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spb · Mar 28, 2002, 06:22 AM

X seems to be going through some very public growing pains

How long before it is ready for prime time?

This side of 2010?

OreoCookie · Mar 28, 2002, 06:32 AM

The Mac CPUs have fallen behind in terms of raw power. That's why X seems slower than it is.

My brother has installed Win XP on his 1.5 or 1.6 GHz Athlon and the GUI (GDI+) needed about 50% of the horsepower of this CPU at times! I work with a Win 2k PC at work which feels worse than X on my iBook (K6-2 400 MHz vs. G3 500 MHz).

If you take a look at the SPEC marks of Apple's top of the notch 1 GHz-G4, then you understand why: it's performance (SPECint) is comparable to a 1.26 GHz PIII -- that's the part that matters most to normal apps. The SPECfloat marks are about *half* what the PIII could do and about one fourth a PIV does! (These measurements were performed by the German magazine c't which is a rather credible source; the author of the article was rather surprised about the results.)
Of course this doesn't say much about real-world performance, but it indicates, the G4 lags somewhat behind.

It's about time for the G5 ...

rlmorel · Mar 28, 2002, 07:08 AM

Sorry guys. OSX is ready for prime time.

I am running Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Filemaker (1.5 million records in database), Illustrator, and anything else I can get my hands on. I need Photoshop native. I need Palm to step up to the plate. And my Epson printer has problems. Other than that, it is a world of difference from OS9.

Sure, I have good hardware (DP500), lots of RAM and I have spent the money to get native apps, but I don't miss things like memory warnings, and having to explain to my wife why she gets them and what she needs to do to alleviate them. It also does not crash, and she does not have try to troubleshoot the problem, something she (and other newbies) are confounded by. She did not like using OS9 much, but tolerated it. She LOVES using OSX. The multiuser functionality of OSX is great.

Sure, XP looks okay. I do like their remote desktop functionality. I don't use it much because I am still working with Win95, Win98, WinNT, and Win2000. Win2000 is clearly the best of those, but...it is still Windows. I use it because I HAVE to. It ain't much fun, but it gets the job done using Filemaker, Word, Excel and Access. But it still crashes, freezes and is confusing on occasion trying to get an app installed.

If that is the tool you think you need, then that is what you should use. But I think OSX, even in its embryonic, imperfect state, is superior to any of the other Win OSes. I cannot comment on XP. But it is still Windows.

Damn. Why did I even respond to this? Shywizard, is that you? or perhaps it is KellyHogan...hooked again.

SMacTech · Mar 28, 2002, 08:37 AM

I have been using it in prime time, at least for what I do, for one year now. No doubt the OS will have its 'growing pains'. I purchase all the hardware in our company of 100 employees, which includes all the latest greatest P4s, XP, new servers and I am quite happy with my 450 cube running OS X. Those SPEC marks are bunk for real world use. I had a friend over, who uses XP with a 1.8g P4 and he was blown away by OSX, and the way everything worked, on my lowly G4. The thing that impressed him most, was how using iMovie, exporting to QT, iPhoto, iTunes just worked so well.

spb - See you in 2010

MickS · Mar 28, 2002, 08:49 AM

Originally posted by spb:
X seems to be going through some very public growing pains

Sir,

you are a troll and I claim my $10

Guy Incognito · Mar 28, 2002, 08:54 AM

Originally posted by spb:
X seems to be going through some very public growing pains

How long before it is ready for prime time?

This side of 2010?

Don't be ghey.

Voch · Mar 28, 2002, 09:11 AM

Originally posted by spb:
How long before it is ready for prime time?

About six months ago.

I'm sorry I waited until last month to upgrade.

Voch

boots · Mar 28, 2002, 09:13 AM

I think it's a legitimate question....even if it was intended as a troll topic.

I had my concerns about Steve pushing OS X as the default....mostly because of the PPP bug. Most consumers would be using modems to get on-line, and this was a pretty embarrasing bug for that.

Finlay Dobbie (Yeah...!) tracked down the problem, apple rewrote the modem extension, and Finlay distributed it (originally). So for me, the problem is fixed. Apple still hasn't offically posted the fix yet, however. So this is still a problem.

