[Dark Goob]

So I just installed Vista on my new MacBook Pro (2.4 GHZ LED).

So I reboot into Vista. Low and behold, cnn.com loads in 2 seconds flat. ESPN.com in only 4 seconds. This was in Internet Explorer. I did a double take! Rebooted, same test, same results.

Now I rebooted into OS X. In Safari (not beta 3 just regular Safari that came with my computer), cnn.com takes 17 seconds to load, while ESPN.com was even slower. WTH?

Even in Camino, my preferred browser due to its speed, cnn.com takes 4-5 seconds, and ESPN.com about 8. Clicking the "College FB" tab in ESPN.com takes several seconds to load, whereas it was damn near instantaneous in Vista.

Also Second Life runs at nearly double the frame-rates in Vista compared with OS X 10.4.9.

My only comment is: WHAT THE HELL?!

Can someone please explain this performance disparity to me? And even better, can someone assure me that in OS X 10.5, this will be fixed?? Otherwise, I'm sorry, but I just may end up running Vista on my Mac, a thought which basically makes me want to throw up.

I mean, OS X has a marginally better UI, but I just paid $2500 for this computer so I could have the fastest computer on the market. Why would I use an operating system that makes my expensive new computer 1/2 as fast as it could be? Frankly I'm going to go with whichever operating system runs the fastest on it, since honestly Adobe CS3, Second Life, web browsers, and text editing programs are going to be the same either way I go. I don't ever use iPhoto, and iTunes is on Windows too.

If Vista is 2x faster or more, in almost every task from web browsing to virtual reality, where does that leave OS X? What the hell is going on?

Someone please tell me I forgot to flip the "fast" switch in my OS X preferences.

-=DG=-

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

IE7 is much faster than Safari 2. Safari 3 is faster than IE7 but eats more memory according to PC Pro's tests.

Games are faster under Vista because the Nvidia drivers are clocked higher and, well, because Windows games are more mature. It will always be like this it seems.

Question is what productivity applications are you using and do they run better or faster on OS X?

[Dark Goob]

Games? Did you see me mention a game anywhere in my post??

Second Life is the productivity application I run. I make money with it. To me, that makes it productive. I make and sell various products, write scripts, and do 3D design and building.

So now you're telling me that "Nvidia drivers are clocked faster" in Vista -- what does that mean? How do I fix it in OS X?

All I want to do, is use OS X for Second Life and web browsing, and have it be as fast as on Vista. All of my documents over the past 23 years have been in the Mac format. I have owned literally over 25 different Mac computers over time. I have documents on my hard drive with creation dates in the mid-80's.

The idea that WINDOWS can run primary applications faster on my Mac, than OS X can, makes me want to .. well lets just not go there. How can Apple be so crappy, that their own operating system running on their own hardware is not even as fast as the competing product running on it?

Please tell me it's just that the drivers for the NVIDIA 8600M GT have not been fully written yet for OS X, and that it will happen soon, and that the slow web performance is fixed in Leopard, and it's all just a bad dream. Please?

Because right now, I cannot get IE7 for Mac, and Safari 3 is not ready for general use (nor from what I could tell from testing it, was it significantly faster than Safari 2 while running on OS X). Camino runs great, but I still don't understand why it would be half as fast as IE7 is on Windows? Unless it is also related to the NVIDIA graphics card drivers not being up to snuff on OS X?

It is highly disturbing to me that, overall, doing anything in Vista just seems faster. I doubt that if you time how long it takes a Photoshop filter to render, that it would be much different. That's going to be the same between both systems. But, it's the SPEED of every day tasks, like web browsing, and dramatically higher SPEED of Second Life in Vista that is making me question what the heck is going on here. I want to know why this is the case, and if it is going to be fixed in 10.5, or by an NVIDIA driver update, or what?

Thanks, if anyone knows.

-=DG=-

[Dark Goob]

PS -- Please, nobody patronize me with any "just get used to it" garbage, or try to tell me that SL is a game, or try to justify OS X's poor performance here. It is simply NOT ACCEPTABLE for OS X to run something like a web browser or a virtual reality application at HALF OR LESS the speed of Windows Vista on Apple's own hardware. That's just ridiculous! The only reason that I bought this MacBook Pro (to replace my PowerBook G4 1.67 Ghz) was due to the fact that it has faster performance for 3D applications such as Second Life. For anything else, (including any of the Photoshop tasks I do with images from DSLRs as an amateur photographer, editing video in Final Cut Pro, recording multi-track audio in Digital Performer, etc.) my previous computer worked just fine.

