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digiology2 · Apr 7, 2004, 02:37 PM

I just upgraded to panther from 10.1.5 and I have to say people have made it out to be way better.
I think the fact that i have little use for some of the features is partialy why Im disappointed.
Expose is rarely usefull to me, anyone who got used to using comand+h to hide programs before expose knows that you only have to press this twice if you have two programs open and you want to get to the dektop. As for showing all the windows, i prefer the window menu within a program. For example if I have multiple pages from the macnn forums open I can't see which one is which without putting my curser over it, it seems only usefull for when I have loads of images open(which iphoto can help me out with).
Im only bitching because the feature isn't useful to me and panther looked like the best thing since sliced bread I can still do things the old way so expose doesn't bother me. Im just saying its not useful with certain finder habits like mine.
The performance is next, everyone said Jaguar was significantly faster than 10.1, and that Panther was moderately faster with a few bugs. Well it seems moderate jumping from 10.1 to panther. I'd say panther was faster for all of those who's processors couldn't handle window redrawing as you move them around,things in the GUI (because of the fact that it relys more on the graphics card).
On my Dual G4 though I don't notice unless I look at the CPU monitor.
Multitasking has gotten worse for me, iTunes skips, not when I move windows around or minimise windows but with simple tasks like scrolling through a (plain) html page in safari and (you wont believe this) one time when I pasted an email (around the size of this message) into TextEdit. And all i had open was iTunes, Finder, TextEdit and iCab! This never EVER happened in 10.1, I don't think this is a bug just the OS deteriorating in quality due to all these fancy new features. I noticed when I did this a second time with this post it didn't happen, its rare, not really annoying, but shows that the OS has multitasking which seems worse than 10.1.
As for the GUI ther are few things I don't like but I shouldn't complain its a matter of taste (the new way of selecting multiple files is annoying though). One thing I don't like is how the sidebar expands itself showing the full names of the folders rather than the icons, I had to go around to all my folders moving it so it was smaller.
The look of the OS is getting more insulting to my intelligence as it updates (the big icons ect). I know its handy for the OS to be easy for new people but together with the one button mouse the GUI makes us mac users look like absolute retards!

Im glad i got that out

Anyone think the OS is getting worse(and better at the same time!)?

Hop Pocket · Apr 7, 2004, 02:47 PM

Well, I really have few complaints about Panther other than the bugs that have been around for a while and are still not fixed.

My iBook700 and G41.25 dual both have a lot of performance improvement over 10.1 and 10.2 (I don't think I ever had 10.1 on my desktop but I did on my laptop).

How much ram does your machine have? A lack of sufficient ram would cause any improvements made to the OS to not be noticable.

digiology2 · Apr 7, 2004, 03:51 PM

Sorry I meant to stress that I have a powerful Dual 1Ghz G4 with 512MB of Ram. I think that should be enough, I thought that Jaguar took advantage of the Dual Processors better than 10.1? You'd think panther would be very fast.
It is fast, just not really faster than 10.1, a simple thing like quitting TextEdit took about a second and a half to bring up the 'do you want to save changes?' message. These kinds of things are rare though and they don't happen the second time around usually, it wouldn't happen in OS10.1

Im not saying panther isn't better, its just not an improvement a few areas and its gotten worse in others

gorickey · 04:05 PM

I think it's underrated considering how far the OS has come in such a short amout of time...amazing...

JLL · Apr 7, 2004, 03:59 PM

Originally posted by digiology2:
Sorry I meant to stress that I have a powerful Dual 1Ghz G4 with 512MB of Ram. I think that should be enough, I thought that Jaguar took advantage of the Dual Processors better than 10.1? You'd think panther would be very fast.
It is fast, just not really faster than 10.1, a simple thing like quitting TextEdit took about a second and a half to bring up the 'do you want to save changes?' message. These kinds of things are rare though and they don't happen the second time around usually, it wouldn't happen in OS10.1

Im not saying panther isn't better, its just not an improvement a few areas and its gotten worse in others

Did you upgrade or did you do an Archive and Install?

