[Targon]

OSX's interface is MUCH slower than Mac OS 9x, here are the most outstanding situations i notice.

Mac OS 9x on a 400Mhz Powerbook with 128 meg of ram and a 8 meg video card-

Clicking on ANY menu in the Finder or any application will instantaneously display.

Open a PDF file with images (even black/white) and large tables, moving the scroll an the page will scroll as smooth as silk with no lag or jerkiness.

Mac OS X 10.3.x on a 1.5Ghz Powerbook with 1.5gig of ram and 128meg video card-

Click on applications folder placed in the dock takes a painful 5 seconds to display, clicking the bookmarks menu or history menu in Safari painfully displays after a latent 5 seconds. Immediately clicking these menus again is almost instantly responsive, however if the menus have not been accessed for around 20 mins or so, the menus will again induce this horrific 5 second delay.

Open the same PDF file in Preview with images an large tables and try to scroll, my god, CPU meter maxs out, the page takes about 4 seconds to scroll, it jumps, jerks and splutters. Atrocious and completely unexcept-able behavior.

Zooming in/Out vertically and horizontally on waveforms of audio in ANY application on OS X is a really BAD experience. Painfully slow, jerkyiness and spluttering are some of the words needed to describe the dismal experience.

On Mac OS 9x zooming in/out of waveforms presents NONE of these problems seen in OS X. Zooming/scrolling waveforms in 9x is smooth as butter, in Windows its even better, smooth as silk.

These situations are exactly where i need to see 10 fold improvements in Mac OS X. Tiger perhaps and with application updates?

[Link]

Dude your laptop is like 5 years old, of course it's going to function like crap.. so does my 8 year old laptop, but you don't see me complaining.

[DudeMac]

Originally posted by Targon:
OSX's interface is MUCH slower than Mac OS 9x, here are the most outstanding situations i notice.

Mac OS 9x on a 400Mhz Powerbook with 128 meg of ram and a 8 meg video card-

Clicking on ANY menu in the Finder or any application will instantaneously display.

Open a PDF file with images (even black/white) and large tables, moving the scroll an the page will scroll as smooth as silk with no lag or jerkiness.

Mac OS X 10.3.x on a 1.5Ghz Powerbook with 1.5gig of ram and 128meg video card-

Click on applications folder placed in the dock takes a painful 5 seconds to display, clicking the bookmarks menu or history menu in Safari painfully displays after a latent 5 seconds. Immediately clicking these menus again is almost instantly responsive, however if the menus have not been accessed for around 20 mins or so, the menus will again induce this horrific 5 second delay.

Open the same PDF file in Preview with images an large tables and try to scroll, my god, CPU meter maxs out, the page takes about 4 seconds to scroll, it jumps, jerks and splutters. Atrocious and completely unexcept-able behavior.

Zooming in/Out vertically and horizontally on waveforms of audio in ANY application on OS X is a really BAD experience. Painfully slow, jerkyiness and spluttering are some of the words needed to describe the dismal experience.

On Mac OS 9x zooming in/out of waveforms presents NONE of these problems seen in OS X. Zooming/scrolling waveforms in 9x is smooth as butter, in Windows its even better, smooth as silk.

These situations are exactly where i need to see 10 fold improvements in Mac OS X. Tiger perhaps and with application updates?

OS 9 is faster than OS X as far as the display is concerned because it does not do anything intensive graphically with the elements of the UI. Mac OS X has a first generation 3D type graphical display (Quartz meshed with Aqua), all other operating systems still pretty much bitmap everything. Look at Windows XP's Luna interface and the desktop icons to get an idea of what I'm talking about, the design and concept is horrible looking. The window draws that look like dancing legos before a completion is appalling to the eyeballs.

I have a Powerbook G4 (667 MHz) and it does fine with Mac OS X, I mean it's not as speedy as my iMac G4, which is newer, but it does well and has proven its worth time and time again. Actually, I made a switcher out of a friend of mine (a few years ago) when we ran some Photoshop benchmarks between his PC laptop and my Tibook and pretty much put his machine to shame, though his machine was 500 MHz faster (with Intel Inside mind ya).

Mac OS X is leagues ahead of Windows XP and I use both systems, so I know first hand!

[Apple_John]

I knew I will get flamed by saying I will get a Dell.

alex627

Good luck with the next Service Pack.

SP2 is a cakewalk to me, just a few mouse click and it is done.

Dell's are simply crap boxes built and supported by third-world labor. It sure as hell doesn't employ any Canadians. That's why they are cheap. Wal-Mart computers.

I thought the same before I open up the Dell. It uses Seagate 7200 8mb harddrive (even mine is the low-end model). And the 2 fans are just as quiet and powerful as Panaflo. The tiny powersupply handles 4 drives just fine. Not a crash so far.

BTW how much is that 5-year-old Cube worth right now on eBay? How much is that 1-year-old Dell worth right now on eBay?

Computers are not investment for me. The Dell may lost 50% of its value, I don't care, it is only $200cdn for a year, less than a dollar a day.

Underwear

pay a few hundred more and get something nice from one of the other manufacturers. i think my Sony is doing OK.

Sony?????? you are kidding, right?????

mbryda

Dell is the shitebox of PC's (I deal with PC's day in and out). Let's talk in year 2 and 3 when tha POS Dell is in pieces.

I sent my iBook in over 5 times during the 3 years AppleCare... and I am not calling it a sh!tbox. The dirt-cheap dell is running flawlessly over a year.

I tried to hate the Dell, but it is cheap, quiet, stable, 0 problem. What else could I ask for?

[StonedRose]

Long time Mac user and Certified Apple Tech. Have always owned Macs. When the whole "Switch" campaign started..I went the other way....Picked up a PC..also have my PB G4/17 1.5 128MB Video, 2GB RAM. My PC Intel P4 3.2GHz

Granted the bus speeds are 167MHz on the PB and 800MHz on the PC. However, on the internet the PC smokes the PowerBook. I gett 500K + per sec on the PC and on the PB i get no faster than 200K..same connection. THe same is with file sharing over the same network. I actually have fell in love with the PC with the abundace of software, games etc...The Mac is always last in that aspect. Granted I have to perform Ad Ware/ Spy ware and virus scans..but That is normal and I haven't had a issue with the PC at all. My powerbook however...just died. Boots to no tone. Will not boot off Discwarrior X, SystemWorks 3, or TechTool 4.0.1...It will boot HW Test and the OS X cd..but will not test or tone or format the drive. I have noticed that Apples product has gone very cheap in parts..but still high in cost. Not good nowadays. With the release of the Mac Mini (total joke) consumers will find ease of use after the transisition..but the Mini will have a total cost of ownership value of 6 months....far lighter than the PC platform. The Mac OS interface is awesome compared to Windows. Somehow I think Apple has a pretty lame product strategy...just seems that they want to please stock analysis...and not the consumer user. Apple is still tops on the Pro gear. The Xserve is by far the best paltform for secure serving in multi platform environments. My 2 cents. Have a groovy day.

