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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > I've been REALLY impressed with Tiger's multitasking (PNG)

I've been REALLY impressed with Tiger's multitasking (PNG)
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olePigeon
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May 25, 2005, 03:47 PM
 
Here's a screenshot I made from my PowerBook after I realized all that I was doing at the same time. That's Maya in the background rendering my movie (you can see that here, but you need QT 7, it's H.264), with Photoshop in the foreground where I'm resizing and cropping some screenshots for a manual I'm making and sticking them into my Illustrator (though now I realize I should just use InDesign), with my Italian homework in the back too. With all this going iTunes didn't miss a beat streaming to my AirTunes.

I didn't realize I had all those apps open running at the same time. Even with Maya rendering my movie, Word opened in about 3 seconds.

I was so impressed I took a screenshot once I realized all the crap I had running. Tiger has completely blown me away.
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typoon
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May 25, 2005, 04:04 PM
 
hehe try doing all that on a PC.
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CaptainHaddock
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May 25, 2005, 04:06 PM
 
What kind of system do you have, olePigeon? I've been pretty impressed too, except that I get a lot of 60-second program freezes (spinning beachballs) when using apps that have been open for a day or more.
     
CatOne
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May 25, 2005, 04:43 PM
 
Originally Posted by typoon
hehe try doing all that on a PC.
It would actually work just fine. Silly you think it wouldn't. Believe me, a Windows 2000/XP machine can multitask quite well. I worked on a 2000 machine for 4 years at work, running Outlook, doing compiles, running J2EE applications, web servers, etc., and it was fine.

Windows has been very good at multitasking since NT 4 came out. To think/say otherwise, is to really lose credibility, because it's fairly obvious you have no idea what you're talking about.
     
pooka
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May 25, 2005, 04:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by CaptainHaddock
What kind of system do you have, olePigeon? I've been pretty impressed too, except that I get a lot of 60-second program freezes (spinning beachballs) when using apps that have been open for a day or more.
No crap. And it seems to be worse with Tiger. I can only assume that it has to do with RAM and pageouts. But if I restart everything is back to normal. And I don't mean a restart and the finder feels fine. I mean restart the comp, the apps and get back to work.

The most frustrating thing in the world to me lately has been program switching and seeing that damn wheel.

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jszrules
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May 25, 2005, 04:57 PM
 
Originally Posted by CaptainHaddock
What kind of system do you have, olePigeon? I've been pretty impressed too, except that I get a lot of 60-second program freezes (spinning beachballs) when using apps that have been open for a day or more.
Same here. I've read posts where people are thrilled they haven't seen one beachball during a Spotlight search, that everything seems "snappier", etc. While I did experience this newfound smoothness when going from 10.2 to 10.3, that does not seem to be the case with me and Tiger. Perhaps it is because I am not on a G5 or perhaps it is because I upgraded instead of Archive/Clean Install, but I doubt those are the reasons. Who knows.
     
olePigeon  (op)
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May 25, 2005, 05:43 PM
 
I'm using a 15" 1.67 PowerBook G4 with 2GB of RAM. The only problems I've been having is with Maya. It refuses to end a rendering job, even if I manually cancel it. It continues to render blank frames. It doesn't show up in pa -a or in Force Quit, so the only way to get around after rendering is to restart.

I'm hoping there'll be a 6.5.2 update for Maya soon cuz it's a REALLY annoying bug.

Other than that, Tiger has been awesome. I think a beachball pops up when loading Photoshop or Illustrator, but it's always done that. But it loads fast anyway, a LOT faster than Panther. The only app I've had run for days on end is iTunes and it hasn't given me any problems.

I can report again later after I get some internet access up at my new place. Then I can run some apps overnight and see what happens.
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CaptainHaddock
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May 25, 2005, 09:39 PM
 
I guess it's good to hear I'm not the only one with spinning-beachball problems. It's just weird having the app I'm using inexplicably freeze for a minute. And as far as the GUI and stuff go, Tiger is definitely faster than Panther.

CatOne, I used Windows 2000 for years, and it was rather pathetic at multitasking. It was impossible to do anything while big applications like Photoshop or InDesign were churning away. From what I've seen on other people's XP systems, it's not much better (and nowhere near Panther or Tiger).