Hop Pocket · Apr 7, 2004, 04:16 PM

Originally posted by digiology2:
Sorry I meant to stress that I have a powerful Dual 1Ghz G4 with 512MB of Ram. I think that should be enough, I thought that Jaguar took advantage of the Dual Processors better than 10.1? You'd think panther would be very fast.
It is fast, just not really faster than 10.1, a simple thing like quitting TextEdit took about a second and a half to bring up the 'do you want to save changes?' message. These kinds of things are rare though and they don't happen the second time around usually, it wouldn't happen in OS10.1

Im not saying panther isn't better, its just not an improvement a few areas and its gotten worse in others

I'd say that's probably a little bit abnormal. If you did do an upgrade, like a previous poster mentioned, I'd recommend reinstalling, preferrably a fresh install (erase your disk first), or an "Archive and Install"

Terri · Apr 7, 2004, 04:20 PM

Yeah something is wrong with your install, this is not normal.

Catfish_Man · Apr 7, 2004, 04:44 PM

For comparison, my dual 867 w/ 10.3.3 takes around a second to cold launch TextEdit, and less for operations within the program like the one you mentioned. Warm launches are about as fast as opening a new window.

digiology2 · Apr 7, 2004, 04:49 PM

I erased and installed panther on a new ATA133 120GB hard drive. Its not slow just stalls sometimes. Applications open fast dont get me wrong, text edit take about 2 secs to open a text file (50k) so thats not a prob

funkboy · Apr 7, 2004, 04:52 PM

Sounds like you have a bad install.

TextEdit loads up in a second or, at most, two, on my iMac 800. The page that slides down when saving an unsaved document in TextEdit takes no time to show up - it just animates nice and smoothly.

Try re-installing Mac OS X.

MartiNZ · Apr 7, 2004, 05:34 PM

Well I remember being a touch underwhelmed when moving from 10.1.5 to 10.2. I really liked 10.1.5 and I think that if needed, I could still survive perfectly well on it - it even introduced the proper system-wide text smoothing, which made quite a difference, and I liked the look of the GUI - some parts even more than what we have now ... like less brushed metal

.

But it turned out to be mainly because 10.2 introduced bugs in the Finder and various things. By the time we had 10.2.5 I found it much better. But with Panther, I found it much better than Jaguar straight out of the box! Working with PDFs was much faster, Expos� worked really nicely (iBook G3 800 - if I still had the 600 with 8MB graphics I'm not sure if that would have been the case!) and app and general performance seemed better.

So yes, the difference could have been due to having a slower machine somewhat, but I still think the difference was quite noticeable. Anyway, it's kind of hard to tell now as (as usual) everything that was added / improved in Panther was so well integrated that I can't remember what it was like before now

!

One thing that scared me recently though was when I had iTunes, iPhoto, Calculator, Finder, Safari, iChat and GarageBand running. As I said earlier... that's way too much brushed metal

!

pliny · Apr 7, 2004, 05:54 PM

I think my trusty DV has only gotten more life out of the X updates. X.0 was good, X.2 better, now with Panther, I can do much more than before at excellent speeds. I wonder how many 41/2 year old PCs are running the latest Windows with the only addition being more RAM?

There could be less brushed metal.

Hop Pocket · Apr 7, 2004, 05:57 PM

Originally posted by pliny:
I wonder how many 41/2 year old PCs are running the latest Windows with the only addition being more RAM?

Don't forget how many top of the line macs were made utter **** for a couple of years (in my opinion) by early OSX. I won't argue that OSX has not made improvements, but I think we are at a place now with Panther where it probably should have been to be considered a somewhat mature and/or useable operating system.

I guess you know now how I feel about 10.1 and 10.2. It felt like I was trying to build a house of cards in a wind tunnel.

Thinine · Apr 7, 2004, 06:23 PM

The speed difference between 10.1 and 10.3 should be worth it alone. If you aren't seeing a measurable increase in speed in every way, there is definitely something wrong with your install.

Sage · Apr 7, 2004, 06:59 PM

I'm running a G3, 600mhz iBook with 384MB of RAM and a plethora of Haxies and other 3rd party crap running in the background, and yet Panther is very fast for me. Something definitely is wrong with your install (not that you needed to hear that again

).

BTW, have you installed 10.3.3? That had a very noticeable speed boost in it.

Peabo · Apr 7, 2004, 07:18 PM

Originally posted by Sage:
BTW, have you installed 10.3.3? That had a very noticeable speed boost in it.

ahhh...that takes me back to the days of 10.0.1

Toyin · Apr 7, 2004, 07:27 PM

To answer your question....no.