[furio13]

What exactly are the people running that they see a lag?
Running apps in OSX is fine, everything short of Photoshop(which I run 8+ hours a day...and video editing software) runs real fast on the variety of mac that I use at home and work everyday. I also use a PC w/ XP on it at home and at work...both do what they need to but for speed I stick with the MAC.
What video card do these people have and what models are they using?
It seems like a lot of talking and no specifics to what is making the machines run slower or faster.


Just the facts.

lol.

[olePigeon]

I have to reinstall Windows about once every three months and I can't leave my PC on for longer than 4 or 5 days before I just have to restart due to crap crashing or slowing down.

I have a base Windows2000 install with SpyWare and antivirus checkers. I keep it clean and behind a hardware firewall, and it STILL slows down horribly after a while.

[Cooter]

[DudeMac]

Granted the bus speeds are 167MHz on the PB and 800MHz on the PC. However, on the internet the PC smokes the PowerBook. I gett 500K + per sec on the PC and on the PB i get no faster than 200K..same connection.

Hogwash, I surf with a Mac and a PC on the Internet, they both perform the same on the same connection!

I actually have fell in love with the PC with the abundace of software, games etc...The Mac is always last in that aspect.

You mean; redundance in software. Unless the software comes from a big name company like Adobe, Macromedia, Intuit and etc..., then it's usually bloatware or me2ware. As for games, I'll take a game console (to play games) over a PC or Mac anyday!

Granted I have to perform Ad Ware/ Spy ware and virus scans..but That is normal and I haven't had a issue with the PC at all.

Don't forget to defrag :-P

With the release of the Mac Mini (total joke) consumers will find ease of use after the transisition..but the Mini will have a total cost of ownership value of 6 months....far lighter than the PC platform.

As compared to a Dell? My sister-in-law just had her motherboard replaced in her Dell (Dimension 4700c) just recently and she hasn't owned the computer for a year. Of course it seems to be an ongoing problem with Dell and this motherboard issue since the OptiPlex has that same issue (similar in design). I read that a University had to replace 40 motherboards in a lab full of Dell OptiPlexes.

TCO on a Mac is WAY BETTER than on a PC. My PC has had almost every hardware component replaced due to failures, I have never had any hardware issues with any of my Macs ( I own 5 of them).

I use and abuse Macs and PCs, and I think overall that Macs are the better solution over PCs and mainly it's because Windows is the worst operating system on the market due to being unreliable, unstable and insecure (from its inherited design flaws).

Is the Mac perfect? Nah, only when it's compared to a Windows PC does it seem that way.

[CaptainHaddock]

I sit with my Mac at the home of some friends, in a room surrounded by PCs. Not a week goes by that one of the PCs doesn't need cleaning from trojans or worms, even though every machine is fully patched and behind a firewall. Not a month goes by that one of the PCs doesn't need a completely fresh re-installation of Windows. And these PCs all belong to actual computer geeks who know what they're doing.

Needless to say, they all want Macs now.

And then there's my parents' crappy Dell. The machine has the best firewall, anti-virus, and anti-spyware software I could find. All they do is browse the web and send e-mail. And yet, I go over every week to fix problems, whether to clean a trojan, fix a Windows mis-configuration, or hunt down the cause of the latest inscrutable error message that pops up ever 5 minutes. For my parents, Windows and its ilk (Outlook, Word) are interface nightmares, they never feel in control. They don't know what those ugly little icons mean, or how to find stuff in Microsoft's clever "smart menus".

And have you ever tried using Windows Explorer to browser local drives or a network? Sure the controls seem snappy, but the snappiness hides long waits while the actual program is unusable. I could never figure out why XP took 10 times as long to read a list of files as Windows 95 did.

I'll take my slightly-less-snappy (on a G4) but always-ready-to-be-used Mac interface any day.

[the Rebel]

Originally posted by Apple_John:
I am switching back to WinXp after 3 years on Mac. I first got myself a brand-new $300cdn Dell just for a project. After upgrade the ram to 512, the machine run smoothly. Not a single crash after 1 year or so. It is just as quiet as my Cube. I am now using it everyday.

My next major desktop purchase will be a Dell. I never like Dell. But it is dirt cheap compare to Mac, and give me zero problem.

I hope to stay with Mac, but I see no reason. 99% of the time I run PS, OO, Firefox and iTunes. OS structure is not important to me, as long as it stables. PC can do the same job 50% cheaper than a Mac.

Are you saying that your 1 year old Dell is somehow better than your 4.5 year old Mac?

What OS do you run on your Cube? Were you aware that its outdated 16MB ATI RAGE Pro video card is not capable of fully utilizing Quartz in OS X? With that old of a Mac, you should be running Mac OS 9.

What kind of Dell you can buy for $300 Canadian?? According to their website ( http://www1.ca.dell.com/ ), the cheapest Dell desktop computer is the Dimension 3000 for $449 Canadian. For that price, you get a Celeron processor with 256MB single channel shared RAM; that means that the XP Home Edition operating system actually has to try running on less than 256MB. At that price, the system does not come with any speakers, it does not have any FireWire ports, and the ONLY software bundled with it is WordPerfect and Acrobat Reader.

There is absolutely no way that the $449 (Canadian) Dell Dimension 3000 can do the same job as a $629 (Canadian) Mac mini; nor is it half the price. The Mac mini does not have to "share" its 256MB of system memory with the video processor because the Mac mini includes a ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB of dedicated DDR video memory. The Mac mini also comes bundled with a bunch of software. Plus, not only does the Mac mini have a Firewire port and an internal speaker, it also has a DVI video port. If you buy a Dell with DVI, Firewire, dedicated video memory, and an equivalent bundle of software, then it would cost more than you would pay for a Mac.

