[Macnnmember]

Should be faster window resizing and I mean fluid resizing, also window scrolling is the most in important issue Apple should address in this final release. I feel if they don't get this issue dealt with I will be scratching my head. 10.3 isn't that bad compared to earlier versions but resizing windows and scrolling is still to jerky. It's hard to be on a Windows or OS 9 platform where the UI is very responsive and 10.2 or later is still like it is. Hopefully Apple has been focusing on this for a while considering that Tiger will be the last full system upgrade for the next 2 to 3 years.

Has any of the newer Tiger builds shown any improvements in this area?

[leperkuhn]

Originally posted by Macnnmember:
Should be faster window resizing and I mean fluid resizing, also window scrolling is the most in important issue Apple should address in this final release. I feel if they don't get this issue dealt with I will be scratching my head. 10.3 isn't that bad compared to earlier versions but resizing windows and scrolling is still to jerky. It's hard to be on a Windows or OS 9 platform where the UI is very responsive and 10.2 or later is still like it is. Hopefully Apple has been focusing on this for a while considering that Tiger will be the last full system upgrade for the next 2 to 3 years.

Has any of the newer Tiger builds shown any improvements in this area?

I hope so. Slow resizing is embarassing when showing something on my computer to a friend, and I avoid it at all costs.

[TheTraveller]

I most whole-heartedly agree! Window resizing, and scrolling. I'm looking forward to all the icing on the cake, but hey, let's finally have the cake cooked thoroughly, shall we?

What does everyone else think? Would you rather have Dashboard and Spotlight, or decent window resizing and scrolling?

[cpac]

Originally posted by TheTraveller:
What does everyone else think? Would you rather have Dashboard and Spotlight, or decent window resizing and scrolling?

dashboard and spotlight.

[RevEvs]

Originally posted by cpac:
dashboard and spotlight.

ditto

[Webscreamer]

I just hope they didn't forget Font Book.... unusable as of now.

[Big Mac]

Originally posted by Macnnmember:
Should be faster window resizing and I mean fluid resizing, also window scrolling is the most in important issue Apple should address in this final release. I feel if they don't get this issue dealt with I will be scratching my head. 10.3 isn't that bad compared to earlier versions but resizing windows and scrolling is still to jerky. It's hard to be on a Windows or OS 9 platform where the UI is very responsive and 10.2 or later is still like it is. Hopefully Apple has been focusing on this for a while considering that Tiger will be the last full system upgrade for the next 2 to 3 years.

Has any of the newer Tiger builds shown any improvements in this area?

You really had to start a new thread to discuss this topic yet again? You're new here but that issue is not. It has been talked to death.

IBL (I have to hope.)

[Detrius]

GUI Terminal services. This is the only way Apple is going to be able to get into the enterprise market.

Example:

User sits down at a Mac mini (thin client). Instead of logging into the Mac mini, they log into a quad G5 server that has 16GB of RAM. All of the other 200 employees in the building do the same thing. This way, everything is centralized--user data, applications, processing power, etc... everything. If the thin client dies, it is replaced. There is no need to backup the thing client. The server(s) is/are what is backed up and maintained.

This would also be useful for small businesses. Instead of buying cheap machines for everyone, they can be cheaper machines for everyone and one big centralized server. It feels faster, has more storage, etc... People can share things more easily.

[mitchell_pgh]

1) support for 640 x 480 grayscale screens
2) proper NATIVE floppy drive support
3) the menu in the window (like windows 95)
4) solitaire BUILT IN
5) smaller, more pixilated icons
6) go back to OS 8.5 quality
7) we all want Chicago back as the system font
8) remove the debug code
8.5) more cow bell
9) less internet
10) make it more iTunes

[cpac]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
8.5) more cow bell

ditto.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by TheTraveller:
I most whole-heartedly agree! Window resizing, and scrolling. I'm looking forward to all the icing on the cake, but hey, let's finally have the cake cooked thoroughly, shall we?

What does everyone else think? Would you rather have Dashboard and Spotlight, or decent window resizing and scrolling?

I have no problems whatsoever scrolling on my Dual 533 G4 w/GeForce 2MX and 1GB RAM. What kind of low end machine are you running to have problems with scrolling?

BTW, window resizing speed depends on how the program is written. In Cocoa, there could be any incredibly large number of different NSView objects, all with their own different rules for what to do when resizing. Also, once these rules have been recalculated, the NSView must be redrawn. It would seem to me that you would need a faster processor and more RAM to do this more efficiently. There may be some optimizations to be made, but this seems to me that this would be more program specific than anything else. My Terminal windows resize a LOT faster than my Safari windows.