Back to Tiger's spinning beachball problem, I've filed a few bug-reports with Apple. There's another Tiger bug that complicates things: you can't save process samples with Activity Monitor like you should. It gives some kind of weird error message instead.
     
Xtraz
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May 26, 2005, 12:01 AM
 
I'm just going to add myself to the people who have been experiencing spinning beach balls when switching apps.

Even the simpliest of apps like Stickies or TextEdit has that problem, and it usually lasts for 10 seconds.

Mind you this is on my iBook 1Ghz... none of this crap on my Dual 2Ghz G5


Edit: Just remembered one thing... I did an upgrade install on my iBook and a clean install on the G5. Can those who have the spinning beach ball problem post whether you did an upgrade, archive or clean install?
( Last edited by Xtraz; May 26, 2005 at 12:08 AM. )
     
spacefreak
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May 26, 2005, 12:16 AM
 
Originally Posted by CaptainHaddock
I used Windows 2000 for years, and it was rather pathetic at multitasking. It was impossible to do anything while big applications like Photoshop or InDesign were churning away. From what I've seen on other people's XP systems, it's not much better (and nowhere near Panther or Tiger).
I used Windows 2000 for years doing plenty of heavy-duty stuff (including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects) and rarely experienced a glitch.

InDesign, at least the first 1 1/2 versions, was inefficient and bloaty IMHO. I bet that was the application that put your memory usage over the top.

I did make sure that I had plenty of memory in my machine, and I never installed any of the seemingly endless array of crap software that has infiltrated and taken over the Windows world.
     
jszrules
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May 26, 2005, 02:29 AM
 
Originally Posted by Xtraz
Edit: Just remembered one thing... I did an upgrade install on my iBook and a clean install on the G5. Can those who have the spinning beach ball problem post whether you did an upgrade, archive or clean install?
Upgraded. Also NOT on a G5. I guess that combo doesn't help. This beachball thing isn't a total deadlock, don't get me wrong, it's just that some Spotlight searches and switching apps take a few seconds until they actually happen.
     
moki
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May 26, 2005, 02:49 AM
 
Looks good, but your screenshots of windows should probably have the shadows included as well.
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Xtraz
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May 26, 2005, 04:27 AM
 
Originally Posted by jszrules
Upgraded. Also NOT on a G5. I guess that combo doesn't help. This beachball thing isn't a total deadlock, don't get me wrong, it's just that some Spotlight searches and switching apps take a few seconds until they actually happen.
Right its not a freeze, but it is annoying. What's more, it wasn't there in Panthar, so it just feels like less of an "upgrade"
     
CaptainHaddock
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May 26, 2005, 04:33 AM
 
Originally Posted by jszrules
This beachball thing isn't a total deadlock, don't get me wrong, it's just that some Spotlight searches and switching apps take a few seconds until they actually happen.
The beachball freeze isn't too bad in that I can switch applications while the original app is frozen.

However, it's not just a few seconds. It's 45-60 seconds. It happened to me during a Spotlight search earlier. I had to sit there twiddling my thumbs for a full minute before Spotlight would respond.
     
theolein
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May 26, 2005, 05:02 AM
 
Originally Posted by spacefreak
I used Windows 2000 for years doing plenty of heavy-duty stuff (including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects) and rarely experienced a glitch.

InDesign, at least the first 1 1/2 versions, was inefficient and bloaty IMHO. I bet that was the application that put your memory usage over the top.

I did make sure that I had plenty of memory in my machine, and I never installed any of the seemingly endless array of crap software that has infiltrated and taken over the Windows world.
And this one is the winner! Windows will crap out on you in a big way if you have too little memory, but as long as have enough memory Windows 2k/XP works just fine.

All OSes have different ways of handling low memory conditions and the Windows way is not very good, but OSX isn't all that hot either when those boundaries are met.
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Millennium
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May 26, 2005, 06:17 AM
 
Originally Posted by CaptainHaddock
What kind of system do you have, olePigeon? I've been pretty impressed too, except that I get a lot of 60-second program freezes (spinning beachballs) when using apps that have been open for a day or more.
Out of curiosity, which apps, and is Firefox one of them? Firefox leaks a lot of memory, particularly if it's left on for too long.
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May 26, 2005, 07:02 AM
 
Originally Posted by CatOne
It would actually work just fine. Silly you think it wouldn't. Believe me, a Windows 2000/XP machine can multitask quite well. I worked on a 2000 machine for 4 years at work, running Outlook, doing compiles, running J2EE applications, web servers, etc., and it was fine.