[Link]

You can get a dell for about $220-300 US but it doesn't come with windows, which costs anywhere from $125 to $250.

[chadseld]

Windows is very 'snappy' Mac OS X is not.
A run-away process on Windows slowes the rest of the system to a crawl.
A run-away process on Mac OS X can go on for weeks before you notice.
Which OS is faster?

It depends on the user.

For example:

User A uses MS Office a lot. He is constantly opening and closing office documents and using web-based applications. He is multi-tasking with applications that do not use CPU when he is not interacting with them. Snappiness counts for a lot for user A.

User B spends a lot of time writing and compiling source code. She often has code compiling in the background (ala Fink update), open's and closes large images often, encodes video, etc... She is multi-tasking with applications that DO use CPU when not in the foreground. Snappiness is not as important as throughput.

Of course, this entire example goes to hell if the Windows PC is loaded up with spyware, then you loose both ways.

[Wiskedjak]

I've always considered myself a dual platform user. I like my iBook, but my next purchase will be a Windows machine.

[the Rebel]

Originally posted by Apple_John:
I knew I will get flamed by saying I will get a Dell.

I thought the same before I open up the Dell. It uses Seagate 7200 8mb harddrive (even mine is the low-end model). And the 2 fans are just as quiet and powerful as Panaflo. The tiny powersupply handles 4 drives just fine. Not a crash so far.


Computers are not investment for me. The Dell may lost 50% of its value, I don't care, it is only $200cdn for a year, less than a dollar a day.

OK, This is ridiculous. You are claiming that last year you bought a Dell for $200 Canadian and that it does everything that you need it to do, but then you mention that you have 4 drives in it. There is no way that you bought a new Dell with 4 drives for $200 Canadian.

[theolein]

Originally posted by meelk:
Viruses, trojans and spyware just dont "magically" appear no matter how much people in the Mac community want it to be so. I'd say if these people were running firefox and thunderbird then they are apparently making stupid mistakes and running exe's/pif's etc they receive via email, clicking "yes" to every popup they happen to get in firefox (a firefox popup is a *very* rare occurance however), or are otherwise doing stupid things. If they have children or teens in the house I would look to them for answers, teens in particular will infest a computer with a variety of malware by visting sites they shouldnt, particularly porn sites. COMMON SENSE will keep any computer clean. I dont have a computer science degree of any kind, or any formal training. I simply taught myself, and use common sense and security mindedness and have no problems. It is very possible, and actually very easy to do.

I agree with you, PARTLY. Up until XP SP2, there were at least three exploits running around on the web that would infect a default install of XP before you even got the chance to switch the firewall on. Denying that would be simply lying. The only way to install XP until then was to do it without a web connection, and only connect after having turned the firewall on.

I was the one that installed their system for those people, with AV, Spybot, SP2 (with firewall on by default), Thunderbird and Firefox. Being an ex windows sys admin, I obviously told the people about not clicking on mail attachments, etc.

Nevertheless, the machine was infected with no less than 5 different viruses and trojans. One of those obviously came from browsing a site that hosted the recent Java exploit, but the rest, I have no idea.

I could spend hours and hours teaching people about safe and defensive computing habits on their PC, but why on earth should I? The parents don't use the computer, the two teenagers do. Why should they have to be computer geeks in order to use the machine?

WHY?

90% of your normal average people on this earth regard the computer as an appliance. Those people don't want to have to study the intricacies of computers in order to use their machine.

And why should they?

That is one of the main reasons why I recommend Macintosh. It's not perfect and it does have occasional problems, but for the average user it just works, and is much closer to the idea of an appliance. I have no idea if the security problem would be worse on Macs if they were more popular, but since that situation is not likely to change in the forseeable future, I don't lose much sleep over it.

[theolein]

Originally posted by CaptainHaddock:
...

And have you ever tried using Windows Explorer to browser local drives or a network? Sure the controls seem snappy, but the snappiness hides long waits while the actual program is unusable. I could never figure out why XP took 10 times as long to read a list of files as Windows 95 did.

...

I had this very same problem when I migrated our company to XP in my last job. I discovered, after some months, that turning off the WebDAV service significantly improves network response times when browsing a server. You could try this and see if it works.

[theolein]

Originally posted by StonedRose:
Long time Mac user and Certified Apple Tech. Have always owned Macs. When the whole "Switch" campaign started..I went the other way....Picked up a PC..also have my PB G4/17 1.5 128MB Video, 2GB RAM. My PC Intel P4 3.2GHz

Granted the bus speeds are 167MHz on the PB and 800MHz on the PC. However, on the internet the PC smokes the PowerBook. I gett 500K + per sec on the PC and on the PB i get no faster than 200K..same connection. THe same is with file sharing over the same network. I actually have fell in love with the PC with the abundace of software, games etc...The Mac is always last in that aspect. Granted I have to perform Ad Ware/ Spy ware and virus scans..but That is normal and I haven't had a issue with the PC at all. My powerbook however...just died. Boots to no tone. Will not boot off Discwarrior X, SystemWorks 3, or TechTool 4.0.1...It will boot HW Test and the OS X cd..but will not test or tone or format the drive. I have noticed that Apples product has gone very cheap in parts..but still high in cost. Not good nowadays. With the release of the Mac Mini (total joke) consumers will find ease of use after the transisition..but the Mini will have a total cost of ownership value of 6 months....far lighter than the PC platform. The Mac OS interface is awesome compared to Windows. Somehow I think Apple has a pretty lame product strategy...just seems that they want to please stock analysis...and not the consumer user. Apple is still tops on the Pro gear. The Xserve is by far the best paltform for secure serving in multi platform environments. My 2 cents. Have a groovy day.

I don't mean to flame you, but if you really are a certified Apple tech and you came to repair my hardware with an attittude like that and such incredibly bad grammar, I would throw you out the door. I used to be a windows sys admin, and I had a nummber of Dell technicians with poor communicative skills similar to yours. I raised hell with Dell until they finally got people who could write an intelligable report out to us. I don't know if you were perhaps drunk or stoned when you wrote that, but it really is shoddy.

