PISMO PowerBook with 384 MEG of RAM.

Here are my observations and comments:

- My only real complaint is OS X runs much slower on my PowerBook then did OS 9. Even on my wife’s 700MHz iBook OS X runs slower than does OS 9. I still think OS X needs more optimization to run faster on older and new G3 laptops.

- I miss the Apple menu items but I really like the dock.

- The anti alias text looks hazy and not as crisp as text in OS 9.

- I love OS X multi tasking. I can be downloading a file, working with an image in PhotoShop, checking my email, running iTunes all at the same time. THIS I REALLY LIKE!! I do feel that the multi tasking helps to make up for OS X sluggishness.

- Wake from sleep kicks butt!! OS 9 took foreverrrrrrr to wake from sleep and would sometimes crash or lockup.

All in all OS X kicks OS 9 butt hands down. Except for the sluggishness, OS X is GREAT!

[Apple Pro Underwear]

i think OSX jaguar is as fast as it will ever get

on a dual 1.25 or 1.4 ghz, they supposedly run extremely fast

even i have to admit, on a g4 500 with no QE...it runs acceptable.



so what i am saying is apple wants you to get a new machine and atleast a g4 (something you're way behind in)


my thoughts concur with yours. there are haxies that fix your menu problems and others. www.unsanity.com.

my main beef is that i got sick of aqua after a week and long for a more plain "os9" looking gui

[andreas_g4]

Originally posted by Apple Pro Underwear:


my main beef is that i got sick of aqua after a week and long for a more plain "os9" looking gui

Really? I loved (and still do) the look of OS 8/9, but OS X.2 (the earlier aqua-theme looked a bit too bulky to me) looks far superior. What really pisses me off (or of? don't know...) is the blue theme. Graphite is a must for me.

[docholiday]

i think apple should seriously consider adding some themes / color schemes to the operating system. while i love the aqua interface, i wouldn't mind having options.. not ones where i have to pay extra cash to use or mess with my os...

my 2 cents

[Apple Pro Underwear]

yep

i don't think it was necessary with os9 because it was no frills but osX is very heavy with the eye candy

i installed several hacks just to get rid of stuff. like stripes.


umm...i would like to see a merge of aqua and os9. sorry, i'm a graphic designer and i find osx not as good as os9 in terms of just getting work done

but yes, a second option. 1 suped up version for regular people and 1 no frills for professionals perhaps

[skyman]

Originally posted by Apple Pro Underwear:
yep

i don't think it was necessary with os9 because it was no frills but osX is very heavy with the eye candy

i installed several hacks just to get rid of stuff. like stripes.


umm...i would like to see a merge of aqua and os9. sorry, i'm a graphic designer and i find osx not as good as os9 in terms of just getting work done

but yes, a second option. 1 suped up version for regular people and 1 no frills for professionals perhaps

What hacks did you use and which ones improved performance the most?

[Don Pickett]

You need more memory.

[Nathan Adams]

skymac

1. to increase performance > increase RAM. It can as simple as that.

2. you mention you find the anti aliasing a little hazy. Head into the system prefs, and into the General prefpane. Down the bottom is "Font Smoothing Style", with a choice of 4 different levels of anti-aliasing. That might help

[mitchell_pgh]

I don't even know where to start with OS X being better then OS 9. If all you do is graphic design (Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator, email and word), there really is no reason to jump over yet. But if you do ANYTHING more, jump...


10.3 or whatever they call it will even be better...

[skyman]

Originally posted by Don Pickett:
You need more memory.

I have 384 MEGS of RAM. Do you really think adding more RAM will make a noticeable difference?

[OptimusG4]

I think Pismos could hold what, 512MB according to Apple, but it could actually hold 1GB. You can upgrade more if you wanted. I think 512 is the minimum OS X needs to run a few apps.

[macmike42]

Originally posted by skyman:
I have 384 MEGS of RAM. Do you really think adding more RAM will make a noticeable difference?

Absolutely. The more the better. I upgraded from 160 MB to 384 MB and was amazed at the difference. It was easily the difference between thinking OS X was kinda neat to saying "Whoa! Look what I can make my computer do!" Then I upgraded from 384 MB to 768 MB, thinking I would simply be able to keep more applications open, but it made pretty much everything another notch faster. OS X is one memory hungry SOB. The more you feed it, the happier it (and subsequently you) will be. I would imagine that for e-mailing and web surfing, 512 MB would be the point where you wouldn't see any noticeable gains from adding more RAM, but for serious graphics, development, or video work, the more the merrier (to sum it up in a cliche).