There are always benefits and consequences of any engineering decision. The benefits of Apple's decisions with the graphics system are that windows can be moved around easily, scrolled easily, minimized easily, and even thrown about with expos�. Programming is easy as well. The down side is that resizing is slower, as there is a complicated internal hierarchical structure. When you resize the window, every single NSView gets invalidated and must be recalculated. This is due to the fact that the parent view, the NSWindow got resized, and therefore invalidated. Everything inside must be drawn from scratch.

Yes, it's going to be slow in this ONE task. Everything else is far more advanced than anything any version of Windows has to offer. I can live with a minor slowdown in resize speed to get the major workflow increases of expos�.

[mchladek]

I have no complaints about resizing on my 800MHz G4 iBook. There may be a slight delay between when I click/move and when the window catches up. But once it does it's quite smooth. I'm note embarrassed to show it to my window using friends. On all there machines resizing may be more responsive but it flickers and is just as annoying

[TheTraveller]

Originally posted by Detrius:
I have no problems whatsoever scrolling on my Dual 533 G4 w/GeForce 2MX and 1GB RAM. What kind of low end machine are you running to have problems with scrolling?

Low end machine eh? I have a PowerBook G4 1.25 Ghz with 1.25 GB of RAM. How low-end is that? I think it's kind of comparable to a Mac Mini? Maybe my video card sucks, I don't know. But it was a $2600 machine like 18 months ago.

Scrolling is much better than resizing. Resizing is definitely stacatto with almost all applications. However, mostly what I scroll are web pages, using FireFox. It's not terrible - but it is far, far slower than on most Windows machines.

[leperkuhn]

Originally posted by Detrius:
GUI Terminal services. This is the only way Apple is going to be able to get into the enterprise market.

Example:

User sits down at a Mac mini (thin client). Instead of logging into the Mac mini, they log into a quad G5 server that has 16GB of RAM. All of the other 200 employees in the building do the same thing. This way, everything is centralized--user data, applications, processing power, etc... everything. If the thin client dies, it is replaced. There is no need to backup the thing client. The server(s) is/are what is backed up and maintained.

This would also be useful for small businesses. Instead of buying cheap machines for everyone, they can be cheaper machines for everyone and one big centralized server. It feels faster, has more storage, etc... People can share things more easily.

Man I wish i had this. I used to work on a windows network and I really miss it now that I work exclusively at home.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by TheTraveller:
Low end machine eh? I have a PowerBook G4 1.25 Ghz with 1.25 GB of RAM. How low-end is that? I think it's kind of comparable to a Mac Mini? Maybe my video card sucks, I don't know. But it was a $2600 machine like 18 months ago.

Scrolling is much better than resizing. Resizing is definitely stacatto with almost all applications. However, mostly what I scroll are web pages, using FireFox. It's not terrible - but it is far, far slower than on most Windows machines.

If you are using the keyboard arrow keys for scrolling, increase the key repeat rate as high as possible and lower the delay until repeat and scrolling will be much faster.

[Jim Paradise]

Originally posted by TheTraveller:
I most whole-heartedly agree! Window resizing, and scrolling. I'm looking forward to all the icing on the cake, but hey, let's finally have the cake cooked thoroughly, shall we?

What does everyone else think? Would you rather have Dashboard and Spotlight, or decent window resizing and scrolling?

I'm probably one of the only people who isn't interested in Spotlight as I find that OS X has always been quite easy to search/find files and to organize those files in such a fashion that they are easy to navigate to. While I understand why people are excited about it, for me it's a non-issue and not why I'd upgrade to Tiger. And while I don't find OS X slow, a few general UI improvements to speed would be quite nice, and especially to window resizing.

[Superchicken]

How often do you honestly resize windows? Safari sure that has tons of stuff that has to be rerendered when you resize. But things like the Finder aren't bad at all. Not to mention... hit the freaking green glob and be done with it! I rarely resize my windows.

As for scrolling, Apple does not control Firefox. Firefox is far from a typical OS X app I have no idea what Apple could do to make it scroll smoother or better. But try Safari or Omniweb if you want to have valid reasons for complaint.

[Maelman]

I agree. It definitely...

[jac]

All your cowbell are belong to us...

[cpac]

Originally posted by Jim Paradise:
I'm probably one of the only people who isn't interested in Spotlight as I find that OS X has always been quite easy to search/find files and to organize those files in such a fashion that they are easy to navigate to.

Spotlight is more than just file searching - it's email, iCal event, meta-data and file CONTENT searching, all from a single location, and all instantaneous.

I don't use file searching much in 10.3 (and never really did going back to 1985), but I think Spotlight is so much more, that it will fundamentally change how I interact with the file structure. At any rate, it's far more important to have it than minor optimizations for window resizing.