[Zak Nilsson]

I'm also an Apple Certified Tech, I've been working with Macs for 20 years, and I won't be getting a PC any time soon. I love how all these people come on here with 5 year old Macs and complain about how they're not "snappy". You're kidding, right? I am absolutely appalled at how poorly Windows handles multiple tasks. Anybody who's used Windows for any length of time will be familiar with the constant hard drive grinding that's associated with doing pretty much anything on a Windows box. Why does it take more than 30 seconds to open Control Panels? Is that "snappy"?

I have an Alienware system at home too, a 3.2 GHz P4. My GF uses it as her main computer and games on it too. She agrees that my DP 1 GHz G4, going on 3 years old now, is faster in almost every way than her PC. The PC is better at gaming, but that's pretty much it. She's always commenting on how much more responsive the Mac is compared to her Alienware, despite the PC being a completely top of the line machine. I've experienced it myself plenty of times. You go to do something and the HD sits there and grinds while Windows slowly draws every icon in a given window.

It's pretty pathetic, honestly.

[aristotles]

Enough of this crap all ready. I'm a dual platform user with mac at home and windows at work. The impression that windows is "snappier" is largely an illusion and Windows does perform extremely poorly when you are dealing with large amounts of data.

GDI will stop painting windows and you will end up with a white window when a program is under heavy load. I've experienced the entire interface bogging down from one task where it literally takes a couple seconds to switch between programs on a P2.2 Ghz w/512MB of ram.

I will gladly choose a slight sluggishness in an interface that stays responsive under heavy load over an interface that stops painting.

Stop spread FUD. A 400Mhz machine is "not" a good measure of an OSes overall usability. It's time for you to join the 21st century. Just think how slow XP with all they gfx settings turned on would be.

Get Shadow killer if you insist on running OS X on such a small machine. Amiga OS was blazingly fast on my Amiga but i would "not" want to be using an OS without memory protection.


In actually use, OSX is faster than XP if all things are equal (use windowblinds, windowfx, objectdock and Avedesk).

[bhuot]

I switched to the eMac from a Toshiba notebook in March of 2003 and never looked back. There were hundreds of applications listed in the below $100 price ranges on the Internet for a PC, but the vast majority of them were crap. I don't use any application over $100 (I have paid 150 for vector drawing programs before) and the graphics I create on my Mac are far better than the ones I created on my PC. The speed is much faster - the only time my internet connection goes down - once every 6 months it is because Comcast went down, not my machine. I installed Comcast cable internet on my machine myself in matter of minutes and I have done a major OS upgrade and had no problems at all. I didn't even have to update drivers for my digital camera, printer, or modem. They never have blaimed my machine now that I start out by telling them I have a Mac with 1 GB of RAM and half the hard rive, in other words 20 gb free. There were some slow performing areas of OS X with 10.2, but with 10.3 it is lightening quick. I only have a 700 mhz processor but it is much faster than any Celeron I could get for the same price. My computer has not crashed in almost a year (even with Jaguar). I never do virus checks, drive defragmentation, or spyware scans and my computer is on a high speed connection 24 hours a day - dedicated IP address. I do use a firewall - the one included with OS X and I don't network my computer with anything except a direct connection to the Internet through ethernet. I usually have to wait a blink of the eye for most applications to start even with 10.2. I can run Java applications without any speed difference or stability difference except for a slower loading time. I go to flash intensive sites and never have to wait more than a split second for it to load and run. I can also multitask with almost any set of applications and do not have them crash on me - something I never could on Windows.

http://benjamin-newton.info/tech

[theolein]

Originally posted by Targon:
OSX's interface is MUCH slower than Mac OS 9x, here are the most outstanding situations i notice.

Mac OS 9x on a 400Mhz Powerbook with 128 meg of ram and a 8 meg video card-

Clicking on ANY menu in the Finder or any application will instantaneously display.

Open a PDF file with images (even black/white) and large tables, moving the scroll an the page will scroll as smooth as silk with no lag or jerkiness.

Mac OS X 10.3.x on a 1.5Ghz Powerbook with 1.5gig of ram and 128meg video card-

Click on applications folder placed in the dock takes a painful 5 seconds to display, clicking the bookmarks menu or history menu in Safari painfully displays after a latent 5 seconds. Immediately clicking these menus again is almost instantly responsive, however if the menus have not been accessed for around 20 mins or so, the menus will again induce this horrific 5 second delay.

Open the same PDF file in Preview with images an large tables and try to scroll, my god, CPU meter maxs out, the page takes about 4 seconds to scroll, it jumps, jerks and splutters. Atrocious and completely unexcept-able behavior.

Zooming in/Out vertically and horizontally on waveforms of audio in ANY application on OS X is a really BAD experience. Painfully slow, jerkyiness and spluttering are some of the words needed to describe the dismal experience.

On Mac OS 9x zooming in/out of waveforms presents NONE of these problems seen in OS X. Zooming/scrolling waveforms in 9x is smooth as butter, in Windows its even better, smooth as silk.

These situations are exactly where i need to see 10 fold improvements in Mac OS X. Tiger perhaps and with application updates?

I know exactly what you mean, but I think your particular situation is worse, by far, than the average.

Firstly, most people experience a lag when right clicking on the Applications menu placed in the Dock, but the actual duration of that lag varies from machine to machine and from install to install. On my old 667TiPB, it was on the order of 1.5 seconds, but only because I had installed and deleted hundreds of shareware apps. The original install had a lag of about 0.5 seconds.

On my present 1.3GHzAIBook, There is a lag of about 0.1 seconds.

I have also never experienced the problems you talk about in Preview. What version of the OS are you running?

As for zooming in on Audio, I never noticed this when I was running the trial of Peak.

I guess that you have either a) very old and slow hardware, or b) a very fragmented disk, or c) an older version of OSX that does not do automatic defragmentation.

Have you ever run a fsck -fy from single user mode?

I think you are projecting your own frustrations onto the Mac as a platform, and I doubt that many will agree with your experiences. I know I wouldn't.

[theolein]

Originally posted by Apple_John:
I knew I will get flamed by saying I will get a Dell.

alex627


SP2 is a cakewalk to me, just a few mouse click and it is done.



I thought the same before I open up the Dell. It uses Seagate 7200 8mb harddrive (even mine is the low-end model). And the 2 fans are just as quiet and powerful as Panaflo. The tiny powersupply handles 4 drives just fine. Not a crash so far.