Windows has been very good at multitasking since NT 4 came out. To think/say otherwise, is to really lose credibility, because it's fairly obvious you have no idea what you're talking about.
Yeah he is right. Windows has been doing this well before the Mac was.

Right before OS X was announced, many graphic artists were switching to NT because of it's multitasking and stability for the time.

Apple is lucky it got OS X out when it did.

Don't get me wrong, I loved OS 9, but dang, not being able to scan a pic and do something else at the same time sucked.


Panther was the first OS X version I really loved that actually reminded me of how Windows multitasks.

I think however, Tiger has beat it in responsiveness.
     
Zimphire
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May 26, 2005, 07:05 AM
 
Originally Posted by spacefreak
InDesign, at least the first 1 1/2 versions, was inefficient and bloaty IMHO. I bet that was the application that put your memory usage over the top.
It was man.. oh I so loved ID but it was just too darn slow.

InDeisn CS2 however is a dream. It can actually be called a real Quark Killer.

Esp since we wont have to redo all the artwork in InDesign when we switch over.

As far as the beachball thing goes in Tiger, I have never ran into that.

I am running it on a 1.25ghz G4 tower with a gig of RAM.

I also did a clean install. Meaning I wiped the HD clean and installed.

I do this with every NEW OS. It seems to solve any problems I have had in the past with new OS's, and gives an accurate assessment of how the new OS compares.

Tiger just flies on my computer compared to Panther. And Panther wasn't slow at all.
     
itguy05
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May 26, 2005, 09:30 AM
 
Originally Posted by CatOne
Windows has been very good at multitasking since NT 4 came out. To think/say otherwise, is to really lose credibility, because it's fairly obvious you have no idea what you're talking about.
The multitasking part of Windows is fine, although it could use a little tweaking.

What sucks is Windows' lack of UI updating. How many Windows programs will "lock" when they are busy and just blank out dialogs, leave screen artifacts, etc. That's just wrong and should never happen. With OSX I never get these things, as programs can almost always get moved out of the way and the OS keeps the UI at the foreground most of the time.

This behavior could be the reason why people think Windows' multitasking sucks. It's the UI portion that sucks.
     
wadesworld
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May 26, 2005, 10:26 AM
 
It would actually work just fine. Silly you think it wouldn't. Believe me, a Windows 2000/XP machine can multitask quite well. I worked on a 2000 machine for 4 years at work, running Outlook, doing compiles, running J2EE applications, web servers, etc., and it was fine.
Windows multitasks quite well, but it gets in a strange state *way* too often. You Windows users know what I'm talking about - like where you click on an app in the taskbar and it won't come to the front. That happens all the time with IE.

You end up force-quitting the offending app and continue working, but later it happens to another app. Eventually you decide the system is just wacked out, so you end up rebooting.

Or, if you're a corporate user, you've probably experienced this:

"User: Hi, help desk, my Windows system is doing this...."

"Helpdesk: Wow. That's strange. Try this. And that. And that."

"User: Same thing."

"Helpdesk: We'll, you'll just need to reimage your harddrive with the corporate image. Have a nice day."

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itguy05
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May 26, 2005, 11:10 AM
 
Originally Posted by wadesworld
That happens all the time with IE.
People still use IE?
     
olePigeon  (op)
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May 26, 2005, 12:18 PM
 
Originally Posted by theolein
And this one is the winner! Windows will crap out on you in a big way if you have too little memory, but as long as have enough memory Windows 2k/XP works just fine.
Except when you also want to play music. If you try an MP3 or, gods forbid, an audio CD... *studder* *studder* *studder*

My bro's PC has a 2.4GHz Athalon with 2GBs of RAM. If he's playing some music and loads a game, the music either gets stuck and starts to studder, or it stops playing alltogether.
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olePigeon  (op)
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May 26, 2005, 12:20 PM
 
By the way, I'm using a Clean installation of Tiger. I always do that ever since 2 different Apple reps (during our Panther update for our server) told me to always do a Clean install. The reason is that Apple can't gaurantee that preferences and files won't be or act corrupted when they're archived and restored. This can cause havoc on your system. So his rule of thumb was to always do a clean install and is usually their recommendation for server upgrades.