[wadesworld]

My only real complaint is OS X runs much slower on my PowerBook then did OS 9. Even on my wife?s 700MHz iBook OS X runs slower than does OS 9.

Of course it does. It's doing far more work and the display hardware on that Powerbook is way behind the times.

It's a bit like complaining that Medal of Honor is much slower on your G3 Powerbook than Doom 1.

I still think OS X needs more optimization to run faster on older and new G3 laptops.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but any optimization it gets will be an incidental effect of something else they were working on. In short, Apple is not, and will not be spending time working on how OS X performs on G3's. That may not make you happy, but that's how it is.

Wade

[skyman]

Originally posted by wadesworld:
Of course it does. It's doing far more work and the display hardware on that Powerbook is way behind the times.

It's a bit like complaining that Medal of Honor is much slower on your G3 Powerbook than Doom 1.



Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but any optimization it gets will be an incidental effect of something else they were working on. In short, Apple is not, and will not be spending time working on how OS X performs on G3's. That may not make you happy, but that's how it is.

Wade

I have to disagree with you. Yes my PISMO is old (3 years now) but OS X still runs slow on my wife’s brand NEW 700MHz iBook. Since the iBook is going to be around for a while there is still a lot more Apple could do and should do to improve the performance of OS X for BRAND NEW G3 iBooks.

[undotwa]

Originally posted by skyman:
I have to disagree with you. Yes my PISMO is old (3 years now) but OS X still runs slow on my wife’s brand NEW 700MHz iBook. Since the iBook is going to be around for a while there is still a lot more Apple could do and should do to improve the performance of OS X for BRAND NEW G3 iBooks.

There still is plenty of optimization left for OS X so don't you worry.

On any G3 OS X will feel a little sluggish.

I'd say the mininum for a 'fast' experience would be:

450 Mhz G4
512 MB of RAM

I've only got a 500 Mhz G3 iMac/256 MB but I find it acceptable. I don't need anymore power at the moment.

[stew]

Originally posted by skyman:
- The anti alias text looks hazy and not as crisp as text in OS 9.

Get SuperCal and calibrate your screen. Made a huge difference for me, I totally hated Quartz text before I did that.

[pat++]

Originally posted by wadesworld:

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but any optimization it gets will be an incidental effect of something else they were working on. In short, Apple is not, and will not be spending time working on how OS X performs on G3's. That may not make you happy, but that's how it is.

Wade

Please don't tell people such things. A few people know what's coming with 10.3 and.... well... you'll see. But all I can say is that you're wrong.

[jaske]

A G3 is fine, so long as you max the ram, AND the G3 is accompanied by 32 megs vram (thus, the current iBook 800). I was an unsatisfied G3, OS X user until I purchased the iBook 800.

Seriously, the better video card makes a MAJOR difference by fully enabling Quartz Extreme. And yes, the iBook 700 with 16 megs supports QE, but based on my personal expereince the 32 megs is truly needed for QE to make a noticeable difference.

[andreas_g4]

Originally posted by jaske:
A G3 is fine, so long as you max the ram, AND the G3 is accompanied by 32 megs vram (thus, the current iBook 800). I was an unsatisfied G3, OS X user until I purchased the iBook 800.

Seriously, the better video card makes a MAJOR difference by fully enabling Quartz Extreme. And yes, the iBook 700 with 16 megs supports QE, but based on my personal expereince the 32 megs is truly needed for QE to make a noticeable difference.

Agreed. But I find no big difference in using QE with 16 or 32 Megs VRAM. For my private use I have only a 600 MHz iBook with 16 MB VRAM and 640 MB RAM, and I frequently use various other machines with 32+ VRAM. Besides the obviously better overall performance on a G4 with fully enabled QE, I find my iBook 600/16/640 more than usable. Except heavy apps like PS and stuff (which I use nevertheless on my iBook), performance is ok, especially the GUI.

In comparison to my previous machine, a Titanium 500 with only 8 Megs/VRAM an no QE, it's a difference like night and day!

And besides all technical speaking, the "look and feel" experience depends last but not least much on the personal requirements, IMHO.

[Hoosier_1701]

Originally posted by stew:
Get SuperCal and calibrate your screen. Made a huge difference for me, I totally hated Quartz text before I did that.