Computers are not investment for me. The Dell may lost 50% of its value, I don't care, it is only $200cdn for a year, less than a dollar a day.

Underwear


Sony?????? you are kidding, right?????

mbryda


I sent my iBook in over 5 times during the 3 years AppleCare... and I am not calling it a sh!tbox. The dirt-cheap dell is running flawlessly over a year.

I tried to hate the Dell, but it is cheap, quiet, stable, 0 problem. What else could I ask for?

I would not flame you for buying a Dell. I'm an ex windows sys admin who migrated all our company's Hp desktops to Dell when the Hp-Compaq merger was happening and no one knew what the future held. For the most part the Dells were prefectly ok, except that, out of a batch of 20 machines, 3 were DOA. Dell outsources all its repeair services and the technicians, from Unisys, were absolutey useless. They were unable to repair the machines, and, in one case, came in over 7 times and ended up replacing every single part in the machine, from the power supplies to the motherboard to the CPU, and the machine would still not work reliably. Added to this, they would not give us replacement machines during the time when the 3 machines were down.

The end result was, of course, an enormous amount of productive time lost, for which I carried the blame.

Your experiences with the ibook and Dell say absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing, about the respective quality of Apple vs Dell machines. I think you will find that the majority of computer users, do not have your problems. You are making the classic mistake of projecting your single experience onto a whole brand.

Sadly, of course, most people do this. This is how a brand gets a reputation, good or bad. Luckily for Apple, the brand has, in general, an excellent reputation. Unluckily for Dell, it doesn't.

Dell has one of the worst reputations for quality in the PC world. I think this is partly due to the fact that Dell outsources almost everything in its business, from production to repair and its call centres. No one has a solid point of contact in the Dell world. It was a mistake in my last job to buy Dell, one which I would not repeat. HP despite its huge drop in repuation with Carly Fiorina, has a far better customer response.

Dell's business model is built on absolute low cost, which is why they are so successful. The problem is that, in Dell's case at least, you get what you pay for.

[Targon]

Originally posted by Link:
Dude your laptop is like 5 years old, of course it's going to function like crap.. so does my 8 year old laptop, but you don't see me complaining.

u replying to me?

[meelk]

Originally posted by mbryda:
Uh, yes they do. Security experts have long since concluded that if you put an unprotected Windows machine on the Internet it will be infected within 15-30 minutes. WITHOUT THE USER DOING ANYTHING.

In fact a coworker did just that with a virgin machine, didn't touch it, and it was tost in a day or so.

Thats called a WORM. Look it up. If you attach your machine directly to the net you are an idiot anyway, including Macs.

[meelk]

Originally posted by aristotles:

In actually use, OSX is faster than XP if all things are equal (use windowblinds, windowfx, objectdock and Avedesk).

ahahahahaha. In other words, if you make it look like OSX by loading a ton of useless crap and bogging it down?

[Cooter]

Originally posted by Targon:
Click on applications folder placed in the dock takes a painful 5 seconds to display, clicking the bookmarks menu or history menu in Safari painfully displays after a latent 5 seconds. Immediately clicking these menus again is almost instantly responsive, however if the menus have not been accessed for around 20 mins or so, the menus will again induce this horrific 5 second delay.

[Cooter]

Originally posted by meelk:
ahahahahaha. In other words, if you make it look like OSX by loading a ton of useless crap and bogging it down?

...you bring your Windows box, I'll bring my DP G4 box and we'll run several simultaneous heavy loads and we'll see which one is still responsive. I'll guarantee you its mine. Windows threading is far behind OS X or Linux.

And I use XP/2000/MCE 2005, OS X/OS X Server, Red Hat 9/Mandrake 10.2 all daily.

They all have their uses. Lotsa cheap vertical market apps on the Windows side becasue of the ease of development with .NET. No need to reinvent the wheel. I use XP boxes where it makes sense.

But, for a daily usage machine on my desk, nothing beats OS X. And, I can't wait til CenterStage matures so I can shitcan my buggy as hell Windows MCE 2005 box and replace it with a Mac Mini.

[Zak Nilsson]

Originally posted by meelk:
Thats called a WORM. Look it up. If you attach your machine directly to the net you are an idiot anyway, including Macs.

I'd like to see you quantify that, considering there are no worms for OS X. No viruses, spyware doesn't run on OS X, the default web browser block pop-ups... etc. If you put a Mac directly on the net, what, in your opinion, would be the consequences? Be specific with your response please, and make sure you back it up with facts and not opinion, conjecture or assumptions.

[driven]

Originally posted by Apple_John:



SP2 is a cakewalk to me, just a few mouse click and it is done.

And it still leaves a ton of security holes!

[Targon]

Originally posted by theolein:
[B]I know exactly what you mean, but I think your particular situation is worse, by far, than the average.

Firstly, most people experience a lag when right clicking on the Applications menu placed in the Dock, but the actual duration of that lag varies from machine to machine and from install to install. On my old 667TiPB, it was on the order of 1.5 seconds, but only because I had installed and deleted hundreds of shareware apps. The original install had a lag of about 0.5 seconds.

On my present 1.3GHzAIBook, There is a lag of about 0.1 seconds.

This lag is purely governed by the amount of icons in the menu's. Obviously, my applications folder is heavily populated, likewise is my bookmarks and history menu's in Safari. Once the menu has been cached, subsequent access of these menu's become more responsive. Note: windows also suffers from this latency, altho not to the same degree as seen in OS X.

I have also never experienced the problems you talk about in Preview. What version of the OS are you running?

lol, launch activity monitor, show horizontal floating cpu window from monitor menu.

Download

http://www.phonic.com/UsersManual/mm1705.pdf

Jump to page 4 then grab the scroll bar an scroll down past page 20, keep an eye on the CPU monitor, an keep an eye on the application hahaha. Now u have experienced the pain ;-) version of Mac OS X is completely irrelevant, iam currently on 10.3.8, yet i have been infected by this syndrome since PB.

As for zooming in on Audio, I never noticed this when I was running the trial of Peak.

Probably because u don't know any different. Try peak on Mac OS 9x, try Sound Forge in Winhoez, its a very different experience. Pro Tools, Cubase SX and iLogic are far worse btw.

I guess that you have either a) very old and slow hardware, or b) a very fragmented disk, or c) an older version of OSX that does not do automatic defragmentation.