I'd be curious to know if anyone with a spinning beach ball has it after a clean install vs. archive install.
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tooki
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May 26, 2005, 01:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by olePigeon
...with Photoshop in the foreground where I'm resizing and cropping some screenshots for a manual I'm making ...
IP address of 192.168.0.0? That's a network address, not a host address.

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olePigeon  (op)
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May 26, 2005, 02:38 PM
 
Originally Posted by tooki
IP address of 192.168.0.0? That's a network address, not a host address.

tooki
It's just a dummy IP I made for the DHCP Network pane. Who cares what it is, as long as it looks right. The people I'm teaching have never used OS X before, and some have no idea what DHCP is in the first place.
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jszrules
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May 26, 2005, 02:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by olePigeon
By the way, I'm using a Clean installation of Tiger. I always do that ever since 2 different Apple reps (during our Panther update for our server) told me to always do a Clean install. The reason is that Apple can't gaurantee that preferences and files won't be or act corrupted when they're archived and restored. This can cause havoc on your system. So his rule of thumb was to always do a clean install and is usually their recommendation for server upgrades.

I'd be curious to know if anyone with a spinning beach ball has it after a clean install vs. archive install.
Would an upgrade instead of an archive/install cause these same problems you mentioned with an archive/install?
     
Don Pickett
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May 26, 2005, 02:53 PM
 
Originally Posted by Zimphire
Right before OS X was announced, many graphic artists were switching to NT because of it's multitasking and stability for the time.
Sweet Jebus, I'm getting tired of seeing this trotted out. It is absolutely NOT TRUE.
     
dru
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May 26, 2005, 03:24 PM
 
Originally Posted by Zimphire
Yeah he is right. Windows has been doing this well before the Mac was.

Right before OS X was announced, many graphic artists were switching to NT because of it's multitasking and stability for the time.
Well before as in saying Windows was doing this task well or well as in long before?

NT was better that Mac OS 9 for stability and tasking; that's not even worth debating.

However, Windows is not as efficient as Mac OS X. NT was designed with the systems of 10+ years ago in mind and a different target user and hardware in mind thus the shifts that have occured through NT4 and later release's development.

As pointed out, because there's no backing store and so forth, there's a lot of times that Windows won't repaint quickly or respond to mouse clicks and blocks. It's 2005, this delayed updating on screen isn't something that should be acceptable. Windows could also be better at multi-threading (Mac OS X as well). It's a pretty coarse system all things considered. From a user view, I think that's possibly something Apple's improved in Tiger over Panther but there's still some way to go. BOTH system benefit from gobs and gobs of RAM. There's no excuse for not tossing 512+ MB at either Windows or Mac OS X these days in a system that can handle it. Sadly, 1 GB is probably minimal for a system not used for trivial activities. Anything less is asking for jerky performance and a lot of paging.

Thanks to Quartz, there's no question Mac OS X is the top system from a user perspective. I'm very pleased with how Apple's improved their OS with each iteration feeling snappier than the previous while still adding functionality and stability (Tiger's Finder isn't great but it's not as faulty as Panther's). Quicktime 7 is a massive improvement on modest hardware although the player has some visual problems with selection markers.

I expect this progress to only continue as QuickDraw (one example) is depricated entirely and more cruft required to ease the transition to Mac OS X from the Classic OS can be left behind. Tiger is *NOT* the be-all, end-all (Dashboard is a "1.0" mess) but it sets the stage--perhaps marking a new era for Mac OS X--for some excellent things to come. Technically speaking, it might be the most significant release since the initial move to Mac OS X itself.
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CaptainHaddock
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May 26, 2005, 03:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by Millennium
Out of curiosity, which apps, and is Firefox one of them? Firefox leaks a lot of memory, particularly if it's left on for too long.
Nope, I don't really use Firefox. I get the random app freezes with almost every app I use regularly - Safari, Camino, Photoshop, Textedit, Finder, Mail, etc. It happens particularly often when I highlight some text and hit Cmd-C. Wham, spinning cursor for 45 seconds.
     