Look. Virtual reality, 3D engines, and other related applications are a HUGE part of the computing industry, movie industry, entertainment (read: gaming) industry, and are something that Apple must not lag behind in if it is to be a competitive platform. It's quickly becoming the way that people interact online. The original iMac was revolutionary in that it gave an easy way to access the internet. Well, the internet is in 3D now, whether you have made the leap to that yet or whether you are still just using 2D web browsers.

It is quite simply not viable for Apple to take a lackluster approach to this, or for the Mac community to take the stance that "Macs just aren't for gaming" any longer. The reason why is because the same underlying technology that makes games run fast, is also what makes 3D internet applications such as Second Life run fast.

To its credit, Apple's hardware at least is up to the task. Hardware wise, this new MacBook Pro kicks some severe ass. But software wise, obviously something is wrong here. What is it?

-=DG=-

PPS -- Sorry for the long-winded rant here, but I'm just a bit schitzed out about this whole thing. Windows running faster on my Mac than OS X does, well, it just kind of freaks me the F(*) out.

[CaptainHaddock]

How can you load CNN.com in 2 seconds? I have 54 megabit fiber, and it takes quite a lot longer than that just to download the page and all its graphics, scripts, ads and so on — in any browser. It's not the rendering that's slow.

If I follow a link and then go "back" so the graphics are cached, CNN.com renders in less than two seconds in Safari 3.

By the way, I saw some Photoshop CS3 benchmarks that compared Photoshop on an Intel Mac, a G5, and an Intel Mac running Visa. Most filters ran slightly faster in OS X than in Vista on the same machine.

[Jan Van Boghout]

Rendering in 17 seconds definitely sounds like an anomaly. For me, CNN loads in about 4 seconds on Safari 2 (after clearing the cache). Either the MBP was doing something extremely intensive at the time, or the delay was due to the network.

As for gaming, Apple seems to be serious about improving the situation these days. They have made a bunch of OpenGL improvements (like multi-threaded OpenGL), but it's still up to the game developers to take full advantage of the platform.

[moonmonkey]

Open GL performance in games like Second Life is not as good as on PC's, but other things should be at the same speed, there is definitely something wrong with your browser.

[analogika]

Here, CNN took about 3-4 seconds, Safari 3, 2GHz MacBook Core 2 Duo.

[MacosNerd]

CNN loaded in about 3 or 4 seconds for me. I'm not sure if that is patronizing you however

[ghporter]

I just loaded CNN.com on my PC in approximately 4 seconds-running XP Pro with Firefox. As an observation, Safari seems to render a LOT of sites both more slowly and differently. Try Firefox under OS X, and see if it's an OS X issue or just Safari being quirky. My money is on quirky.

[chabig]

CNN loads in about 4 seconds for me too.

[TETENAL]

Safari 2.0.4 on the G5 takes 6 seconds to completely load CNN after emptying the cache. The page is readable after about 4 seconds. Safari 3 beta on Intel takes 3 seconds to completely load CNN.

Originally Posted by Dark Goob 

Second Life is the productivity application I run.

[analogika]

I think you missed the part about it earning him money.

[MindFad]

About 4 seconds for a dead load of CNN.com here—not cached. Going back again after cached: 2 seconds flat. MacBook Pro (original Core Duo, 2GHz).

ESPN dead load: 6 1/2 seconds. Cached: 1.5.

I'm on regular ol' Earthlink DSL.

Are you launching Safari straight away after reboot in OS X? If I do that on my machine, there are things always loading in the background (prebinding, Dashboard, I guess, or what have you) for around 30 seconds the Finder pops up. If I try launching Safari off this slow-ass laptop drive and go to a site as soon as the Finder pops up, Safari will choke, that's for sure.

17 seconds, though, no way.

[Cold Warrior]

CNN takes 2-2.5 seconds to load on my MBP 2.16 GHz 2GB RAM. I use OpenDNS OpenDNS | Providing A Safer And Faster DNS and FireFox 2 with AdBlock. All CNN's ads are blocked.

[larrinski]

You are comparing a new browser in Vista, to Safari 2 which is very long in tooth. If you are worried about web browser speed, use Omniweb, which beats most browsers in speed hands down. It runs a lot faster than Camino, Safari 2, Firefox etc... You could also as mentioned above, install Safari 3. It loads pages very quickly as well. It seems odd to me that you are hung up on web browser speed. The difference of a couple of seconds will not increase your productivity.