One I got that fixed, I have been doing nearly everything on my desktop with OS X. I am pretty hooked. Aside from a few bugs that make me scratch my head in confusion without really being detrimental, it is my standard workhorse. And I only have a 400 MHz G4...not top of the line. So the OS is fine.

I'm still waiting for a couple of apps, though. Endnote is the current deal breaker. I can't go classic free without it. The Office v X suite works very well for me. Powerpoint was particularly impressive. MS Word has a nice look and feel, and is much better (IMO) than Word 98 (my old standard). Chemdraw just came out. Some better scanner support would be nice. I know this isn't apple's responsibility, but it affects the usability of their product for a number of designers. Anything else I need is available from Gnu-Darwin on the unix side.

So now I do believe OS X is primetime ready. If only apple would make it easier for the average person to fix the ppp bug. I hear there are some other internet issues too, but I'm not affected by them, so I don't know how crippling they are.

spb · Mar 28, 2002, 09:36 AM

you are all so very , very funny... not !

OreoCookie · Mar 28, 2002, 09:43 AM

I didn't mean to make OS X look less usable.

As a matter of fact, I have been using it since the Public Beta.

10.0.x was usable.
All the 10.1.x releases are more than usable on an iBook 2 500 MHz. On a G4 it's really fun to use (scrolling works much better, etc.).

Except for MS Office (still have to find an alternative for that

) I didn't need any other native software except the ones 'already there' (OmniWeb, OmniGraffle, TeXShop (!)).

I like the way X works a lot, in fact, I love it.

But still, it feels a bit sluggish on my iBook -- which shouldn't be on a half-year old computer. But I don't blame X, that's my point.

Voch · Mar 28, 2002, 10:54 AM

Okay, I'm sorry for my previous post. I guess that it works great for some and not for others based on what the machine is used for. I'm not a Photoshop professional or audio engineer but I do program in Java, run MacMAME, edit simple HTML with BBEdit, share files with my PC-owning friends, and surf the 'Net. I've had experience with several UNIXes and find the Terminal a real blessing. Maybe what I do Mac OS X has been teriffic on my iBook/500 because what I do is pretty vanilla and my machine is relatively recent (bought it last May).

Admittedly...I still can't burn CDs on my desktop beige G3 and my Yamaha 4416S CDRW under Mac OS X even with El Gato's patch. Mac OS X is not perfect but I think it's a big step for Apple.

If what you do requires extensive use of the Finder for navigation then I guess Mac OS X is a real step backwards as far as speed, familiarness, and/or flexibility.

Voch

velocitychannel · Mar 28, 2002, 11:05 AM

I have been using OSX (Classic Free) for over a month now. First thing I did was wipe my hard drive and just install OSX. I was amazed at how much faster and more stable OSX is without Classic running or having an OS9 System Folder on the drive.

I never though I would make the jump to running OSX full time, but I am and it is working very well, thank you very much

Millennium · Mar 28, 2002, 11:27 AM

Approximately negative six months.

OreoCookie · Mar 28, 2002, 11:35 AM

About three or four months ago, my filesystem screwed up (that's why I am interested in it, confer my other post).

Then I installed OS X without Classic and surprisingly I haven't missed it (except when I wanted to install the *OS X* driver for my HP G85 which needs Classic

Other than that, I am using it not only as my primary OS, but my *only* OS!

IonCable · Mar 28, 2002, 12:07 PM

That Spec data that says a G4 is equal to a PIII is in error. If you check Mac Observer and some sites that have look at the data you will find that they disabled the Altivec (velocity engine) in G4 for the tests. Altivec is what gives the G4 a major kick in power. Also Spec tests aren't very good for real world computing comparisons. ie a V8 in a sports car has better acceleration than a V8 in a Heavy-Duty pickup.

However, The G4 has fallen behind to a degree, but not as much as many think.

I put it this way which you like to have a new, clean, efficent 4 cycled Sports car that has all the niceities, and looks good (OS X) or a '79 Camero that's rusting out, gets bad gas milage and has 100,000 miles on it and is always in for repair, looks bad, but has a 350 V8 (XP).

I know it's a weak compare, but I hope you get the point. What the OS is, does, and will be is sometimes more important that the hardware it runs on.

