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rmendis · Mar 5, 2003, 07:39 PM

I have found that Carbon apps appear more responsive or faster in Mac OS 9 than in Mac OS X.

Particularly (the carbon game) Civilization III (seems to run more smoothly in Mac OS 9) and even to a lesser extent Adobe apps (Illustrator 10, GoLive, LiveMotion).

Anyone else notice this?

thePurpleGiant · 08:46 PM

Hmm, depends on the program really. It seems that the majority of programs that are carbon and work under OS 9 and X have been around for much longer under OS 9, therefore more optimtismed etc.

ALso note that almost any single program will, in itself, run faster under OS 9. It's OS X's ability to multitask and run multiple programs fast that gives it an advantage.

(That was a 'yes' to OS 9 is faster btw!)

Millennium · Mar 5, 2003, 08:57 PM

It seems to depend on the event model, more than anything else. Apps using the Classic events model seem to do better on OS9. Apps with CarbonEvents definitely do better on OSX (note that CE apps can only go back as far as 8.6; the most bare-bones Carbon ports, such as AppleWorks, can go all the way back to 8.1 if need be).

This makes some sense. Each OS does better with the event model designed for it. It also shows some of why we still see Bad Carbon Ports; the developers may still be valuing OS9 over OSX.

rmendis · Mar 5, 2003, 11:25 PM

Originally posted by thePurpleGiant:
(That was a 'yes' to OS 9 is faster btw!)

Wow!

So it isn't just me then...it seems that no one (has yet) voted for Mac OS X being faster at Carbon apps (and the vast majority of them in fact are)!

Cipher13 · Mar 6, 2003, 12:11 AM

In this respect, OS9 slaughters OSX.

Gul Banana · Mar 6, 2003, 05:34 AM

Speed is one of the things OS X is definitely not designed for. A look inside CoreFoundation will give you the shudders if you value efficiency above all else

sniffer · Mar 6, 2003, 06:15 AM

I think the poll results says it all really. That's also why I still have OS 9 on my hd. Ehm.. Perhaps I shouldn't tell, but my mac is even running os9 right now..

step · Mar 6, 2003, 09:59 AM

personally i'm delighted at shelling out for an osx native photoshop 7 , then finding that it runs faster in classic anyway.
didn't see 'that' in any reviews!
still, if i didn't run it in classic i wouldn't be able to use my new hp scanner/ printer (says osx on the box.. ha!)

rmendis · Mar 6, 2003, 10:33 PM

Originally posted by Millennium:
It seems to depend on the event model, more than anything else. Apps using the Classic events model seem to do better on OS9. Apps with CarbonEvents definitely do better on OSX...

This makes some sense. Each OS does better with the event model designed for it.

This may in fact be the primary factor.

One has to remember that Mac OS X evolved from Rhapsody/NEXTSTEP - a native Cocoa environment. The portable Carbon API was ported to run ontop of it.

What wouldn't surprise me is if the NEXTSTEP Window Server is still the basis of Mac OS X. That is the Cocoa event model (NSEvents) is stil the native event model for Mac OS X. With Carbon and Classic events budded to run on top of it.

Well, then the next step for Apple engineering is not a problem at all...that is to make Carbon the native environment for Mac OS X and bud Cocoa ontop of that. This might sound strange but the difference is akin to the difference between:

1. SoftWindows running on NEXTSTEP for Intel
2. OPENSTEP running on Windows 2000/NT/XP

(Perhaps Apple was waiting to see which of the two event models - Classic or Carbon - would become more popular?)
If so, then we can expect Mac OS X 10.3 Panther to really give Carbon (and it's apps) a real Turbo boost!

rmendis · Mar 7, 2003, 01:02 PM

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
A look inside CoreFoundation will give you the shudders if you value efficiency above all else

The idea behind these Core* services and frameworks was to remove the dependency between each of the API/environments - Carbon, Cocoa and Java.

CoreFoundation in particular and the CF classes (isomorphic to the NS classes) were ment to provide object oriented like functionality from within C. That is each class is represented as a C struct and a collection of functions (from what i remember). The mapping is fairly accurate and concise.

NSArray <-> CFArray
NSString <-> CFString
etc..

So the Carbon API was budded ontop of CoreFoundation and other Core* frameworks. This is very nice and has the potential for speed improvements at the expense of a little less readable code (in comparison to the same logic in Objective-C or Java say).

However, i think what is really holding Carbon back is the CoreServices that handle the window services and events.

It seems that the Cocoa events (NSEvents) are still native while Carbon and Classic events are budded ontop of that. I'm not sure about this, but that must be the only explaination for Carbon apps to run faster on Mac OS 9 than on Mac OS X.

Perhaps with Panther, Apple will finally make the switch to making CArbon events the default and native event model with NSEvents budded ontop of that.

Anomalous · Mar 7, 2003, 04:06 PM

LOL zero votes for OS X!

rmendis · Mar 10, 2003, 01:39 AM

Originally posted by Anomalous:
LOL zero votes for OS X!

Finally someone voted for Mac OS X.

I wonder if it was out of sympathy?

dfiler · Mar 10, 2003, 07:02 AM

I dunno... last night I discovered that my ancient OS9 install has been broken for months. I hadn't noticed.

(An installation program gave me the following error: Installation cannot be performed on this computer.)

Does that make my OS9 Carbon faster or slower?