Definitely sounds like something is awry. My Dual 500 with 1.5gb of RAM has never stalled under that kind of load. I can have both processors pinned on CPU monitor and iTunes keeps playing sans interruption. Almost every Apple application launches before the 1st bounce in Panther. Text edit, system prefs, Preview are often loaded before the icon hits it's apex.

One thing to note however. During the progression from 10.1 to 10.3 the biggest speed improvements seem to be in the slower hardware, especially G3s. You were already on a fast machine and the speed bump may be less noticeable.

512MB or RAM is pretty low. With 1.5gb of RAM I still have page-outs when using basic applications and 1 or 2 'pro' apps. RAM is so cheap nowadays you can pick up a 512MB stick for about $100.

As for the additional features in 10.3. I was a command-h person in 10.1 and 10.2. In fact I had my scroll wheel button set to be command-h. Now I never hide windows and use the scroll wheel to activate the applications switcher and scroll between applications. I find that switching between applications is much faster when the application isn't hidden. I find expose very useful because you can actually use the desktop as a shelf to move items. I also use the iLife suite a lot and if I remember correctly iMovie was a pig until the most recent update.

Anyway good luck. I'd do the usual maintenance, fsck -fy, repair permissions, and clean out your caches and preferences to see if something is corrupt, because what you're describing doesn't sound right.

msuper69 · Apr 7, 2004, 08:58 PM

You answered your own question because you seem to feel it is over rated.

I don't.

Horsepoo!!! · 09:13 PM

Considering almost everyone saw and recognized decent speed boost going from 10.2 to 10.3 and a major one from 10.1 to 10.2, it's hard to believe that you don't feel that speed boost.

Either something went wrong during the install or you're just trying to get some much needed attention.

Besides, 10.3 is a lot more than just features and speed. Lots of underlying elements are updated. Even though they're not visible to the end-user, they make developer's lives easier. As result, some developers will make programs that only work under 10.2 or even only under 10.3 and refuse to make a version that works with earlier OS versions because it would be too much work.

So sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and buy the latest version even if it brings nothing to you except the chance to use a wider ranger of software.

Hard to believe you could still use 10.1 considering most 'good' programs are 10.2+ only.

OzarkMtn · Apr 7, 2004, 09:55 PM

The RAM needs to be increased...

digiology2 · Apr 7, 2004, 10:16 PM

See thats the thing I upgraded only to use some of the newer software so the improvements dont interest me much.
What Toyin said is true though, the speed boost should be less noticable because my machine is fast anyway. Some people seem to have misunderstood though, its not slow, textedit doesn't take ages for the 'do u want to save' box it just did on one ocassion and iTunes doesn't constantly skip it only did twice during hours of usage.
It mighty fast, I just dont have as much confidence in it that I can open ALL my applications and still listen to iTunes (i did this once on 10.1 it fun, the dock gets really messed up).
I doubt it was a bad install and the tiny bugs dont seem to be enough to justify another install.

As for 512Mb of ram being very little, you must be joking! I'll consider it, but I think it should run fine with 512MB

Terri · Apr 7, 2004, 10:54 PM

512 is nothing these days.

Most of the G5s that my clients have been buying they are putting 2.5 gigs of ram in them. Basically they come with 512 and then they buy two 1 gig sticks for them. They scream in Photoshop.

The 17" Powerbook that I'm typing this on has 1 gig of ram in it.

yukon · Apr 8, 2004, 12:11 AM

I dunno, I can see how Jaguar and Panther really are quite different from eachother and previous versions of OS X, partly when applications no longer work, or just the many small details that change, like the Apple icons or the position of options, etc. I noticed the speed difference in 10.1, that was great. 10.2, slight speed difference here, sometimes much faster, sometimes much slower, but I didn't have Quartz Extreme. The difference in 10.3 wasn't terribly much, but it was enough to make me feel like "we're getting closer". It's all evolutionary IMHO, but evolution is good.