I tried using SuperCal to more correctly calibrate my iMac G4. When I was finished, I switched back and forth between the SuperCal profile, the standard iMac profile, and a third that I had created using Apple's built in utility. The SuperCal profile seem really off and dark. I'm not sure what I did wrong. Is there a particular lighting situation that is preferred when doing this?

[Terri]

Originally posted by skyman:
I miss the Apple menu items but I really like the dock.

Get FuitMenu, in addition to giving you back the Apple menu it lets you right click on folders and navigate them.

I put all my seldom used stuff in the Apple menu, a alias to my jobs folder, a alias to my hard drive and a alias to Volumes. That last one lets me navigate any mounted drives.

Now I like the Dock a lot more since it isn't so full of junk. Still really wish I could put the Dock on the left side of my right monitor.

Speed is pretty decent as long as I don't open too many things. I'm running a single 450, 1.25 gigs of RAM, Radeon 8500 card, the card really helped.

PS: I also use ASM, Windowshade, and Labels.

[dissident]

I think apple should consider giving user the abillity to choose an alternative aqua mode whithout the transparency, high quality shadows, fading menus and real-time rendering when moving windows around. I would certainly be able to live without those "show-off" features if it made OS X less sluggish on older machines.

[willed]

Originally posted by pat++:
Please don't tell people such things. A few people know what's coming with 10.3 and.... well... you'll see. But all I can say is that you're wrong.

Oooh. That sounds quite exciting (esp. as I have an iBook 500). I just hope you're not full of BS!

[Apple Pro Underwear]

Originally posted by dissident:
I think apple should consider giving user the abillity to choose an alternative aqua mode whithout the transparency, high quality shadows, fading menus and real-time rendering when moving windows around. I would certainly be able to live without those "show-off" features if it made OS X less sluggish on older machines.

i work some freelance for some larger design production firms (advertising reated)


i really don't see them adapting OSX in it's current form

I JUST DON'T


i don't see them installing OSX and then going to unsanity.com and installing haxies to get functionality that should come with OSX. when sitting down with art directors, i don't see them minimizing a slow slow window to the dock especially if they're trying to move quickly between illustrator 10, photoshop 7, indesign 2

i like OSX overall, but it's just too much. give the pro users a super simpler pro style UI.

[:haripu:]

Originally posted by Apple Pro Underwear:
i don't see them installing OSX and then going to unsanity.com and installing haxies to get functionality that should come with OSX. when sitting down with art directors, i don't see them minimizing a slow slow window to the dock especially if they're trying to move quickly between illustrator 10, photoshop 7, indesign 2

sorry, i don't see your point. what is it about art directors that you can't see them minimize windows to the dock? i used to be one (now i am freelance, too) and i was a great minimizer in my time.

no, seriously, i never understood the argument about aqua being too complex for design work. it is a very well balanced gui, and if you don't believe me then go look what horrors are lurking in the gui customization threads. it really just needs some getting used to it. after that you won't even notice it anymore.

and i don't have any haxies installed. i learned to do everything the OSX way (but i can understand everyone installing labels X - it is really a must have for efficient production).

[Apple Pro Underwear]

snappiness:
window resizing
scrolling
opening windows/ documents
gui lag

window shade
apple menu



i'm talking about high end production personnel who have a art director hovering and just need to open a 75 page powerpoint and the thing is barely scrollable and then he asks you to open the corresponding indesign doc which the powerpoint document is based on and it take 10 seconds for the powerpoint file to minimize and another 40 seconds for the indesign doc to open...and then it's lagging like hell just to get to page 22 where it freezes for 4 seconds just so the insertion point in the text tool to appear and you have to shut down illustrator (which takes a 10 second lag just to switch apps and 20 seconds to close it)

i like OSX too, and i think it has a good future


but a solid os 9.2.2 is snappy and just better for high end production/design right now

[eddiecatflap]

..well i'm VERY impressed with x's multi-tasking..

..at the Moment while i write THIS.. i'm rippng a cd - track 2 , playing track 5 , downloading my emails , switching between 2 very ott script enabled websites , reading the process viewer , designing an animation in classic and drinking a beer..!

ALL AT THE SAME TIME..!!!

..and with no grate slow-down..ok the occasional BBOD .. but compared to 9 - which i guarantee would crash or lock up ..its utterly and completely amazing !!

