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MHerberg · Aug 1, 2003, 10:42 AM

I have the first generation Icebook (iBook Dual USB). It is 500Mhz and has 384 MB of memory.

Now I can't really discuss anything specific, as I am under a real NDA (now I really wonder how so many people got 7B21 so fast otherwise) but for those how haven't touched 10.3 you should get excited... very excited.

10.3 is much much faster even at this early stage on my OLD computer. You got to remember that my laptop is pre Quartz Extreme and I still feel a huge difference in responsiveness. The interface changes, in the most part, are a lot prettier and more functional.

So be excited, as Apple has really done there homework this release and your computer will feel reborn. Apple will also undoubtedly add additional features to make this purchase well worth the upgrade fee.

sniffer · Aug 1, 2003, 11:03 AM

Great news. I have the same iBook, just +100 mhz. Thanks for the info.

OS X is getting better on the same hardware. To late to regret now Apple, extending the life span of my hardware and all.

gorgonzola · Aug 1, 2003, 11:07 AM

I have literally the same computer, so that's nice to hear. I did recently order a 1 GHz TiBook on massive edu discount though.

cybergoober · Aug 1, 2003, 11:11 AM

Keep in mind that even a fresh Jaguar install is going to feel a lot snappier than one that's been in use for almost a year.

That's not to say that Panther is not going to provide a nice speed increase. Just keep an eye on it, as after a while of loading stuff on it whatnot you could start to see a decrease in performance.

DBvader · Aug 1, 2003, 11:18 AM

im really happy for you, when i installed the first panther release on my computer, it didnt seem much faster than jag. i run a dual 867.

WinsOBoogi · Aug 1, 2003, 06:02 PM

Excellent!!!!!

My 500 mhz/384 iBook has been EXTREMELY sluggish on 10.2.6! I mean..sometimes, it hiccups for a while when I press the "VOLUME" keys....I even thought about BUILDING A PC for a while...imagine that...lol..never...

Good, good, good news. I've literally almost become fed up with this machine..my primary machine.

superblue · Aug 1, 2003, 08:10 PM

My Spec: iBook 500/384MB + your post = happy me. Bring it on!!!

SupahCoolX · Aug 1, 2003, 08:17 PM

That's nice for my iBook 600. Of course, by the time Panther ships my dual 2Ghz G5 should have arrived...

...Then I will wake up and continue on with my iBook.

moreno · Aug 1, 2003, 09:11 PM

Keep in mind that even a fresh Jaguar install is going to feel a lot snappier than one that's been in use for almost a year.

That's not to say that Panther is not going to provide a nice speed increase. Just keep an eye on it, as after a while of loading stuff on it whatnot you could start to see a decrease in performance.

it is snappy?�

blackbird_1.0 · Aug 1, 2003, 09:40 PM

old ibook users unite!

Toyin · Aug 1, 2003, 10:24 PM

What I've noticed to date is that the faster the hardware the less of a speed bump. There is a decent increase in speed on my Dual 500 with 1.5gb of RAM on the original Panther. I've since deleted it and will wait for the final. If it's faster than the DP1 I'll be more than happy.

Superchicken · Aug 1, 2003, 10:55 PM

If this keeps up my 333Mhz G3 is gona feel like a 1Ghz G4

hahaha...

I'm getting a new iBook though so the speed increase is very welcome for me

misc · Aug 1, 2003, 11:32 PM

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
I have literally the same computer, so that's nice to hear. I did recently order a 1 GHz TiBook on massive edu discount though.

Woo those massive edu discounts.

Anyhoo, good news for us poor folks!

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Aug 1, 2003, 11:38 PM

I remember hearing the same jazz for 10.1 and 10.2.

brainchild2b · Aug 2, 2003, 12:01 AM

Trust me. Those of us who develop are very familar with the "Clean Install" speed up. After all we did the same with 10-10.1, 10.1-10.2 and are very familar with this effect.

Believe me when I say Panther is soooo much noticably faster. Quartz is about 40-50% faster than ever before. This isn't the clean install effect.

Once you get it on your machine you'll know. Journaling is even enabled which is actually a performance hit and it's still faster by 10x at least.

Panther is like how well older windows machines run the internet... It gives life to older machines and makes them very useful.