If you are so experienced on a Mac, then games running slower on a Mac should not be a surprise. Windows game development is more mature. The games are usually ported to the Mac. As I don't play Second Life(oops, not a game sorry...), does it run as a Universal App? That will slow it down if it doesn't. Does running a Virtual reality game at a higher bit rate make you more money? I only ask as I don't see the relationship of frame rate to game speed. It understand that you may see a bit more detail. Does the game "run" twice as fast in Vista? Do the players talk quicker or run faster in Vista? If so, then Vista is your OS...

You also fail to bring up another productivity issue. A friend of mine just bought a PC with Vista on it. It crashed a number of times and wasn't stable. She was so mad that her brand new machine kept crashing, that she returned it and bought a Mac. She has no issues with it, and isn't wasting her time trying to fix the machine...OSX is more stable, is prone to less spyware, and viruses. That to me improves my productivity.

And lastly, if you like Vista so much, and your Mac lets you run Vista, then you should be happy... You get a nice looking computer and your OS of choice!

[Dark Goob]

Alright apparently something was rather slow with my Safari that one time (the 17 seconds was an anomaly.

Upon further testing I am getting about 4 seconds to load cnn.com in Safari as well as Camino. Still, for that or for espn.com, it's about half the speed of what it takes in the IE7 on Vista.

Hey, I'm not making this stuff up. It's not like I *want* Vista to be faster. If you guys don't believe me on this stuff, I'm happy to make a YouTube video of it so you can see.

Jan Van Boghout wrote:
> > >
As for gaming, Apple seems to be serious about improving the situation these days. They have made a bunch of OpenGL improvements (like multi-threaded OpenGL), but it's still up to the game developers to take full advantage of the platform.
< < <

Well yeah, at the WWDC keynote, Jobs definitely made it seem like gaming was a renewed priority.

But as for OpenGL, my understanding is that it's a piece of junk compared to DirectX 10, which is the standard for newer 3D engines. If you read the stats on the NVIDIA 8600M GT, it supports OpenGL 2.1, but really it's designed primarily for DirectX 10 with all its cool hardware features. (GeForce 8600M - Notebook and Laptop) Of course, Microsoft is not likely to port this proprietary Vista technology over to the Mac.

But still, is lack of DirectX the reason why something like Second Life would run at 1/2 the speed of Vista while on OS X? Are we saying that the performance issues are because Linden Labs (the developer of SL) does not take advantage of multi-threaded OpenGL? (To be sure, I have submitted a support ticket to them regarding this matter, but have not heard back yet.)

Incidentally, has anyone tried to run Second Life within Parallels 3.0? How is the performance?

> > >
By the way, I saw some Photoshop CS3 benchmarks that compared Photoshop on an Intel Mac, a G5, and an Intel Mac running Visa. Most filters ran slightly faster in OS X than in Vista on the same machine.
< < <

Well, that's good to hear. Honestly, the only things I do in Photoshop are use Layers and Adjustment Layers. Occasionally I'll run Reduce Noise or Unsharp Mask, both of which ran fast enough by far on my G4. I suppose if I was in a production environment with CS3 on Intel, working with high-resolution images, it would matter. But these days, most of the Photoshop work I do is with textures (512 x 512 pixels) so all the filters happen just about instantaneously, even on Photoshop 5.5 on the G3 I use as a SCSI scanning machine

CaptainHaddock wrote:
> > >
How can you load CNN.com in 2 seconds? I have 54 megabit fiber, and it takes quite a lot longer than that just to download the page and all its graphics, scripts, ads and so on — in any browser. It's not the rendering that's slow.
< < <

I don't know, man. I'm just telling you what I saw -- and it wasn't from cached. This was using the faster of the various Comcast services available (8 mb/s downstream I beleive). I'll check again later today and video tape it, then post it on YouTube so you guys can see.

> > >
If I follow a link and then go "back" so the graphics are cached, CNN.com renders in less than two seconds in Safari 3.
< < <

Alright. I don't know what to say. Honestly the web browsing speed of OS X, while seemingly slower than Vista, is still very good. I mean, honestly, I am not such an impatient person that I would not wait an extra couple of seconds per web page in order to use the Mac OS. Just the horribly-designed Control Panel alone is enough to make me never want to use Vista.

But while the browser performance issues are annoying, the 3D performance issue is simply unacceptable.

Anyway I'll post more information if I get any from Linden Labs or Apple or anyone else. If anyone else here has more information about this, especially regarding NVIDIA drivers for OS X, I'd like to hear it.

-=DG=-

[besson3c]

All of these "it took me 4 seconds to load this page" are probably somewhat helpful as a frame of reference, but it doesn't mean that this individual should be loading pages in 4 seconds too, there are simply too many variables to account for:

- network speed at that precise moment

- DNS server responsiveness if doing a lookup of an uncached IP

- other processes OS X may be working on at that precise moment (particularly ones that may be eating up a significant amount of your system resources)

- host responsiveness

- web browser rendering speed

- local web browser cache

- wireless network performance, if applicable

etc.