Zaurus
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May 26, 2005, 04:50 PM
 
can anyone tell me what's "spinning beachball"
     
theolein
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May 26, 2005, 05:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by Don Pickett
Sweet Jebus, I'm getting tired of seeing this trotted out. It is absolutely NOT TRUE.
Well, I saw it happen in the company I was working at in 2000. The entire graphics department, without being pushed by anyone, switched to Win2000 on their own because they were tired of the continual crashes and memory hassles with OS9. Whether they're still using Windows is another question, but in the late 90's, many people were just tired of the problems of OS8 and OS9.
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Xtraz
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May 26, 2005, 06:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by CaptainHaddock
It happens particularly often when I highlight some text and hit Cmd-C. Wham, spinning cursor for 45 seconds.
Exactly the same as me, the Cmd-C is often the culprit. It also seems to affect applications that haven't been in the foreground for a while.

Since we seem to be suffering from the same symptoms, I wonder if we can find the root cause (without, say, doing a clean install)
     
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May 26, 2005, 06:28 PM
 
Originally Posted by olePigeon
It doesn't show up in pa -a or in Force Quit, so the only way to get around after rendering is to restart.
I'm assuming "pa" is a typo and you meant "ps" but the "-a" flag doesn't really do very much. Try it with "-auxc" which will get you every process of every user on your computer.
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CatOne
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May 26, 2005, 09:24 PM
 
Originally Posted by Don Pickett
Sweet Jebus, I'm getting tired of seeing this trotted out. It is absolutely NOT TRUE.
Then why does Photoshop (and Adobe Creative Suite) even exist for Windows, then?



Some people who formerly used Macs for graphic design work most certainly DID change to Windows. Both Adobe and Quark users. Sure, not all, and Apple's market share in the creative space is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than in other areas of businesses, but it's not as high as it used to be. Which means some people have switched. And it could very well be because the PCs were better at multitasking (and overall stability) than Macs running OS 9. It could also be because of other reasons (corporate standards).

I hear creative people tell me all the time that their folks are more productive on OS X based machines. And that it's easiest to use a fully Mac environment for creative teams. But nearly all of them have at least tried the stuff on Windows, and some have moved parts of teams over.
     
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May 26, 2005, 09:25 PM
 
In my experience windows 2000 multitasking has been mediocre at best. (Compared to OS X. Compared to OS 9 it was good). Mediocre multitasking combined with the headaches of maintaining and supporting windows never made Windows a viable alternative to me. OS 9 was always relatively stable for me, except for certain webrowesers that would take my whole system down, but thats a different thread, I guess.

In my experience, Windows Multitasking is not, and never has been up to par with OS X.
     
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May 26, 2005, 10:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by Zaurus
can anyone tell me what's "spinning beachball"
It's what people online often like to call the wait cursor in Mac OS X at least since Panther.

In 10.0 and 10.1 it was the NeXTSTEP wait cursor, a spinning disc kind of like a rainbow cd-rom. This goes back to 1989 when the original NeXT Computer had no hard disk, only a magneto-optical drive (sort of like a read-write CD in a permanent sleeve but with half the available space).

The spinning wait cursor often indicated waiting for the optical drive. Steve's vision was that college students would take "their world" with them on these mag-opt discs and walk into rooms of NeXT Computer workstations, pop the disc in and boot into their personalized environment. It was clever but the drive was slow and noisy thus a HD and built-in floppy option were soon added.
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Don Pickett
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May 26, 2005, 11:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by theolein
Well, I saw it happen in the company I was working at in 2000. The entire graphics department, without being pushed by anyone, switched to Win2000 on their own because they were tired of the continual crashes and memory hassles with OS9. Whether they're still using Windows is another question, but in the late 90's, many people were just tired of the problems of OS8 and OS9.
One company does not a trend make. Look at numbers for marketshare in graphics/pre-press/DTP.
     
Don Pickett
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May 26, 2005, 11:26 PM
 
Originally Posted by CatOne
Then why does Photoshop (and Adobe Creative Suite) even exist for Windows, then?
iTunes runs on Windows. Are you sure you want to follow this line of logic?