Zimphire · Aug 2, 2003, 12:04 AM

Yeah it's nice to know OS X is actually getting FASTER, That is odd for OSs. It's usually the other way around.

OS X still has awhile to go before it has the GUI response of OS 9.

But it is far from unusable.

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Aug 2, 2003, 12:06 AM

Originally posted by brainchild2b:
Trust me. Those of us who develop are very familar with the "Clean Install" speed up. After all we did the same with 10-10.1, 10.1-10.2 and are very familar with this effect.

Believe me when I say Panther is soooo much noticably faster. Quartz is about 40-50% faster than ever before. This isn't the clean install effect.

Once you get it on your machine you'll know. Journaling is even enabled which is actually a performance hit and it's still faster by 10x at least.

Panther is like how well older windows machines run the internet... It gives life to older machines and makes them very useful.

10x faster. Uh huh. So why ISN'T it the clean install effect?

You may have noticed that the above machine does not support QE.

Zimphire · Aug 2, 2003, 12:19 AM

Yeah but I think even Apple claimed Panther would speed up non QE machines.

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Aug 2, 2003, 12:21 AM

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Yeah but I think even Apple claimed Panther would speed up non QE machines.

Just like they would take a year to port Next to Mac and it would ship in a year. That was in 1997.

geekwagon · Aug 2, 2003, 02:10 AM

The speedup is very real, especially on slower machines like iBooks. The difference doesn't seem near as large on a dual 1.25. I have done clean installs on my machines with Jag and Panther is much faster. I wouldn't say 10x faster, but it is very noticeable.

I think it is a testament to how poorly optimized the previous releases were more than anything else though. That said, it is nice to see older hardware actually get FASTER over time instead of slower.

brainchild2b · Aug 2, 2003, 02:16 AM

It actually feels faster on machines that aren't QE enabled, because machines that were had the extra horsepower so you didn't notice the lacking performance as much.

I am putting panther through all the paces on about 8 machines, one of them is for the sole purpose of breaking it for bug reports.

It's not the install effect, because I said so that's why. Countless developers, and creditable news sources will tell you the same thing. If you don't believe that's cool. Just don't post here about it since you won't know what your talking about.

After playing with every build of Apple's OS for the last 8 years and installing "os x-ish" builds since Rahapsody, hundreds of times you kinda get a feel for what the installer rush is.

Link · Aug 2, 2003, 07:09 AM

Actually yes.. from second hand info.. the graphics engine itselfs seems to have been rewritten

on dual cpu machines the effects are MUCH faster.. sheets and such move extremely fast vs the funkiness on 10.2 and you can have multiple effects going at the same time without 1 or both lagging like heck.

pelorus · Aug 2, 2003, 09:49 AM

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Just like they would take a year to port Next to Mac and it would ship in a year. That was in 1997.

A bit unfair. They only GOT it in 1997 (actually Dec 20th 1996) and they shipped "Mac OS X Server 1.0" on March 16th of 1999. It took less than that to "port NeXT" as was evidenced by the Rhapsody Previews that were available through 1998.

Okay, it took them two more years to turn that into Mac OS X 10.0 but considering the changes they made - it's actually an amazing feat. It wasn't just a porting job of course.

Had they not had to detour down the "Carbon" route then they'd have shipped Mac OS X (client) within a year. Of course they HAD to make that detour

Zimphire · Aug 2, 2003, 10:33 AM

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Just like they would take a year to port Next to Mac and it would ship in a year. That was in 1997.

Yeah but in this case, it is speeded up.

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Aug 2, 2003, 10:39 AM

Originally posted by Link:
on dual cpu machines the effects are MUCH faster.. sheets and such move extremely fast vs the funkiness on 10.2 and you can have multiple effects going at the same time without 1 or both lagging like heck.

I don't think that is because of 10.3 though. If you use the iChat beta you will see that the buddy list folds down MUCH faster. I think Apple just smoothed out the animation or removed some frames or something.

MindFad · Aug 2, 2003, 10:47 AM

Originally posted by Link:
on dual cpu machines the effects are MUCH faster.. sheets and such move extremely fast vs the funkiness on 10.2

Yeah, but that's probably because they just made sheets faster instead of "optimizing our sheet speed!"

I personally really like the new sheet speed. Now they just need to add menu blinking options.