WOWZERS!

..i was very anti-x , but that was on my icebook , on a 17" imac it ROX



..the g4 reely makes a BIG dif !

..if only the towers were quieter , i'd have gone for a dualie..

..upgrade the ram that's all i can say . going from 256 - 768 is the best value for money upgrade you'll EVER make.

ha!

[pliny]

Originally posted by wadesworld:
Of course it does. It's doing far more work and the display hardware on that Powerbook is way behind the times.

It's a bit like complaining that Medal of Honor is much slower on your G3 Powerbook than Doom 1.



Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but any optimization it gets will be an incidental effect of something else they were working on. In short, Apple is not, and will not be spending time working on how OS X performs on G3's. That may not make you happy, but that's how it is.

Wade

Hmm, this seems an odd statement given as how Apple are still selling G3's running X, and that 10.2-10.2.3 feature improvements to ATI graphic chips, which are in older G3s.

But if your point is that a G4 will run X better, and that X is built for the G4 and beyond, well then I agree.

My $.02.

[pat++]

Originally posted by willed:
Oooh. That sounds quite exciting (esp. as I have an iBook 500). I just hope you're not full of BS!

I do have an iBook 500 too
And trust me, this is definitely not BS.

[Eug]

Agreed. But I find no big difference in using QE with 16 or 32 Megs VRAM. For my private use I have only a 600 MHz iBook with 16 MB VRAM and 640 MB RAM, and I frequently use various other machines with 32+ VRAM. Besides the obviously better overall performance on a G4 with fully enabled QE, I find my iBook 600/16/640 more than usable. Except heavy apps like PS and stuff (which I use nevertheless on my iBook), performance is ok, especially the GUI.

Monitor spanning is supposedly extremely painful with 16 MB of RAM on the video card.

[skyman]

Originally posted by skyman:
[B]
- Wake from sleep kicks butt!! OS 9 took foreverrrrrrr to wake from sleep and would sometimes crash or lockup.B]

Oh well, so much for wake from sleep being flawless. Tried waking from sleep today and got the blue screen of death.

Had to hold down power key to reboot.

My first crash and I have only been using OS X for 3 days.

[cpac]

so are you trolling or what?

The reasons 9 "feels" faster than X have been gone over and over, as have the reasons why X is actually getting more done for you.

Wake from sleep doesn't cause crashes all by itself (trust me, I wake from sleep at least a dozen times a day), instead you were probably running some wonky piece of software that caused a problem...

If you're here to ask for help, you'll need to start describing your problems in more detail, but if you're just here to b*tch, you're complaints are better directed at Apple.

[skyman]

Originally posted by cpac:
so are you trolling or what?

I have over 600 posts, yep I guess I am a troll.

Get a life!

The reasons 9 "feels" faster than X have been gone over and over, as have the reasons why X is actually getting more done for you.

Read my first post you idiot. I made that very same point.

Wake from sleep doesn't cause crashes all by itself (trust me, I wake from sleep at least a dozen times a day), instead you were probably running some wonky piece of software that caused a problem.

Office X, BBedit, Fetch, PhotoShop, FileMaker, GoLive, Explorer. Nothing "wonky" about any of these!

If you're here to ask for help, you'll need to start describing your problems in more detail, but if you're just here to b*tch, you're complaints are better directed at Apple.

Yep, you sure were a lot of help! NOT!

[Don Pickett]

Originally posted by skyman:
Oh well, so much for wake from sleep being flawless. Tried waking from sleep today and got the blue screen of death.

Had to hold down power key to reboot.

My first crash and I have only been using OS X for 3 days.

Your wake from sleep problems are probably hardware-related. I finally traced mine to a faulty Firewire bridge chip in my Zip drive.

[skyman]

Originally posted by Don Pickett:
Your wake from sleep problems are probably hardware-related. I finally traced mine to a faulty Firewire bridge chip in my Zip drive.

It has only happened once so far (knock on wood). It was just a surprise since I am running OS X. No big deal, just an unpleasant surprise.

I only have 384 MEG of RAM and I think that might be part of the problem.

[pliny]

I've always found earlier outings of Apple OS's to have problems with waking from sleep, on many different machines. For instance, system 8.6--what a pain to wake from sleep there, lots of problems. Then by 9.0, especially 9.04, probably the greatest Classic OS ever, all the kinks were worked out, for the most part, so that waking from sleep was easy.