Some people who formerly used Macs for graphic design work most certainly DID change to Windows. Both Adobe and Quark users. Sure, not all, and Apple's market share in the creative space is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than in other areas of businesses, but it's not as high as it used to be. Which means some people have switched. And it could very well be because the PCs were better at multitasking (and overall stability) than Macs running OS 9. It could also be because of other reasons (corporate standards).

"Some" is not the issue here. The quote was:

Right before OS X was announced, many graphic artists were switching to NT because of it's multitasking and stability for the time.
Which is categorically not true. There is always some platform switching back and forth. Most of it is because of the corporate reasons you mention: decisions flow from the top down with no choice but to switch. However, there was no mass migrations as has been claimed.
     
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May 26, 2005, 11:54 PM
 
I disagree with the comments that say Windows XP is better at multitasking. Anecdotal evidence isn't very reliable, but from my experience, my Mac can do multiple things and have multiple programs open *far* better than any Windows computer I've used; my P4 machine with 1GB RAM at work coughs switching apps sometimes - more than on my Mac mini, it seems, but that may just be in my head.

Almost every frequent Windows user who sees my Mac says, "holy crap man, you can't have that many programs open." That seems to indicate that one really can't have that many apps open on windows without really slowing down the whole system.
     
theolein
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May 27, 2005, 01:54 AM
 
Originally Posted by Don Pickett
One company does not a trend make. Look at numbers for marketshare in graphics/pre-press/DTP.
Indeed. The Mac's marketshare in graphics is lower than it was during the late 90's. I'm not singing Windows praise here, but this zealotism here, and the absolutely insane belief that it is impossible to do productive work with Windows gives the Mac a bad name.
weird wabbit
     
Don Pickett
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May 27, 2005, 02:10 AM
 
Originally Posted by theolein
Indeed. The Mac's marketshare in graphics is lower than it was during the late 90's. I'm not singing Windows praise here, but this zealotism here, and the absolutely insane belief that it is impossible to do productive work with Windows gives the Mac a bad name.
I am not arguing from the point of view of zealotism. I am merely taking issue with generalized statements which have no basis in fact, such that there was any mass migration away from Macs in those fields. Marketshare has its natural ups and downs, but that cycle is driven by the interaction of many factors, most of which have nothing to do with platform preference: the aforementioned corporate decision-making, the expansion and contraction of given markets, the fortunes and misfortunes of cornerstone software vendors, etc.

The numbers I have seen show the Mac's marketshare in the graphics fields to vary between 85 and 90%. I don't mind arguments, but I wish people would argue with facts rather than generalizations.
     
theolein
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May 27, 2005, 02:25 AM
 
Care to provide a source fro those numbers? Your comment, directed at me, stating that there were never any Mac graphic artists who switched over to Windows in the late 90's and early 2000's, is simply wrong. You make it seem as if it only happened in the company I worked at, but I never mentioned the other companies I worked at where management phased out the Macs in the graphics, and especially in the web departments.

I'm talking from personal experience. I could go on a crusade and find hard numbers, such as Adobe's and macromedia's respective windows and mac sales, but I'm not trying to prove how good windows is. I'm a Mac user.

But it doesn't blind me from the reality of what platform is the world's most highly used platform, which, despite all of its security and other problems, remains productive for hundreds of millions of people every day.
weird wabbit
     
jszrules
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May 27, 2005, 03:06 AM
 
Originally Posted by olePigeon
By the way, I'm using a Clean installation of Tiger. I always do that ever since 2 different Apple reps (during our Panther update for our server) told me to always do a Clean install. The reason is that Apple can't gaurantee that preferences and files won't be or act corrupted when they're archived and restored. This can cause havoc on your system. So his rule of thumb was to always do a clean install and is usually their recommendation for server upgrades.

I'd be curious to know if anyone with a spinning beach ball has it after a clean install vs. archive install.
Would an upgrade instead of an archive/install cause these same problems you mentioned with an archive/install?

Originally Posted by Xtraz
Since we seem to be suffering from the same symptoms, I wonder if we can find the root cause (without, say, doing a clean install)
I wonder, too...but the type of install unfortunately probably has a lot to do with it. Not just upgrade vs. archive vs. clean, but whether we repaired permissions before and after the switch to Tiger...that type of stuff.
     