It's obvious that much "under the hood" is changing with each release, but revisions of the old MacOS and revisions of Windows are exceptionally obvious, but then again, they were seperated by many years. Lots changing every new revision....but that was expected when the system was made to have layers and seperation between elements, right?

digiology2 · Apr 8, 2004, 12:29 AM

Ok, maybe more RAM will help, but I don't think it'll totaly change things I'd say it would run great with 256MB. I know people underestimate the influence ram have on performance but in this case I feel like it wouldn't help much, that said I'm going to upgrade to 1Gig if I buy ProTools LE

discotronic · Apr 8, 2004, 01:37 AM

Running Panther on my iMac 1.25GHz has made me feel like I work faster. I can't say that there was an actual speed increase.

I had 10.1 on an iMac 350MHz and upgraded to Panther. If you want to see an increase in speed...that's where you go. I was amazed at the difference.

Over rated. Not at all. Under estimated. Definately.

whoosh · Apr 8, 2004, 02:01 AM

One thing I must say about Expose is that it's infinitely more useful if you are using a 4- or 5- button mouse. It makes navigating through windows a breeze, especially coming from Windows XP =).

Link · Apr 8, 2004, 02:25 AM

I will agree about the crappy itunes performance. It's disgusting,.

kovacs · Apr 8, 2004, 03:59 AM

Hmm... I think 512 should be enough for most people I only have 512 mb and I'm only using 300 of it with several big apps running...

slider · Apr 8, 2004, 06:26 AM

I have seen improvements with each upgrade I have made. I am ecstatic with Panther. I am not really sure what bugs some people mention. Personally I had had some networking problems in a mixed environment, ie PC's, OS 9, while in early panther, but since the 10.3.3 update everything has been smooth and fast. I don't think about the OS, and to me that is what you want. I have to use windows XP pro all the time, I honestly don't understand how people can defend this thing, it's constantly in my way and is full of inconsistencies and about as far from intuitive as you can get. Panther, in my book, gets to thumbs up.

bonaccij · Apr 8, 2004, 07:25 AM

Ya know, the only thing that I really notice in OS X (all itterattions) is how slow it is to redraw when you resize a screen. It just drives me batty! You can MOVE a window around your screen like lightning - but to resize it...... that takes forever. What is that all about? I know, I know, Quartz this Quartz that but still, you would think that this particular "feature" would have been addressed by now.

Personally, I can't imagine working on any other system though. Panther really is quite good.

kovacs · Apr 8, 2004, 07:34 AM

Originally posted by bonaccij:
Ya know, the only thing that I really notice in OS X (all itterattions) is how slow it is to redraw when you resize a screen. It just drives me batty! You can MOVE a window around your screen like lightning - but to resize it...... that takes forever. What is that all about? I know, I know, Quartz this Quartz that but still, you would think that this particular "feature" would have been addressed by now.

Personally, I can't imagine working on any other system though. Panther really is quite good.

Yeah it's strange especially if you consider how fast expos� can resize a window...

St.John · Apr 8, 2004, 08:06 AM

Originally posted by kovacs:
Yeah it's strange especially if you consider how fast expos� can resize a window...

I may be wrong, but I think the window move/expose thing just moves and scales a bitmap in memory. As this is pretty much implemented in hardware nowadays, it's quick. To RESIZE the window, all the buttons etc have to be redrawn, which takes longer as it has to go through the software to see what has to be done to the GUI elements before drawing the appropriate blobs onto the screen.

ryju · Apr 8, 2004, 09:01 AM

Originally posted by Link:
I will agree about the crappy itunes performance. It's disgusting,.

Never ever happened to me. EVER.

wadesworld · Apr 8, 2004, 10:34 AM

If you use OpenGL at all, the absolute LAST place you want to be is on 10.1. The OpenGL drivers in 10.1 are very buggy. The drivers in 10.3 are much, much better.

Wade

diehlr · Apr 8, 2004, 12:22 PM

Originally posted by pliny:
I wonder how many 41/2 year old PCs are running the latest Windows with the only addition being more RAM?

My dad's Celeron 500 mhz laptop is running XP very nicely, with the only addition being more memory. Turned off themes (ugly) which helped quite a bit. 320 megs and it runs everything both he and my sister throw at it, and very well actually. My sister runs Photoshop CS and Illustrator and I have never heard a complaint. She's pretty impatient too.