In any OS, you can either try to improve matters, or simply switch to something that allows you to be more productive. You have many options, including Vista.

Every OS X browser I've used is quite slow at loading multiple tabs simultaneously, but my browsing behavior does involve loading several pages into tabs. By doing this, the speed of loading an individual page is not really important to me, but rather the speed in which I can use the browser again (which, like I said, OS X gets poor marks with... There are rumors this is improved in Leopard though).

[shinji]

Barely takes me 2-3 seconds in safari with 8-9 tabs already open. It's not cached, as I don't get my news from CNN. 30 mbps cable, Mac Pro.

So something is very wrong and unusual if it is taking 17 seconds, possibly your airport or firewall settings? I used Windows for the past 6 years, and Vista is the reason I switched back to macs after not owning one since the powerbook pismo. I don't really notice a speed difference, but for me the OS X interface is more than marginally better.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Dark Goob 

But as for OpenGL, my understanding is that it's a piece of junk compared to DirectX 10

I don't know who told you that, but I bet they get money from Microsoft.

Originally Posted by Dark Goob 

If you read the stats on the NVIDIA 8600M GT, it supports OpenGL 2.1, but really it's designed primarily for DirectX 10 with all its cool hardware features.

As far as I'm aware, OpenGL is perfectly capable of using that all card's shader features. It's just called "DX10-compatible" because that's the buzzword people want to hear.

Anyway, I anticipate this debate will look a lot different in four months.

[Dark Goob]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

I don't know who told you that, but I bet they get money from Microsoft.


As far as I'm aware, OpenGL is perfectly capable of using that all card's shader features. It's just called "DX10-compatible" because that's the buzzword people want to hear.

Anyway, I anticipate this debate will look a lot different in four months.

Well, this is the response I anticipated from you guys... denial, excuses... no one with any actual reasons why web browsing and Second Life is half the speed on OS X. Just, "oh it must have been related to the network speed at the time" etc.

Well like I said I'll post you some videos tomorrow, then you can see for yourself.

I gather that you think the slow 3D performance in SL is a Tiger issue and Leopard will fix it? I haven't tried it with any other 3D applications. I mean if someone could show that Quake 4 gets the same framerates on Vista and OS X on the same hardware (LED MBP), that would be reassuring to me that perhaps it's just an SL issue.

-=DG=-

[analogika]

What denial or excuses in Chuckit's post?

He's saying that OpenGL is not worse than DirectX10; that may well be correct, I don't know.

It doesn't change the fact that DirectX10 is not currently supported under OS X, and that most ports from DirectX to OpenGL are apparently, if benchmarks are anything to go by, piss-poor efforts.

How is saying "Well, the developer ****ed it up" "denial" or "excuse"?

And how is pointing to new porting technology that was demonstrated at WWDC and that bodes well for decent performance of ported DirectX software and noting that the situation might well be different when that hits the market in four months "denial" or "excuse"?

[besson3c]

Dark Goob:

Perhaps we'll start to see some better game performance as some get into using Cedega/WINE to basically allow those same Windows games to run in their native Windows environment on the Mac.

[pooka]

Dark Goober,

All I can tell you is to get used to it and cross your fingers that one day, things will improve. Personally, I can't stand any flavor of Windows, and so long as Apple continues to produce machines and software that allow me to stay competitive, I won't be switching. That said, there are just some areas that OS X consistently eats butt compared to the dark side. Aside from some bullshit fantasies that some people have deluded themselves into believing, you will always have a faster, smoother experience online with some either Vista, XP or hell, 2000. Well, so long as the machine isn't bogged down with spyware and crap. I'm sure plenty will disagree, and I could be wrong, but my experience as a web developer (who has witnessed and participated in countless user tests on a wide variety of projects and hardware) tells me that Apple has to make some serious changes to their browser to improve the situation.

Oh, a big reason is also related to Flash. Now, of course, everyone will bitch and complain about how it sucks, ruining the web or how you should disable the plug-in since you don't really need it. That is an option, but it doesn't change the fact that with or without, IE or Firefox on windows will spank OS X on the same hardware.

As for your other problems, meh, get used to that as well. As with most ports to OS X, it's a second class citizen. Hell, half the **** in Adobe's Creative Suite are lousy ports that are now where near as responsive as their PC counterparts. Disk I/O, in general, seems to worse most of the time as well. Networking as well.