Now we're back into another OS flavor and there are wake from sleep problems being attributed to internal hardware glitches, wonky softs, USB mice, directory problems, bad hd's, and so on. Oh the good old days are back!

[BTP]

Are you saying the RAM or amount of RAM?

Personally, I think it could only be the RAM if it were bad.

[Don Pickett]

Originally posted by skyman:
It has only happened once so far (knock on wood). It was just a surprise since I am running OS X. No big deal, just an unpleasant surprise.

I only have 384 MEG of RAM and I think that might be part of the problem.

It's not a RAM problem. I have had two wake from sleep problems with my Powerbook. The first was under OS9 and was traced to buggy mouse drivers. I fixed that one by replacing them with USB Overdrive. The second was, like I said, a faulty Firewire bridge chip.

[cpac]

Originally posted by skyman:
I have over 600 posts, yep I guess I am a troll.

Get a life!

Last I checked, post-count was not an indication of troll-hood. (Just look at El Pre$idente/Green Leaf/Kelly Hogan).

Office X, BBedit, Fetch, PhotoShop, FileMaker, GoLive, Explorer. Nothing "wonky" about any of these!

Yep, you sure were a lot of help! NOT!

My point was that *nobody* could be a lot of help with the generic description you gave (thus leading me to suspect you were a troll...)

Well let's examine this. Your problem, as you most recently described it, was that your Mac crashed on wake. That's not particularly descriptive.

The list of software you are running is a start to finding a fix . . . (for all anyone could tell from your initial post, you were running 5 different haxies with your own modified theme along with tons of beta software).

Other helpful information would include what you were doing/what was running just before you put your system to sleep, whether you've encountered the problem before, whether it happens every time you attempt to wake from sleep or not, and perhaps, (for those that can interpret them) crash logs of various sorts.

----------------

Basically I was suggesting that if you want help solving a problem, you need to be specific about what your problem is rather than just complaining.

Your overly strong reaction leads me to continue to suspect that you're just looking to troll...

Best of luck, and if you provide more details, I and others will be quite willing to help you solve the problem.

[skyman]

Originally posted by cpac:

Best of luck, and if you provide more details, I and others will be quite willing to help you solve the problem.

Like I said in my previous post:

"It has only happened once so far (knock on wood). It was just a surprise since I am running OS X. No big deal, just an unpleasant surprise."

[Terri]

Mac OS X has been rock solid for me. That being said I did have a freeze today when I was quitting out of Virtual PC.

I've only had one other freeze like this so far this year and that was when Entourage's database got corrupt.

That works out to about one freeze a month. Under 9 I would get about 2 or 3 a week.

I think that no matter how perfect a OS is once in awhile something will just go horrible wrong. Especially since I'm running some beta software like X11, Safari and a few others. I also have older hardware, a 450 AGP, and I really push my machine hard.

Overall I'm very happy with Mac OS X. I can only imagine where it will be in another year or so.

[DeathMan]

Originally posted by skyman:
I have 384 MEGS of RAM. Do you really think adding more RAM will make a noticeable difference?

Max the RAM, you won't regret it. Max it on the iBook too.

[Hash]

cpac, would you please

JUST SHUT THE F*** UP

[sniffer]

Hmm.. X rock stable? I don't think so. If I for instance unplug, plug-in power cord on my iBook while sleeping in OS X 10.2.3 the system goes unstable. Connecting to a tv with my AV cable doesn't work correctly unless I just have had a fresh restart. In my experience OS X have lately matured speed wise and feature wise, but the stability have varied a lot. I have even experienced the track pad stopped responding in 10.2.3 which was a unpleasant experience especially since I was demoing my iBook for a friend. Ver 10.0-10.4 was extremely slow etc, but I didn't get my first kernal panic until 10.1.x. Go figure.

PS: Don't give me that crap about bad ram now ya hear.

[sniffer]

BTW on the other hand, X is quite stable for me, but not ground rock stable in my experience in the latest versions. Just so I've mentioned it.

[Synotic]

VPC does some weird stuff with the mouse and they keyboard... It's "frozen" me a few times. I am not sure if escapepod would of worked... But it's not an OS X problem

[Fallout]

Whenever OSX starts to chug (which happens often, i have an iMac G3 400) I open ShadowKiller. It helps a LOT. I highly recommend using this program if you've got a slow Mac.