Fonzie · Apr 8, 2004, 12:53 PM

I can somewhat agree to what the original poster said. I have an iMac 800Mhz with 512mb ram and I iTunes skips or even stops when ShapeShifter loads my themes. And from a cold reboot Finder takes up to 3 seconds to show a window. I gets faster after that but no way instant as I would like it to be as far as doubleclicking an icon and the window appears.

I tried rebinding and executing daily/weekly/montly scripts. But nothing is speeding up the Finder windows and nothing is keeping iTunes from skipping. I'm on 10.3.3.

I don't know about earlier OSX releases other than 10.2 which was okay but not fast either.

And I'm not gonna re-install OSX because of it. I tried that once but it returned to the state it's in now.

Toyin · Apr 8, 2004, 01:26 PM

Originally posted by Fonzie:
I can somewhat agree to what the original poster said. I have an iMac 800Mhz with 512mb ram and I iTunes skips or even stops when ShapeShifter loads my themes. And from a cold reboot Finder takes up to 3 seconds to show a window. I gets faster after that but no way instant as I would like it to be as far as doubleclicking an icon and the window appears.

I tried rebinding and executing daily/weekly/montly scripts. But nothing is speeding up the Finder windows and nothing is keeping iTunes from skipping. I'm on 10.3.3.

I don't know about earlier OSX releases other than 10.2 which was okay but not fast either.

And I'm not gonna re-install OSX because of it. I tried that once but it returned to the state it's in now.

Log out, login and press and hold the shift-key (this will disable all your login items)
You're running a haxie that effects every single graphic element on your computer. I've found that haxies will slow down your machine especially loading applications.

Peabo · Apr 8, 2004, 02:02 PM

With regards to resizing, download VLC and in the preferences, turn on openGL accelleration (or something like that) and you can totally fluidly resize a playing movie as if it were a blank textedit window. The movie doesn't even jump!

Apple could learn from these guys...

Hop Pocket · Apr 8, 2004, 02:06 PM

Originally posted by z0ne81:
With regards to resizing, download VLC and in the preferences, turn on openGL accelleration (or something like that) and you can totally fluidly resize a playing movie as if it were a blank textedit window. The movie doesn't even jump!

Apple could learn from these guys...

Totally true. It's amazing how nice VLC is now that they support OpenGL for playback. It is my understanding that this was not supported in previous versions.

Toyin · Apr 8, 2004, 02:23 PM

Seems like poor resizing is more a product of software coding then the actual OS. Run any X11 application and the resizing will be silky smooth, with slower refresh rates. Of the browsers I still find that IE resizes better then any of the modern browsers.

Windows software has been doing this for years and they've optimized the shite out of it (plus have more hooks into the hardware), but have you tried to resize iTunes on Windows? It's as painful (even more so) then OSX.

d_oob · Apr 8, 2004, 02:29 PM

kind of agree on the title of this post. Upon reading all the problems people have been having with the new upgrade (10.3.3)... OS 'X' is starting to sound like what OS '9' use to be like. Always constantly restarting, zapping pram, hunting through prefs and extentions to find the culprit file that is causing things to crash.

I thought OS X was suppose to be an OS that you didn't have to worry about. Now it almost seems like it is slowly degrading. I never had problems with OSX in the earlier stages of it 10.1 - 10.2 but now maybe (i don't have any knowledge of programming) there are so many features being added that OSX is getting bloated and too complicated for its own good. I really hope it doesn't go the way of Windows. This is another almost another topic but it also feels enevitable that viruses will hit this OS up since the mac is definitely in the mainstream or is getting there pretty fast. But that another topic (but in a way related)

You get what i mean. Maybe for apple, the demand may be overwhelming the supply and quality of things.

Anyone have similar observations?

Hop Pocket · Apr 8, 2004, 02:30 PM

One thing though -- OSX uses more buffering for its window draws, which has the effect of minimizing flickering and tearing when dragging a window across the screen. On windows, drag a window across the screen and it looks like crap until it stays still.

msuper69 · Apr 8, 2004, 02:46 PM

Originally posted by d_oob:
kind of agree on the title of this post. Upon reading all the problems people have been having with the new upgrade (10.3.3)... OS 'X' is starting to sound like what OS '9' use to be like. Always constantly restarting, zapping pram, hunting through prefs and extentions to find the culprit file that is causing things to crash.