Have you ever run a fsck -fy from single user mode?

Your guesses are wildly misguided, and your question has no bearing on the current configurations of which u have no knowledge on.

I think you are projecting your own frustrations onto the Mac as a platform, and I doubt that many will agree with your experiences. I know I wouldn't.

Perhaps you need to understand what is actually going on with in Mac OS X's display system and the way current applications and hardware handle graphics before you start doubting my experiences and the widespread experiences of others whom which have experienced and voiced their concerns regarding this situation ;-)

Best

[Targon]

Originally posted by Cooter:

thanks for your suggestion, but why do u assume this setting is checked on my machine?

anywayz, im quite aware of this setting ;> thanks all the same

[Zak Nilsson]

Originally posted by Targon:




lol, launch activity monitor, show horizontal floating cpu window from monitor menu.

Download

http://www.phonic.com/UsersManual/mm1705.pdf

Jump to page 4 then grab the scroll bar an scroll down past page 20, keep an eye on the CPU monitor, an keep an eye on the application hahaha. Now u have experienced the pain ;-)

First of all, is there any good reason you can't actually type the word "you"? Does it really take that much longer? Second, just to humor you I did exactly what you suggested. Scrolling from page 2 to page 20 took approximately 1 second. I did see the processor spike but only to about halfway, and only for a fraction of a second. But I see it spike all the way to full all the time, usually when opening a program or doing something processor intensive. That's because OS X has really good process management, something you can't say about Windows.

So no apparently I didn't experience the pain, LOLOMGWTFBBQ lolol.

[Targon]

Originally posted by Zak Nilsson:
First of all, is there any good reason you can't actually type the word "you"? Does it really take that much longer? Second, just to humor you I did exactly what you suggested. Scrolling from page 2 to page 20 took approximately 1 second. I did see the processor spike but only to about halfway, and only for a fraction of a second. But I see it spike all the way to full all the time, usually when opening a program or doing something processor intensive. That's because OS X has really good process management, something you can't say about Windows.

So no apparently I didn't experience the pain, LOLOMGWTFBBQ lolol.

This has nothing to do with process management, btw i have not suggested windows has good process management, in fact im not even supporting windows so why bring this up?

When i move the scroll bar slowly thru pages 5, 6, 7 the cpu meter maxs out, then page freezes up, the cursor is about 2" below the scroll bar for few seconds until the OS re-draws the page, then the scroll bar jumps to the position of the cursor.

[Targon]

Zak Nilsson > curious, 4 posts, registered in May 99 ??

[theolein]

Originally posted by Targon:
This lag is purely governed by the amount of icons in the menu's. Obviously, my applications folder is heavily populated, likewise is my bookmarks and history menu's in Safari. Once the menu has been cached, subsequent access of these menu's become more responsive. Note: windows also suffers from this latency, altho not to the same degree as seen in OS X.



lol, launch activity monitor, show horizontal floating cpu window from monitor menu.

Download

http://www.phonic.com/UsersManual/mm1705.pdf

Jump to page 4 then grab the scroll bar an scroll down past page 20, keep an eye on the CPU monitor, an keep an eye on the application hahaha. Now u have experienced the pain ;-) version of Mac OS X is completely irrelevant, iam currently on 10.3.8, yet i have been infected by this syndrome since PB.



Probably because u don't know any different. Try peak on Mac OS 9x, try Sound Forge in Winhoez, its a very different experience. Pro Tools, Cubase SX and iLogic are far worse btw.



Your guesses are wildly misguided, and your question has no bearing on the current configurations of which u have no knowledge on.



Perhaps you need to understand what is actually going on with in Mac OS X's display system and the way current applications and hardware handle graphics before you start doubting my experiences and the widespread experiences of others whom which have experienced and voiced their concerns regarding this situation ;-)

Best

A number of things:
1. I don't know how old you are or what your level of education is, but your use of "u" and "lol" make you appear to be both a teenager and a less than intelligent one at that. I have to assume that you are in fact not a teenager, since you seem to have professional experience with audio software, but I sure as hell would not want to work with you in a professional setting given the way you react to someone who is trying to take you seriously.

2. What gives you the impression that I have no idea how the display system in OSX works? Is it because my impressions are different to yours? Do you have the idea that you know more than every single living person about the insides of OSX in particular and dsiplay systems in general? Perhaps you should look for a job with Apple, then. With your attitude I'm sure they'd love to employ you.

3. Given that I'm a trained multimedia producer, and have worked with various audio and video software on every computer system, from System 7 to OSX.3 on Macs and from WinNT to WinXP on PC's, how do you get the impression that I have no idea what I'm talking about? I am not an audio professional, but I sure as hell have used Peak (amongst others) on Macs prior to OSX.

4. I did what you suggested and downloaded the pdf with activity monitor running, went to page 4 and scrolled down to page 20. Sure enough, the cpu activity monitor spiked... momentarily, while the programme was building the thumbnail previews. I was really non plussed. Have you ever bothered to look at the behaviour of other software when being the only currently active task? I have a surprise for you: They all behave like that, on all platforms. I loaded iTunes in the background and started a song playing, and redid the "test". While the base activity went up, as is to be expected on a multi-tasking OS, the CPU did spiked exactly the same this time around doing the same task. The CPU will, in general, spike when doing an intensive task. The OS, however, allots as much CPU time to the task as it can, but will generally make sure that other tasks are not interrupted. As an experiment, try doing exactly the same test on WinXP with the CPU monitor running. You'll see the same result.

5. Your comment about the Applications pop up in the Dock is not entirely correct. Obviously, the number of icons there is the biggest influence. But the state of the disk is a major factor, since the menu usually gets built once, the first time you access it during a session, and then gets cached for faster use until it gets purged from the cache. It would really have been more useful if you had given an indication of just how many applications you have in there. Instead you chose to use the "lol, ur a n00b looser" teenage ********. Your experience does NOT translate to everyone else, no matter how much you would wish it so.

6. If you got this far, which I doubt since you seem to have the attention span of a gnat, I think that you'll find people will take you seriously if you take them seriously.