Personally, with all of its faults, I still prefer OS X. I just wish they could spend some of that iPod cash to make it the best at everything.

Edit:

Also, you're going to hear reasons why some software sucks, or how it could probably be fixed, or if the developers did a, b or c things could be better. This changes jacksheeit, because in the end, they probably won't. Like I said, get used to it.

[goMac]

There was an issue a while back where OS X's graphics drivers would only use one processor core, and Windows would use both. This could be why you're having issues with frame rate in second life. The Second Life crew has to ship an update to use the new mutlicore drivers.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Dark Goob 

I gather that you think the slow 3D performance in SL is a Tiger issue and Leopard will fix it?

I can't talk about Second Life specifically, as I don't play it and have paid it very little attention in general, but I do know Apple has put a lot of work into OpenGL performance on Leopard. I don't have Leopard and would be under NDA even if I did, but I do think it will make a big difference for a lot of people, particularly on newer computers like yours.

Like goMac said, it could also just be that the developer didn't bother to optimize the OpenGL code. It's not as uncommon as it should be for developers to do this on platforms they view as secondary ("Oh, I guess I ought to put something out for those Mac/Linux users").

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by MindFad 

ESPN dead load: 6 1/2 seconds. Cached: 1.5.

I'm on regular ol' Earthlink DSL.

Same provider, same service, same time. Single 1.8 GHz G5.

More thots on this later.

[Dark Goob]

analogika wrote:
> > >
What denial or excuses in Chuckit's post?
< < <

He is denying that DirectX 10 is any better than OpenGL 2.1. Well, I believe OpenGL 3.0 will be the only version that adds something similar to DirectX10's Shader Model 4.0.

By excuses, I mean the previous poster who said, "Windows game development is more mature." Well that's not an excuse for a virtual reality applications being slower under OS X. When what you have are two versions of an application that are simultaneously co-developed for both platforms, if the OS X version is lagging behind, then what is necessary is for Apple to pump more developer support resources towards that sector in order to shore up that aspect of their platform.

Now, it seems based on the most recent Jobsnote that Apple is finally getting around to targeting the VR/gaming sector, which is good because in 10-20 years it will be the dominant mode of interaction online. Gaming may have been the birthplace of mass-market 3D but it's well beyond that now, and it's growing every day.

Yeah, hopefully it's just something that will be addressed with driver updates for OS X, or maybe it is just a Second-Life-specific thing. I have learned Second Life does not use DirectX 10. Also Tiger is not as recent an OS as Vista, so maybe this is just something Apple intended to address in 10.5, but since it's been pushed back a couple of months, the hardware has come out before the OS that takes full advantage of it.

I did notice that NVIDIA does not have any downloads on their site for Mac OS X drivers. Which of course means Apple is the one responsible for that, right?

> > >
How is saying "Well, the developer ****ed it up" "denial" or "excuse"?
< < <

Well it's hard to blame a developer for not supporting an OS/hardware combination that has been on the market only 2 weeks. But the web browsing speed issue is more confusing, and would point to a more underlying problem, like for example, graphics card drivers in OS X that are in need of updating.

> > >
And how is pointing to new porting technology that was demonstrated at WWDC and that bodes well for decent performance of ported DirectX software and noting that the situation might well be different when that hits the market in four months "denial" or "excuse"?
< < <

That's neither a denial nor an excuse. Hopefully these things all come to fruition as we are hoping. I mean there's really no downside to the Mac increasing its presence as VR/gaming platform, since all it could do would be to boost sales and increase OS X's viability as a mainstream OS.

I'm probably just overreacting and need to be a little more patient with the progress of stuff on OS X in catching up to Vista. Hopefully it does soon.

-=DG=-

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Dark Goob 

I gather that you think the slow 3D performance in SL is a Tiger issue and Leopard will fix it? I haven't tried it with any other 3D applications. I mean if someone could show that Quake 4 gets the same framerates on Vista and OS X on the same hardware (LED MBP), that would be reassuring to me that perhaps it's just an SL issue.

The 3D performance has nothing to do with OpenGL vs. DirectX as all id engines (including Q4) use OpenGL on all platforms. It's rather an issue of driver optimization independent of which framework you use. John Carmack has repeatedly stated, he will not switch from OpenGL to DirectX, and I assume he has good reasons for it and knows better than most of us. (OpenGL is also used by many Windows games and applications, mind you.)