[milhous]

if live resizing in qt7 (which appeared quite smooth btw) on tiger is any indication, i can see it happening in tiger systemwide. of course we won't really know till we actually get it.

i'd really like to see how life resizing in qt7 for windows is going to be. resizing videos in windows isn't the greatest experience that's for sure.

[Catfish_Man]

Window resizing is faster.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by TheTraveller:
Scrolling is much better than resizing. Resizing is definitely stacatto with almost all applications. However, mostly what I scroll are web pages, using FireFox. It's not terrible - but it is far, far slower than on most Windows machines.

Firefox isn't a native Mac OS X application. All of the scrolling, etc... is done in FireFox--that's why scroll wheels don't scroll at the same speed in FireFox as in the rest of the system. You wouldn't have this problem if you were using a Mac program like Safari, or (ghasp), Internet Explorer. In this respect, Internet Explorer is better than FireFox. Go yell at Mozilla.org for this one.

[TheTraveller]

This is hillarious! Try Safari? Ha ha. OK, done. Safari scrolling is slow, its window resizing is slow. I can use the down/up arrow keys with the repeat rate set to fastest, I can use the scroll bars with the mouse - no matter. Scrolling and window resizing is sloooow slow slow. One day, find a relatively late model PC (as my PowerBook at 18 months old is relatively late model) and scroll some web pages and resize them - use whatever browser you like. You'll see it puts the Mac to shame.

[hmurchison2001]

There are programmers on these boards that can explain better but what Apple attempted to do with the windowserver in OSX is to handle large amounts of data and minimize the negative effects that can happen when the CPU comes under heavy load.

Most of what you see in OSX displayed is composited and double buffered. It takes a whole lot of pounding before the windows server slows to a crawl like the PC system. In fact I've never seen OSX display grind to a halt myself but maybe someone has done it.

I used to have a developer pic which explained how cool the Quartz is. The downside of such cool technology is that right now the speed of resizing isn't hot because it cannot be accelerated by Quartz Extreme as easily. Improvements will happen but I doubt we ever see the speed you get from todays windows or OS9 and when Longhorn comes out with something like Quartz Extreme I expect their resizing to slow a bit as well.

Resizing is definitely not the most important issue. I hear far more requests to fix the finder. Also never compare two computers by how fast they scroll or resize a window. You'll only succeed in making yourself look like a total boob. That wasn't aimed at anyone in particular.

[msuper69]

Originally posted by Detrius:
GUI Terminal services. This is the only way Apple is going to be able to get into the enterprise market.

Example:

User sits down at a Mac mini (thin client). Instead of logging into the Mac mini, they log into a quad G5 server that has 16GB of RAM. All of the other 200 employees in the building do the same thing. This way, everything is centralized--user data, applications, processing power, etc... everything. If the thin client dies, it is replaced. There is no need to backup the thing client. The server(s) is/are what is backed up and maintained.

This would also be useful for small businesses. Instead of buying cheap machines for everyone, they can be cheaper machines for everyone and one big centralized server. It feels faster, has more storage, etc... People can share things more easily.

They had this back in the 70's only with a character mode interface. An IBM mainframe and green screen terminals. All the data and processing is done on the mainframe and the terminals serve as input/output devices. The main difference now is the user interface. Much nicer these days but the essential idea is exactly the same.

Ah, the good old days.

[jamil5454]

Originally posted by msuper69:
They had this back in the 70's only with a character mode interface. An IBM mainframe and green screen terminals. All the data and processing is done on the mainframe and the terminals serve as input/output devices. The main difference now is the user interface. Much nicer these days but the essential idea is exactly the same.

Ah, the good old days.

This reminds me of the Linux Terminal Server Project, which is awesome.

http://www.ltsp.org

Actually, I used this technology once in a real-life application:
I had a small contract job for a small office building to set up their computers and network. So I went to an auction and bought about ~25 old Pentium/486 computers with 16mb of RAM and floppy drives. I then bought 25 100mbit network cards and 25 PCI video cards, and put them in all the computers. Next, we built a dual-opteron server with 4gb of RAM and 1TB of HD space to serve as the "mainframe". Once everything was hooked up, we put NetBoot on the floppy disks in each client and booted them in diskless mode. The clients loaded, booted, and worked off the server, with only X-Windows running on the client. This was very fast and cost efficient.

So yeah... OS X DOES need some sort of GUI Terminal server. And those 3rd party apps like VNC are too slow because they aren't built into the OS like the Windows Terminal Server is.


I love telling stories.

[jock]

Resizing and scrolling definately faster in Tiger (8A293)confirmed on "OLD" hardware, Sawtooth g4 /ati8500, imac 15/800 and 17in PB,christ knows what happens on a dual G5.
Booting up, huge increase in performance, I had to repeat this test several times on different machines as I just couldn't believe it.
Anyone with a G5 care to comment.