[iJed]

Originally posted by Zak Nilsson:
I'm also an Apple Certified Tech, I've been working with Macs for 20 years, and I won't be getting a PC any time soon. I love how all these people come on here with 5 year old Macs and complain about how they're not "snappy". You're kidding, right? I am absolutely appalled at how poorly Windows handles multiple tasks. Anybody who's used Windows for any length of time will be familiar with the constant hard drive grinding that's associated with doing pretty much anything on a Windows box. Why does it take more than 30 seconds to open Control Panels? Is that "snappy"?

I have an Alienware system at home too, a 3.2 GHz P4. My GF uses it as her main computer and games on it too. She agrees that my DP 1 GHz G4, going on 3 years old now, is faster in almost every way than her PC. The PC is better at gaming, but that's pretty much it. She's always commenting on how much more responsive the Mac is compared to her Alienware, despite the PC being a completely top of the line machine. I've experienced it myself plenty of times. You go to do something and the HD sits there and grinds while Windows slowly draws every icon in a given window.

It's pretty pathetic, honestly.

This is exactly how I find XP every day at work. It seems completely incapable of reasonably handling more than one application at a time, even if the application is very small and simple. Sure writing a document in Word is snappy but whenever you do something remotely complex the whole thing just locks up. I'd say that I could write maybe 10% more code everyday if I were using my Mac mini!

[davidvesey]

Maybe PC users feel their system is faster because they spin their wheels between red lights,

But if I just keep USING my Mac with no interruptions for endless tweaking and repairs, whose system is faster?

DV

[ERG]

I really wonder why even the macnn staff recently advertise topics like this one on the homepage...
It's fairly evident that people use to be "fan" of something, no matter what you try to counterpoint on them.
So why give all of these server space to kids like "targon" (and others) that as "the olein" rightly points out, neither reads nor speaks correctly?
If you have somethings for you need help go on posting here, otherwise please post somewhere in the MS forums...
Everybody is satisfied with what he has and works "as advertised", even if it's a 20 years old girlfriend and several "new models" are available today.
Stop bothering us here and continue to enjoy what "U" have on your desktop
(very few girls in your neighborood, isn't it?)
and sometimes get outside and play...

[meelk]

Originally posted by Zak Nilsson:
I'd like to see you quantify that, considering there are no worms for OS X. No viruses, spyware doesn't run on OS X, the default web browser block pop-ups... etc. If you put a Mac directly on the net, what, in your opinion, would be the consequences? Be specific with your response please, and make sure you back it up with facts and not opinion, conjecture or assumptions.

I LOVE the high and mighty Mac user attitude when it comes to spyware,viruses, etc. Lets be frank, the only thing keeping you safe, is you reside in a paltry 2 or 3 percent of the market. You can jump up and down and wave your arms and say "oh my system is just so much more secure!" all you like, but that doesnt stop Apple from issuing plenty of its own security updates, even if their volume doesnt match those of windows. If Apple were to suddenly control a much larger chunk of personal computing, you would assuredly see Mac malware, worms, etc.
I also like the fact that people seem to think a knowledgeable windows user is somehow using a huge chunk of their computer time each week to maintain their system, when it simply is not true, and never will be for someone who knows what they are doing, at most ill defrag before bed, or run a spyware scan once a week to take care of misc. cookies.

[entrox]

Originally posted by meelk:
I LOVE the high and mighty Mac user attitude when it comes to spyware,viruses, etc. Lets be frank, the only thing keeping you safe, is you reside in a paltry 2 or 3 percent of the market. You can jump up and down and wave your arms and say "oh my system is just so much more secure!" all you like, but that doesnt stop Apple from issuing plenty of its own security updates, even if their volume doesnt match those of windows. If Apple were to suddenly control a much larger chunk of personal computing, you would assuredly see Mac malware, worms, etc.

You're talking out of your ass. I don't see any factual information in your post, only uninformed speculation. Why should I take you seriously and not brush you away as a high and mighty wannabe know-it-all?

[OtisWild]

This corresponds to the frequent complaints I hear from former PC-using friends and clients that Flash and Java are so much slower on the Mac. If OS X has UNIX under the hood, why would Open Source apps perform slower and poorer than Open Source apps on Windows?

I hope that Tiger fixes these performance issues because, by now, Apple has been hearing the complaints for years and has had enough time to fix them.

Most graphical opensource apps are based on X11 primarily, with Win32 API support (often thru a toolkit like GTK or Qt) as a popular second. While Apple offers X11 as a separate process, I doubt it'll ever be integrated as a wrapper layer directly into Quartz, which will limit stuff like OpenOffice.org (which will probably never have a native Quartz port).

Not having to deal with viruses and spyware is a great, but people quickly forget about it when it's no longer a problem. But slow performance�whether it's iCal, iPhoto, the UI�is going to stick in their craw because they're constantly being reminded of it.

Which is why I find Apple's 'economy' choices on the mini to be pennywise and pound foolish if the goal is to get switchers. Inadequate RAM and inadequate HDD speed. If you have someone plunk down $$$ and be disappointed, you've probably lost 'em forever.

Here's hoping the next rev will have at least 512MB RAM and 5400RPM HDD at the same price...

[discotronic]

Originally posted by meelk:
I LOVE the high and mighty Mac user attitude when it comes to spyware,viruses, etc. Lets be frank, the only thing keeping you safe, is you reside in a paltry 2 or 3 percent of the market. You can jump up and down and wave your arms and say "oh my system is just so much more secure!" all you like, but that doesnt stop Apple from issuing plenty of its own security updates, even if their volume doesnt match those of windows. If Apple were to suddenly control a much larger chunk of personal computing, you would assuredly see Mac malware, worms, etc.
I also like the fact that people seem to think a knowledgeable windows user is somehow using a huge chunk of their computer time each week to maintain their system, when it simply is not true, and never will be for someone who knows what they are doing, at most ill defrag before bed, or run a spyware scan once a week to take care of misc. cookies.

Two words: virus propagation

The UNIX architecture is set up so that a virus or worm would have a "near" impossible time spreading. For a program to execute under UNIX the user would have to give it explicit permission to run. Even if the user where to allow that to happen a virus would not do anywhere near the damage like in the Windows environment. Under OSX users don't run as root and the system files are protected because of it's superior architecture. I could never display enough ignorance to say that a virus, worm, trojan or malware is impossible on OSX but I can say that it will never be like it is on Windows.