Gee4orce
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May 27, 2005, 04:43 AM
 
I"ve used Win2000 extensively, and the multitasking is nowhere near as good as on Mac OS X. That said, I'm also getting strange problems with applications in Tiger, where after a long period of inactivity (eg. overnight), anything that displays text becomes very slow (ie. Terminal, preview, etc).

Also, Word has never opened in 3 seconds for me ! (Dual 1.8 G5).
     
Don Pickett
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May 28, 2005, 12:11 AM
 
Originally Posted by theolein
Care to provide a source fro those numbers? Your comment, directed at me, stating that there were never any Mac graphic artists who switched over to Windows in the late 90's and early 2000's, is simply wrong.
Please quote where I said there was no switching – I did not. I said there was no 'mass migration', which is true. I never denied there was switching.

But it doesn't blind me from the reality of what platform is the world's most highly used platform, which, despite all of its security and other problems, remains productive for hundreds of millions of people every day.
Don't know why you are bringing this up, as I have never raised the argument that Windows is better or worse than OS X.
     
theolein
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May 28, 2005, 05:59 AM
 
ok, sorry if I misunderstood you then.
weird wabbit
     
LightWaver-67
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May 28, 2005, 09:18 AM
 
I am a late-comer to this topic. In MY experience, I have witnessed MANY attempts to migrate design departments to the Windoze world over the span of my career (10-yrs agency experience).

One company, the CEO offered a challenge to me... bought me a "kick-ass" (place PC name here, I forget) running some brand of MX enabled chip in it and one of the earlier versions of WinNT. Tried it for 6 months. Too many cross-platform incompatibilities with the Mac users, no Adobe ATM, too unstable, etc... so I went back to Mac. Granted... at the time... MACs were terribly unstable too.

Over the next several years, I had worked on PCs and Macs alike. In the days of OS 8 & 9... I would 100% agree that the multitasking feature(s) of Win NT were something to envy as a Mac user, There wee quite a few things about the Win platform that were really cool... but ultimately, I feel more comfortable, am more productive and get more enjoyment from the Mac environment.

My point is... I've been AT at-least 4 (four) of the larger companies in the Boston area that made a concerted effort to migrate or at least EXPERIMENT with a switch to a Windows based or windows/Mac hybrid design department.

Worked at one that already WAS an all-PC design department. Design is design... if you're good, your work will be good on either platform.

Now that OSX is (has been) out... I have not had the opportunity to compare multi-tasking environments. I am SO incredibly happy with the ability to productively multitask in OSX. I am always amazed at how I can be rendering an animation in LightWave and go right back to working in Photoshop AND Illustrator and still have about 9-10 OTHER apps still open, and it doesn't seem to miss a beat.

In OS8-9... once I hit the "RENDER" button... my computer was unusable until the rendering was done: 20-min, 20-hours... 3-DAYS...

I haven't looked-back to PCs since. They may be better or worse at multitasking... but I gotta say... it's just ONE piece of the puzzle. I am so at-home on a Mac that at THIS point... it wouldn't matter.
     
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May 28, 2005, 10:56 AM
 
Originally Posted by dru
NT was better that Mac OS 9 for stability and tasking; that's not even worth debating.
I agree, but having said that, NT still wasn't that hot when it came to not [/QUOTE]
     
Zimphire
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May 28, 2005, 10:58 AM
 
Originally Posted by Don Pickett
Sweet Jebus, I'm getting tired of seeing this trotted out. It is absolutely NOT TRUE.
Yes, yes it was. I was in the business at the time.

People got high hopes from the Prospect of Copland. They was willing to wait a little longer.

When that fell through, people started moving to NT. Not in droves, but it did happen enough to scare Apple.

Apple at one time, was talking with MS about replacing Copland with a MS NT based OS for Apple also. This was before the BE and NeXT talks

You have to remember at the time system 7.5 was out.

Can anyone say "Type (insert number) error occured?"

System 7 and 8 really sucked. 9 was better, but still didn't have the stuff that was needed.
     
Don Pickett
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May 29, 2005, 12:47 AM
 
Originally Posted by theolein
ok, sorry if I misunderstood you then.
No worries, mate.
     
   
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