NeilCharter · Aug 2, 2003, 12:24 PM

It's good to hear that machines with G3 processors show an improvement in speed. My G4 / 400 also saw a significant increase in overall responsiveness with these builds of Panther.

Two things I have noticed since OS X was released:

1. Each successive release has produced a major increase in performance for any given machine.

Over the past two years or so, Apple have really learnt how to optimize the OS - I wonder how much more room for improvement there is?

2. As OS X have move from 10.0, 10.1, 10.2 and now 10.3, the available functions are significantly increase. Despite that, general performance is enhanced with each release.

If anyone can remember back to the days of system 7, then OS 8 & 9, each new release did bring in new functions but at a serious hit to the performance of the machine.

I know many will argue that OS X is still slow compared to OS 9, but considering all the improvements in terms of usage and stability, it seems well worth it to me.

One other point is that the speed increase we see in Panther now is probably all we are going to see. If memory serve me right, the WWDC seeds of Jaguar were as nippy as the GM release. Not as stable mind you, or full-featured, but it seems that the speed enhancements occur at the earlier stages of development, rather than later.

yukon · Aug 2, 2003, 07:03 PM

well, OS X was very slow on release, it was almost shameful IMHO. but it was a new OS, new technologies, finally getting it "out the door", and i'd suppose Apple wasn't in the optimizing mindset - OS9 couldn't get much faster without breaking stuff. the only exception to that i can think of was moving from System8 to MacOS8.6

while I personally found 10.2 to be slower than 10.1 on my non-QE non-dual G4 (excepting boot times), i'm looking forward to Panther. I decided not to upgrade anything until OS X became much faster on my current machine, just to guard against Apple slowing down the OS intentionally to sell newer machines (i don't think they did, but i see the temptation)

are there any real benchmarks available? boottime, file copy, file delete, display window with 7000 items on "kind" ;-) etc?

moonmonkey · Aug 2, 2003, 07:40 PM

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
I remember hearing the same jazz for 10.1 and 10.2.

This is different, I can instantly open a folder with 1000 files on it and scroll up and down in icon, list or browser view with no lag.

I can run the mouse over the menus (no matter what size) and they open and close instantly.

This is the biggest jump in speed OSX has ever had.

Superchicken · Aug 3, 2003, 05:07 AM

my iMac Rev D is craving some Panther loving hahahha

serious soon as I get this, I'm gona have a laptop by then, so I'll buy the family pack or whatever at the edu discount, OOO I can even go in with a friend and save some bucks

and Boo yah baby!

Simon · Aug 3, 2003, 09:01 AM

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
I remember hearing the same jazz for 10.1 and 10.2.

Stop being such a prick.

10.1 and 10.2 were actually quite a speed-up for most users compared to the version they replaced.

I have no doubt that Panther will feel speedier than Jaguar if I read 100 developer posts that claim it to be.

You're FUD post won't change that.

And even if you don't believe it, it's not like anybody would be forcing you to buy it. Stick with Jag if Panther doesn't cut it for you. But lay off the others.

sniffer · Aug 3, 2003, 12:18 PM

The noticed speed increase between various versions of X and hardware can be significant. Remember 10.1.3 anyone? It did all the difference for my iBook. G4 users didn't notice any differences back then.

yoyoman · Aug 3, 2003, 12:30 PM

Originally posted by DBvader:
im really happy for you, when i installed the first panther release on my computer, it didnt seem much faster than jag. i run a dual 867.

you serious. It really doesn't make a difference. Darn.

I WAS the One · Aug 3, 2003, 01:06 PM

Ok Ok, it is cool and faster and its a MUST have! but... If someone upgrade to panther have to lose all the external hardware again???
when I upgrade to Jaguar, I had to get rid of my old scanner and buy an epson one, and by the way, got to download a software upgrade on epson.com just to use it right away, the same with my Intous tablet and my esternal disk, do you understand? Do I have to get rid of all of thouse things again??? I'm Not rich you know, I would love to have the panther running on my mac, but I dont think so, if I have to buy all my working stuff again. you know what I mean!?

(damn! I was so happy with my old beige G3, and now I have this DUAL MONSTER MDD G4 on my desk turning me krazzy!)