Here is a fact for you to try an digest. The Internet relies on 13 root DNS servers all around the world in order to function. On each and every single one of those servers is a flavor of UNIX. If these servers where to be compromised some really sh*tty things would happen. A large portion of government (and not just the United States) and corporate communication would come to a stand still, billions of dollars in commerce would be lost and little old granny wouldn't be able to play bridge on Yahoo! when she wants. In today's global economy taking out those servers would be a catastrophe bigger than the modern world has ever seen.

OSX may only have a small part of the market but UNIX is bigger than Windows has ever thought of being. UNIX also has a larger responsibility than Windows will ever hold. Hackers are out there trying to find a way to bring at least one these severs down. Don't you think if a hacker did this they would be considered the hacker of all hackers? They are in it for the glory. The glory is in making the biggest impact possible. Taking down one of these servers would surly do it.

Yes, I can say that my Mac system is soooo much more secure. Quit being such a Windows fan-boy and realize that you don't know what in the hell you are talking about. When you talk about OSX you are talking about UNIX. If Windows is so secure like you make it out to be than why don't the governments of the world get together and do a real "switch."

[elvis2000]

Originally posted by CaptainHaddock:
I sit with my Mac at the home of some friends, in a room surrounded by PCs. Not a week goes by that one of the PCs doesn't need cleaning from trojans or worms, even though every machine is fully patched and behind a firewall.

They must be searching for Warez and Porn.

[macimmortal]

"Which is why I find Apple's 'economy' choices on the mini to be pennywise and pound foolish if the goal is to get switchers. Inadequate RAM and inadequate HDD speed. If you have someone plunk down $$$ and be disappointed, you've probably lost 'em forever."

Have you even used a Mac mini for any length of time? I have. It performs MUCH better than my Athlon 2500+ running XP Pro. Seeing as I built that PC about 2 years ago, it is possible that my impressions when comparing the Mac mini to my PC would be about the same as a "switcher". I for one would be blown away by the performance of a Mac mini after having used an older PC.

I will agree that adding more memory will make the mini even better.

[smoke-tetsu]

I see people complain here about the speed on OS X but on my (new) Mac it is just fine. Sure resizing Safari can be a tad slow but I don't sit here resizing Safari all day. Almost everything I can do on my PC I can also do on my Mac with no problems. I have no regrets about getting it. As for Mac OS X over OS 9 I myself actually prefer the preemptiveness on OS X over how it is on OS 9. This is because I do things that get a benefit from it so for me OS 9 is a no go. And yes, I have used it quite a bit before. There are some apps that are open source that for me work just as good as on the PC\Linux while looking better, VLC is the most quick and obvious answer. I also like how the native port of abiword looks (yeah yeah I know probably some people wouldn't agree, I don't care).

The reason why I chose to get a Mac is because I like OS X. Plain and simple. I had my PC running in a power user account (not admin), I had a firewall, and I scanned programs before I installed them. I haven't had a virus problem in all the 8 years I have been on the PC. I kept up with maintanence and everything. I also happened to have my PC fully customised and skinned which I chose and configured well. My PC was OK for the things it meets the system requirements for. In fact, I am going to use it for the few things not available on my Mac.

At the end of the day though I can do the same job on either and get more or less the same results. I just prefer the Mac GUI (as someone can tell by looking at my PC, lol)

Mac Example



PC Example

[themacolyte]

I don't believe that either platform (Windows or Mac) is inherently slower or faster. It depends on what you're doing and expecting...

At work I use a 3.4 GHz Dell HT P4 with 1 GB of RAM running Windows XP Pro. We use .NET to develop a fairly large application (~350,000 lines of code). All of our machines have a distributed computing system running on them as well. So, there are usually two CPU intensive processes running on the system (the distributed client and the .NET development environment). Besides those two functions, the computer is useless to me. It's often useless for development as well. It's rediculously slow to respond (sometimes even when the dist client is not running and .NET isn't doing anything). Perhaps this is due to poor design of .NET on Microsoft's part (sidenote, NOT impressed with .NET) but overall Windows seems to have a real problem with handling multiple intensive processes at one time and simply stops responding for up to 30 seconds or more while it "thinks". It's not this particular computer having problems, this is my third Dell, and every other comuputer in the office is the same way but everyone else is a Windows user and accepts this behavior as normal.

I use my 1.33 GHz Powerbook with 768 MB of RAM to do everything else I need to do for work. I have noticed in development on it that no matter what combination of processes are running, it is always more responsive than the Windows machine. I don't watch the screen update, drawing one thing at a time. Sometimes it will stop to "think" while accessing the hard drive but when I want to switch applications it does so immediately. In flat out processing the Windows machine is logically faster but sitting in front of it, actually using the Windows UI you would never know it.

[aristotles]

Targon, you are trying to use a "modern" OS with ancient hardware and expecting it to perform with pro-level apps? Did you buy those apps you speak of or you are a troll and a software pirate. If you were able to purchase pro-apps for professional work, you should have a upgraded a long time ago. I mean come on, do you see pros on windows using even a 500MHz P3 with pro-level multimedia apps on XP? Of course not.

Everyone knows that XP is a lot slower than window9x but it is also a lot more stable. The same thing goes for OS 9 versions OS X. Modern OSes regardless of hardware platform require modern hardware. Deal with it.

I quite frankly have a hard time believing that you are doing work on 400Mhz machine with professional audio apps. Given me a fricken break.

meelk, I understand that you are too stupid to connect the dots, so I will explain things for you. The reason for mentioning all those apps was to bring the eye candy level of XP up to the OS X level for doing comparisions on GUI responsiveness. If you don't want the shadows in OS X, you can always turn them off with shadowkiller from unsanity.com to speed up OS X on ancient sub-500Mhz hardware.

I was a windows user for a number of years at home until Oct 2002 and I became exclusively mac at home in mid 2003. I am still a windows user/developer at work (40+ Hours per week) and the work we do involves hundreds of MB to GBs of data. Windows is extremely poor at multitasking data heavy apps.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally posted by Targon:
thanks for your suggestion, but why do u assume this setting is checked on my machine?

anywayz, im quite aware of this setting ;> thanks all the same

Because, generally, the faithful assume any MacOS performance issues to be "user error"

[smoke-tetsu]

Originally posted by Wiskedjak:
Because, generally, the faithful assume any MacOS performance issues to be "user error"

Reminds me of the Linux faithfull.