The reason why graphics card manufacturers include `DX10' or so on their box is for marketing reasons and feature-set reasons: DX10 has certain requirements on graphics card and is relevant for getting all of Vista's latest bells and whistles. It doesn't mean the chip `was specifically designed' for DirectX or that OpenGL is inherently inferior.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Dark Goob 

He is denying that DirectX 10 is any better than OpenGL 2.1. Well, I believe OpenGL 3.0 will be the only version that adds something similar to DirectX10's Shader Model 4.0.

Since some of the best-looking games are based on OpenGL (e. g. all games based on one of id soft's engines), I'm not really sure whether this is particularly relevant for your main argument either.

Originally Posted by Dark Goob 

I did notice that NVIDIA does not have any downloads on their site for Mac OS X drivers. Which of course means Apple is the one responsible for that, right?

No, the companies do provide the drivers and Apple helps them integrate them. The drivers are updated via OS updates.

Originally Posted by Dark Goob 

Well it's hard to blame a developer for not supporting an OS/hardware combination that has been on the market only 2 weeks. But the web browsing speed issue is more confusing, and would point to a more underlying problem, like for example, graphics card drivers in OS X that are in need of updating.

Since none of us were really able to reproduce your claimed results for OS X, I find it strange that you base your rant on flaky `benchmark' results.

[besson3c]

Why would web browsing speed be tied to graphics card drivers anyway? The bottlenecks in OS X are in GUI responsiveness, and furthermore, I'm fairly certain that web browsing engines don't touch the GPU anyway...

[Dark Goob]

Originally Posted by pooka 

Dark Goober,

All I can tell you is to get used to it and cross your fingers that one day, things will improve. Personally, I can't stand any flavor of Windows, and so long as Apple continues to produce machines and software that allow me to stay competitive, I won't be switching. That said, there are just some areas that OS X consistently eats butt compared to the dark side. Aside from some bullshit fantasies that some people have deluded themselves into believing, you will always have a faster, smoother experience online with some either Vista, XP or hell, 2000. Well, so long as the machine isn't bogged down with spyware and crap. I'm sure plenty will disagree, and I could be wrong, but my experience as a web developer (who has witnessed and participated in countless user tests on a wide variety of projects and hardware) tells me that Apple has to make some serious changes to their browser to improve the situation.

Oh, a big reason is also related to Flash. Now, of course, everyone will bitch and complain about how it sucks, ruining the web or how you should disable the plug-in since you don't really need it. That is an option, but it doesn't change the fact that with or without, IE or Firefox on windows will spank OS X on the same hardware.

As for your other problems, meh, get used to that as well. As with most ports to OS X, it's a second class citizen. Hell, half the **** in Adobe's Creative Suite are lousy ports that are now where near as responsive as their PC counterparts. Disk I/O, in general, seems to worse most of the time as well. Networking as well.

Personally, with all of its faults, I still prefer OS X. I just wish they could spend some of that iPod cash to make it the best at everything.

Well, exactly. I don't work there, so how would I know, but I just get the feeling like Apple's problem has more to do with company culture and a superiority complex than the actual limitations of OS X. Like, they are focusing on this Time Machine thing, making a shiny reflective dock, etc. when it's like, come on, make the thing run better. Make the GUI more responsive. Make the open/save dialogs remember where you were the last time between different programs (and how the columns were sorted)!!!!!! Make the print window actually show the progress without having to go to the printer list and then double click on the printer and then back to the printer again! Make it remember what the last print settings were without having to make that the default! Make web browsing as fast as on Windows. Make the fonts WYSIWGY (instead of 9 point fonts showing up on the screen as 6 points due to no screens being 72 dpi anymore). Make sure you ship computers with updated graphics drivers. Etc. etc.

Even though I definitely prefer the OS X UI, in terms of betterness, why can't they fix basic stuff though, like the fact that icons on the desktop in list view have columns that are spaced way too far apart and you can't adjust the spacing? And there's no option for it to display the entire filenames, and they truncate retardedly in the middle like "My Very Lon...lename.txt". I mean WTF is that? There's like 1" of blank space between columns, and it's truncating filenames? WHY

I feel like they just ignore the details that make the OS X experience frustrating in favor of trying to go to a "final solution" of the iTunes-ization of everything. Meanwhile graphics performance, network performance etc. is still languishing. I don't want to hear about some flashy new graphics features -- I want to hear about performance improvements, fixing of these long-standing annoying issues with OS X, surpassing Windows in browsing image & movie files (this one they actually are doing right in Leopard finally!), etc.

I mean where was the announcement about the rumored WYSIWYG scalable resolution independent GUI at WWDC? Or are they not doing that?

/rant off

-=DG=-

[Dark Goob]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

Since some of the best-looking games are based on OpenGL (e. g. all games based on one of id soft's engines), I'm not really sure whether this is particularly relevant for your main argument either.