[milhous]

Originally posted by jock:
Resizing and scrolling definately faster in Tiger (8A293)confirmed on "OLD" hardware, Sawtooth g4 /ati8500, imac 15/800 and 17in PB,christ knows what happens on a dual G5.
Booting up, huge increase in performance, I had to repeat this test several times on different machines as I just couldn't believe it.
Anyone with a G5 care to comment.

just curious if this was based solely on observation or some form of testing. did you use panther as frame of reference and perform identical window operationss on both versions? and if you did, was the performance really that noticeable?

[wataru]

Originally posted by jamil5454:
And those 3rd party apps like VNC are too slow because they aren't built into the OS like the Windows Terminal Server is.

I thought it was because VNC sends a bitmap over the network, while the faster solutions (like X) send drawing instructions. I don't think it has anything to do with whether it's "built in" or not. You could run X programs like this with OS X right now if you wanted to.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
1) support for 640 x 480 grayscale screens
2) proper NATIVE floppy drive support
3) the menu in the window (like windows 95)
4) solitaire BUILT IN
5) smaller, more pixilated icons
6) go back to OS 8.5 quality
7) we all want Chicago back as the system font
8) remove the debug code
8.5) more cow bell
9) less internet
10) make it more iTunes

It wasn't until I got to number 4 that I realized you were joking.

[Deimos]

Originally posted by Detrius:
Firefox isn't a native Mac OS X application. All of the scrolling, etc... is done in FireFox--that's why scroll wheels don't scroll at the same speed in FireFox as in the rest of the system. You wouldn't have this problem if you were using a Mac program like Safari, or (ghasp), Internet Explorer. In this respect, Internet Explorer is better than FireFox. Go yell at Mozilla.org for this one.

You can actually fudge the scrolling so that it's must more akin to normal Mac apps, makes a world of difference too.

[Toyin]

1.5ghz PB (1gb RAM, 128MB VRAM). Resizing is tolerable. Resizing playing video on VLC is fluid and smooth. No dropped frames, no stutter. In fact resizing in VLC is better than any other application in OSX including a blank terminal window, so it is possible. I was told that the reason VLC can do this is it's using the video card for most of the work. On that note, is Quartz 2d extreme part of Tiger? If so, I would think the resizing would be markedly improved.

[Dog Like Nature]

Originally posted by Toyin:
is Quartz 2d extreme part of Tiger? If so, I would think the resizing would be markedly improved.

"Yes" and "I agree" respectively!

[moonmonkey]

Even in the very early Tiger builds resizing was greatly improved.
Its not going to be perfect but by now it should be a lot better.

There are so many more exiting things Apple should be spending time on.

[nforcer]

Originally posted by TheTraveller:
What does everyone else think? Would you rather have Dashboard and Spotlight, or decent window resizing and scrolling?

How about just Spotlight and decent window resizing and scrolling. I still don't care for Dashboard.

[nforcer]

Originally posted by jock:
Resizing and scrolling definately faster in Tiger (8A293)confirmed on "OLD" hardware, Sawtooth g4 /ati8500, imac 15/800 and 17in PB,christ knows what happens on a dual G5.
Booting up, huge increase in performance, I had to repeat this test several times on different machines as I just couldn't believe it.
Anyone with a G5 care to comment.

What window and application did you use to test? The speed of a window resize operation is going to vary with the contents of the window and the application. For example, in Preview, in cases where you are resizing a window with an image, usually the image is pinned to one corner and the app only needs to draw the new shown part(s). This is fast on many comps. In TextEdit with a window with text, the application needs to re-calculate line and word breaks and adjust text layout and positioning. The more text you have the slower it should be.

With Quartz Debug you can see exactly what is redrawing during a resize operation, and you can check to see if an app is drawing more than it needs to (or drawing more times than it needs to).

[ashtoash]

You mean like citrix for windows?

Why not just have a server that the application is on and run have an alias linking to the file? It will only store preferences locally and even this can be changed with netinfo or mac os x server.

Originally posted by Detrius:
GUI Terminal services. This is the only way Apple is going to be able to get into the enterprise market.

Example:

User sits down at a Mac mini (thin client). Instead of logging into the Mac mini, they log into a quad G5 server that has 16GB of RAM. All of the other 200 employees in the building do the same thing. This way, everything is centralized--user data, applications, processing power, etc... everything. If the thin client dies, it is replaced. There is no need to backup the thing client. The server(s) is/are what is backed up and maintained.

This would also be useful for small businesses. Instead of buying cheap machines for everyone, they can be cheaper machines for everyone and one big centralized server. It feels faster, has more storage, etc... People can share things more easily.

[ashtoash]

Those are really demanding.. How about just working in 128k of memory space? ;-)

Originally posted by Xeo:
It wasn't until I got to number 4 that I realized you were joking.