NeilCharter · Aug 3, 2003, 02:52 PM

I doubt you will have to buy new equipment again. If the drivers work in jag they probably will in panther. From my understanding Apple are expanding the range of peripherals that the macs can use.

If you're using old forms of connections, such as SCSI, serial connections etc, you have already experienced the problems.

Its for those reasons that I bought a firewire external CDRW, since that type of technology is more likely to be supported by Apple.

iJed · Aug 3, 2003, 03:32 PM

I'd also like to say that the difference on a 500MHz iBook is quite large (and this is from experience with the original Panther DP.) The most notable gains in performance are the speed the menus popup on a first click (now mostly instant) and the smoothness of animations including scrolling.

I hardly even noticed the speed gains in Jaguar on any of my systems but Panther really makes a big difference. I don't think anyone will be disappointed.

Grrr · Aug 3, 2003, 03:49 PM

Originally posted by iJed:
I'd also like to say that the difference on a 500MHz iBook is quite large (and this is from experience with the original Panther DP.) The most notable gains in performance are the speed the menus popup on a first click (now mostly instant) and the smoothness of animations including scrolling.

I hardly even noticed the speed gains in Jaguar on any of my systems but Panther really makes a big difference. I don't think anyone will be disappointed.

I completely agree.. My iBook 600 didnt seem any faster nor slower when going from 10.1 to 10.2. But the jump to 10.3 was definitely a very noticeable improvement in speed. The gains are there.. No doubt about it.

phobos · 04:12 PM

I think it's about time to see some good responsivness from this damn OS. The last few months I'm this close from throwing my DVI 667 powerbook to the wall. Slow menu responsiveness slow window opening slow as hell application opening everything is so FU(KIN slow.... Especially when I need to do some stuff really quick for a deadline or something the os in conjuction with the random beach ball of death on photoshop makes the whole computing experience a disaster

Anyway on a different subject. Everybody is talking about massive education discounts. Where are you seeing those??? I'm going to do my master next year in UK and have posted on apples page my university and all I got was 120pounds off.... This isn't a massive discount especially for a 3000pound powerbook... If you know something else or I'm doing something wrong please inform me

Westfoto · Aug 3, 2003, 05:28 PM

Anyway on a different subject. Everybody is talking about massive education discounts. Where are you seeing those??? I'm going to do my master next year in UK and have posted on apples page my university and all I got was 120pounds off.... This isn't a massive discount especially for a 3000pound powerbook... If you know something else or I'm doing something wrong please inform me [/B]

About Ed-Discounts - Sometimes with Apples pricing it might be cheeper to buy from one of the Mail - order catalogs. Just recently Apple did start up some better discounts, but you do need to remember that you still need to pay tax on top of that price.

http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Im...utingpage.html

That is the page to start at if you are in the US. Try one of the country site where you are.

West

Brass · Aug 3, 2003, 07:23 PM

Originally posted by cybergoober:
Keep in mind that even a fresh Jaguar install is going to feel a lot snappier than one that's been in use for almost a year.

That's not to say that Panther is not going to provide a nice speed increase. Just keep an eye on it, as after a while of loading stuff on it whatnot you could start to see a decrease in performance.

I don't know about that. I've never found a clean re-install of Jaguar, or a permissions fix or both to speed things up at all, despite the recommendations of many.

iJed · Aug 3, 2003, 07:31 PM

Originally posted by Brass:
I don't know about that. I've never found a clean re-install of Jaguar, or a permissions fix or both to speed things up at all, despite the recommendations of many.

I have to agree with you here too. Never have I seen any notable difference in OS performance after doing a clean install. The only possible difference I can imagine is that a newly formated disk is not badly fragmented.

I WAS the One · Aug 3, 2003, 09:52 PM

Originally posted by NeilCharter:
I doubt you will have to buy new equipment again. If the drivers work in jag they probably will in panther. From my understanding Apple are expanding the range of peripherals that the macs can use.

If you're using old forms of connections, such as SCSI, serial connections etc, you have already experienced the problems.

Its for those reasons that I bought a firewire external CDRW, since that type of technology is more likely to be supported by Apple.

Well, I dont have any OLD connections like SCSI or something like that, because I have now a G4 MDD dual, and all I have its new, printer, scanner, external drives... you name it. I am scare about the update, because I dont want to buy new periferals again! get it?