No, the companies do provide the drivers and Apple helps them integrate them. The drivers are updated via OS updates.

Since none of us were really able to reproduce your claimed results for OS X, I find it strange that you base your rant on flaky `benchmark' results.

Well I hope you're right about OpenGL. I don't know much about this sort of thing so I'll yield to Carmack's wisdom.

As for you guys reproducing my "benchmarks", did any of you really try? I mean, boot your machine in OS X and time it, then boot into Windows Vista and time the same thing? So far I just saw a bunch of people saying "my Safari takes 4 seconds" or whatever but not saying what their time for Vista vs. OS X was. And one guy actually agreed with me that Windows is generally faster for web browsing and such. I mean, why would I make this stuff up?

Anyway video camera will be the best way to show you.

-=DG=-

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Dark Goob 

I mean where was the announcement about the rumored WYSIWYG scalable resolution independent GUI at WWDC? Or are they not doing that

It is included (just have a look at the thread on this topic in the OS X sub forum). There was one session on this at the WWDC.

[ghporter]

I just had a chance to see how things run on my MBP. CNN.com took approximately 3 seconds to completely load in Safari, and approximately 2 seconds to load in Firefox. I think it's quite apparent that (on my computer at least) there's no real difference in rendering performance between these two OS X browsers, and in fact no difference between the OS X browsers and my Windows browser, as posted above.

I should also note that my PC is wired to my router, and my MBP is sitting on my lap in the living room, connected wirelessly.

[Dark Goob]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

It is included (just have a look at the thread on this topic in the OS X sub forum). There was one session on this at the WWDC.

Oh, cool. That's awesome. I'll go check it out.

-=DG=-

[besson3c]

Dark Goob: I agree that there are a lot of performance fundamentals OS X completely folds on that Apple should take the time to get right. The Finder is an excellent example of this. While some here will claim that Leopard allegedly fixes these problems, they still have been outstanding for far too long.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Dark Goob 

But the web browsing speed issue is more confusing, and would point to a more underlying problem, like for example, graphics card drivers in OS X that are in need of updating.

Graphics card drivers aren't going to affect the speed of a Web page rendering. More like Safari needs updating. And what do you know? There's a beta out for a new version that's extremely fast. So that should be taken care of in short order.

[Don Pickett]

My $0.02:

I run OS X and Linux at home and, currently, XP at work. Now, direct comparisons are tough because of the differences in network. Work is a very pimped out corporate network with a gigbit backbone and its own very fast DNS servers. Home is Earthlink residential DSL through my old Linksys blue box router and I can't even remember what my DNS servers are. That said, the differences in web browsing between the two seems to be mostly network related when comparing IE 6 on XP, Safari 3 on OS X and Firefox on Linux.

Meaning, while pages load in a jiffy at work, they don't seem to render and more quickly.

[besson3c]

Don: do you notice a difference in performance in network applications in general between your Linux and Mac machines?

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Don: do you notice a difference in performance in network applications in general between your Linux and Mac machines?

None that have made a real impression. The only one I can think of is that Ubuntu's version of Samba can't seem to push past 10Base-T. In other words, if I send from the OS X machine to the Linux machine, I see 100Base-T speeds. From Linux to OS X, I see 10Base-T. But all the normal stuff, like browsing and bittorrent, seem to same on both machines.

[bballe336]

I didn't read the full thread, but if the speed of the web browser (and the difference is mere seconds) would determine which operating system you would use then you obviously didn't make an educated purchase. Although I can't say why your safari is as slow as you describe it. Safari 2 loads cnn.com in just over a second on my G4, it is FAR slower on both my XP and vista PC's.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

None that have made a real impression. The only one I can think of is that Ubuntu's version of Samba can't seem to push past 10Base-T. In other words, if I send from the OS X machine to the Linux machine, I see 100Base-T speeds. From Linux to OS X, I see 10Base-T. But all the normal stuff, like browsing and bittorrent, seem to same on both machines.

What about opening a lot of tabs in Firefox, or browsing a Flash heavy site?

[mpancha]

Originally Posted by larrinski 

YYou also fail to bring up another productivity issue. A friend of mine just bought a PC with Vista on it. It crashed a number of times and wasn't stable. She was so mad that her brand new machine kept crashing, that she returned it and bought a Mac. She has no issues with it, and isn't wasting her time trying to fix the machine...OSX is more stable, is prone to less spyware, and viruses. That to me improves my productivity.

One thing I've found is that Apple uses better hardware than the majority of PC Manufacturors. Because of this a lot of problems people experience when they buy bargain PCs are a non-issue with those using Apple products.