I thought OS X was suppose to be an OS that you didn't have to worry about. Now it almost seems like it is slowly degrading. I never had problems with OSX in the earlier stages of it 10.1 - 10.2 but now maybe (i don't have any knowledge of programming) there are so many features being added that OSX is getting bloated and too complicated for its own good. I really hope it doesn't go the way of Windows. This is another almost another topic but it also feels enevitable that viruses will hit this OS up since the mac is definitely in the mainstream or is getting there pretty fast. But that another topic (but in a way related)

You get what i mean. Maybe for apple, the demand may be overwhelming the supply and quality of things.

Anyone have similar observations?

Every version of OS X including the public beta has been far, far superior to the old Classic Mac OS. At least in my experience. But I have a hunch that includes most OS X users. Basing a judgement of OS X on the posts in these fora is a little like going to the auto garage and basing your judgement of an automaker's offerings on what you find there.

digiology2 · Apr 8, 2004, 06:35 PM

Originally posted by Toyin:
Log out, login and press and hold the shift-key (this will disable all your login items)
You're running a haxie that effects every single graphic element on your computer. I've found that haxies will slow down your machine especially loading applications.

What the hell is a haxie? how will it affect me if I turn them off?

You know its really wierd how according to the forum over 1000 people have read this, 1000 people scattered all over the world saw what I had to say. Freaky...

Toyin · Apr 8, 2004, 07:57 PM

Originally posted by digiology2:
What the hell is a haxie? how will it affect me if I turn them off?

You know its really wierd how according to the forum over 1000 people have read this, 1000 people scattered all over the world saw what I had to say. Freaky...

Haxies are the term used for system modifications made by Unsanity.inc. Whilst these haxies are utter genius (fruit menu, xounds, shapeshifter, window shade x) I have noticed that they do slow down my laptop primarily with launching applications. I didn't notice as much of a difference with my desktop.

digiology2 · Apr 8, 2004, 08:36 PM

Cool! Fruit menu looks pretty good...

My computer stalled again while I was typing in a URL for about one second, its wierd, this should not happen, I was installing soundtrack in the backround but thats why I have two processors! I shouldn't be interupted by backround tasks!

Toyin · Apr 8, 2004, 09:13 PM

Originally posted by digiology2:
Cool! Fruit menu looks pretty good...

My computer stalled again while I was typing in a URL for about one second, its wierd, this should not happen, I was installing soundtrack in the backround but thats why I have two processors! I shouldn't be interupted by backround tasks!

Install menumeters. This can place a CPU monitor on your menubar. I can't live without it. You can also place a hard drive monitor, network monitor,and RAM monitor on the menubar as well. Look to see if these moments of stalling are caused by your CPU or RAM being maximized. I find it hard to believe it's your CPU because even now on my 12" PB the CPU monitor is pinned and I'm typing as fast as I can with no delay or stalling.

digiology2 · Apr 8, 2004, 09:41 PM

Again people are misunderstanding, its not like my system is so slow that I can't have text shown as I type it straight away, its just that things like what i mentioned happen on RARE occassions. I could probably have both processors very busy and type away no prob too, all these problems tend to be happening when Im not doing much surprisingly enough...

Yeah a 512MB stick of ram looks mighty tempting, I think I'll buy some even if that isn't the problem

OzarkMtn · Apr 8, 2004, 09:51 PM

Regarding RAM:

RAM Info

theolein · Apr 8, 2004, 10:03 PM

Originally posted by digiology2:
Again people are misunderstanding, its not like my system is so slow that I can't have text shown as I type it straight away, its just that things like what i mentioned happen on RARE occassions. I could probably have both processors very busy and type away no prob too, all these problems tend to be happening when Im not doing much surprisingly enough...

Yeah a 512MB stick of ram looks mighty tempting, I think I'll buy some even if that isn't the problem

Open your terminal application, type "top", hit enter and let it run. If there is mega gargantuan application or daemon using up resources in the background, you'll notice it. I had a very similar problem to your recently, where the finder and whole applications would just stall every now and again. It turned out that my hard drive was trashed. Got a new HD and my "old" 667MHz TiBook is as good as new (I love this machine). I know your drive is new, but have you tried using disk utility to see if it has any problems? Another potential problem is your start partition, Have you got enough free space on it? You need at least a Gig.