Ghoser777 · Aug 3, 2003, 10:31 PM

I WAS the One, I am confused. Why did you have to get rid of your perpherals when you upgraded to Jaguar? Did they work in 10.1 and before? Where they only for OS 9?

I didn't really hear about peripherals not being supported between 10.1 and 10.2, but I could just be out of the loop.

Matt Fahrenbacher

gorgonzola · Aug 3, 2003, 11:12 PM

Originally posted by phobos:
Anyway on a different subject. Everybody is talking about massive education discounts. Where are you seeing those??? I'm going to do my master next year in UK and have posted on apples page my university and all I got was 120pounds off.... This isn't a massive discount especially for a 3000pound powerbook... If you know something else or I'm doing something wrong please inform me

Yeah, through the Apple Store for Education I only get about $150 off, but my university runs some special promo in the summer on certain prepackaged computers (so you can't BTO), so I ended up getting almost $1000 off ($967 or $954 or something like that). I'm still thoroughly confused about how they managed to do it, but I'm not asking questions...it came fairly loaded too. So it is a massive education discount, but it's not a generally applicable one.

I think I'm just lucky. Sorry.

NeilCharter · Aug 3, 2003, 11:52 PM

Well, I dont have any OLD connections like SCSI or something like that, because I have now a G4 MDD dual, and all I have its new, printer, scanner, external drives... you name it. I am scare about the update, because I dont want to buy new periferals again! get it?

To be honest, I don't get it.

Did you have to get a new scanner because

a. The old one didn't have OS X software to run it?

b. Upgrading to 10.2 killed the software that worked with 10.1?

c. You bought a new machine that didn't have the ports you needed?

If the answer is a - then many older peripherals were not supported by the original manufacturer by them releasing OS X software.

If b - that can happen, but I would be surprised that an update wasn't released after 10.2 to deal with any new incompatabilities.

if c - that's a common complaint, but there are ways to regain those connectivity.

If you are worried about this, wait till 10.3 has been released, contact the manufacturer of the peripherals and ask them if the software will work in 10.3. If not, wait until they provide an update.

Currently in the pre-release builds of Panther, Toast and a few other apps do not work. It is possble that they will remain broken until Roxi o etc post an update.

kmkkid · Aug 4, 2003, 12:29 AM

Could the speed increase be simply that they have taken out ALOT of transparencies? With all the semi-transparent inactive titlebars, & menu's, it was no wonder things were slow. A graphics card can only handle so much when overloaded with all that alphablending. Also the assumption is that maybe shadows are hardcoded now, which may have also speed up drawing time. Not that they havent actually speed up code execution, but I'm sure making more things opaque has helped alot too.

Chris

Don Pickett · Aug 4, 2003, 02:25 AM

Waves his Pismo 500 in the air like he just don't care!

cybergoober · Aug 4, 2003, 08:51 AM

Originally posted by brainchild2b:
Trust me. Those of us who develop are very familar with the "Clean Install" speed up. After all we did the same with 10-10.1, 10.1-10.2 and are very familar with this effect.

I wasn't refuting your claim, just merely stating that after time this snappiness will more than likely diminish. I have no doubt that Panther will bring speed increases. Not sure what you meant by, "Those of us who develop..." because if you're an ADC Select or Premier member you're under a NDA and shouldn't be discussing this here.

(yeah, yeah I'm just bustin' yer chops)

Originally posted by brainchild2b:
Once you get it on your machine you'll know. Journaling is even enabled which is actually a performance hit and it's still faster by 10x at least.

Yeah, I've got it installed on two of my systems. I know.
Actually I'd have it on my old(er) iMac too, but there seems to be an issue with 7B21, iTunes and iPods (I have a 3rd Generation and don't know if it's isolated to the 3rd gens or not).

I WAS the One · Aug 4, 2003, 11:15 AM

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
I WAS the One, I am confused. Why did you have to get rid of your perpherals when you upgraded to Jaguar? Did they work in 10.1 and before? Where they only for OS 9?

I didn't really hear about peripherals not being supported between 10.1 and 10.2, but I could just be out of the loop.

Matt Fahrenbacher

No, you are OK, I make the jump from OS 9 to Jaguar, so thats why I lost my peripherals...
I was using a Beige mac g3 and then I buy the MDD g4..