Just b/c your friend had trouble with a PC doesn't mean its because of Vista. Put Vista on a quality computer and you'll see it work without a glitch. Put OS X on a computer with cheap parts, and you'll see it crumble. If you want to test it, try putting a stick of cheap, no-name RAM into an Apple computer. Watch it croak.

Sorry to get sidetracked off topic, just a pet peeve of mine when people mix up hardware/software/OS issues and point the blame in the wrong direction. I've said it before, I'll say it again... Apple OS and WIndows OS are both equally amazing, and nightmares. They work most of the time, but when they break I hate them both.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

What about opening a lot of tabs in Firefox, or browsing a Flash heavy site?

The joys of PPC Linux: no real Flash. Forget about YouTube, etc. From what Flash does come through there doesn't seem to be much difference. The biggest difference would seem to be Safari's memory usage and caching behavior; Safari 2 and earlier would eat up a lot of memory and get sluggish after a while. Safari 3, while still eating up lots of memory, seems to have fixed the sluggishness.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by mpancha 

One thing I've found is that Apple uses better hardware than the majority of PC Manufacturors. Because of this a lot of problems people experience when they buy bargain PCs are a non-issue with those using Apple products.

Just b/c your friend had trouble with a PC doesn't mean its because of Vista. Put Vista on a quality computer and you'll see it work without a glitch. Put OS X on a computer with cheap parts, and you'll see it crumble. If you want to test it, try putting a stick of cheap, no-name RAM into an Apple computer. Watch it croak.

Sorry to get sidetracked off topic, just a pet peeve of mine when people mix up hardware/software/OS issues and point the blame in the wrong direction. I've said it before, I'll say it again... Apple OS and WIndows OS are both equally amazing, and nightmares. They work most of the time, but when they break I hate them both.

My anecdotal experience backs up the original poster. My XP machine at work, which is a very clean install (no Quicktime, no IM software, etc.) needs to be restarted or logged out/logged in two or three times a week for no reason I can figure out. I will be doing something simple, like copying from Excel and switching to Illustrator to copy the info into a graph, and the GUI will freeze up and become completely non-responsive. Doesn't happen on my OS X machine.

I just think Windows is starting to show its age.

[Visnaut]

Dark Goob,

You mentioned this is a new machine that you purchased recently. I'm not sure at what point you conducted these tests, but it's possible that while in Mac OS X, Spotlight was still indexing your drive. Especially if you've transferred a lot of files over.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

My anecdotal experience backs up the original poster. My XP machine at work, which is a very clean install (no Quicktime, no IM software, etc.) needs to be restarted or logged out/logged in two or three times a week for no reason I can figure out. I will be doing something simple, like copying from Excel and switching to Illustrator to copy the info into a graph, and the GUI will freeze up and become completely non-responsive. Doesn't happen on my OS X machine.

I just think Windows is starting to show its age.

Not necessarily. A "clean" install does not equate to a GOOD install. Lots of options in the Windows installation process can make for an unstable installation.

But I should also point out that even XP Pro is not really a 24/7/365 OS. When I used an XP machine at work, it was policy to TURN THE MACHINE OFF as you left for the day. It's a good practice; how much work do you get done when you're not there?

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Not necessarily. A "clean" install does not equate to a GOOD install. Lots of options in the Windows installation process can make for an unstable installation.

But I should also point out that even XP Pro is not really a 24/7/365 OS. When I used an XP machine at work, it was policy to TURN THE MACHINE OFF as you left for the day. It's a good practice; how much work do you get done when you're not there?

It's a good, fresh install.

My point was more to the "both are great and suck equally" comment above. I have found OS X and Linux machines to be much more stable than Windows machines. My machines at home get restarted once in a blue moon and neither one of them have the kind of freakout problems I see on my Windows machine (which, funnily enough, I'm posting from now). Even in a worse case scenario, if either the OS X or Linux machine freezes up, I can ssh into them and kill whatever process has hung. That's considerably more difficult to do on a Windows machine.

I'm not trying to start a big thing here, as I use whatever OS I have to, and I think people should use whatever OS they want. But to dismiss any criticism with the "they're all the same" argument doesn't wash for me. In my experience, Windows is just not as stable as OS or Linux in a production environment. It's just too fragile.

[Don Pickett]

Oh, yeah: Another random, anecdotal data point. I've noticed that, on Windows, Microsoft applications launch very, very quickly. I just started Powerpoint and it was up and ready in about a second. Third party apps, however, aren't so lucky. InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat are as slow to launch on Windows as under OS X.