I also think that OS X is ready for primetime, that apps are what is lagging but they are catching up. I my boss just got a New Dell with XP a week ago. Guess what the IT people have been in everyday because something else is wrong with it. In fact he is using a borrowed iMac right now with OS X from my team just so can keep up on email and his reports.

pundit · Mar 28, 2002, 12:45 PM

This is a somewhat ridiculous discussion.

Of course OSX isn't ready for 'primetime' in all cases. There are too many people with common issues about the OS. Eventually these will be ironed out.

Also, you shouldn't consider that because *you* had problems with 2000 or NT4, that the system is inherantly unstable. The truth is that MacOS is running on specific or authorized hardware, and in all likelyhood win32 isn't. I could put together a win32 (nt4 or win2000, not XP) system with components and drivers that I would have an extremely high confidence in very very good uptime. That would be based on experience though.

It is only through experience and a 'live beta' process that operating system becomes more stable, and polished.

However...

You might as well give up on 100% uptime, just as server admins in the real world have.

Whether you run Solaris, Linux, Win32 or any other of the dozen or so server OS's, you know that at some point, something bad is going to happen on one of the servers. If its not a bug in the OS, its a bug in a driver, if its not a bug in the driver its an unforseen component incompatibility. When all else fails, the majority of components in the system have limited MBF. And you always have the possibility of UPS's failing too. If you can get away with something you can hotswap, great... but by experience, its usually catastrophic.

Ultimately, sysadmins keep their santity by employing clusters and backups. A geographically dispersed hardware switched cluster of clusters is pretty much the only sure bet in terms of good uptime (only as good as the reaction of the cluster switch of course, although that might be microseconds). That costs big $. Everything else is a sacrifice.

The only feasible solution for having a perfectly reliable desktop is by switching to a terminal server or thin client, and having redundancy on the back end.

===
Regarding Mac vs. PC speed, FWIW you never hear a new pc user on a PC bulletin board complain how slow their new system is... normally how damn fast it is. Its not that way 100% with OS X, so I'd say, there's enough evidence to say that there is a UI speed problem of some description.

pundit

CheesePuff · Mar 28, 2002, 05:19 PM

Mac OS X *is* usable, and it has been since the release of 10.1. That is when I started to run it full time. 10.1.3 is just great, just not awesome. I do all of my work in OS X now, no need to use Classic anymore. (Photoshop 7 beta's are a life saver!

diamondsw · Mar 28, 2002, 06:16 PM

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
If you take a look at the SPEC marks of Apple's top of the notch 1 GHz-G4, then you understand why: it's performance (SPECint) is comparable to a 1.26 GHz PIII -- that's the part that matters most to normal apps. The SPECfloat marks are about *half* what the PIII could do and about one fourth a PIV does! (These measurements were performed by the German magazine c't which is a rather credible source; the author of the article was rather surprised about the results.)

I hate to tell you, but that article was almost entirely discredited. While c't does tend towards high quality stuff, on this one they were way off the mark.

And as to the topic at hand, OS X is perfectly ready for me. With the release of Palm Desktop this past week and Retrospect, I've begun dismantling my OS 9 system completely. I boot Classic maybe once a week or less. I only run pure OS 9 to image DVD's. In OS X, I now have:

Microsoft Office
Quicken
Palm Desktop
BBEdit
CodeWarrior
Toast
Retrospect
VirtualPC

And that's just the commercial stuff I use on a day to day basis. I have a boatload of great shareware, and the OS already comes with many great applications.

And best of all (for me at least), nothing ever crashes. I never reboot anymore. I only log out for security and so my girlfriend can use the computer. I can run a million services (Apache, PureFTPd, VNC, SSH2, etc) all without worrying about some background process killing my computer. I just don't have to think about stability any more - I just do my work.

diamondsw · Mar 28, 2002, 06:22 PM

Originally posted by pundit:
Ultimately, sysadmins keep their santity by employing clusters and backups. A geographically dispersed hardware switched cluster of clusters is pretty much the only sure bet in terms of good uptime (only as good as the reaction of the cluster switch of course, although that might be microseconds). That costs big $.

Heh, don't I know that. I work in large scale web hosting, and every time someone wants geographic load balancing I cringe, because *no one* wants to pay for multiple dispersed sites, what with the data synchronization problems and pure costs of having a completely second site sitting idle.

MacGorilla · Mar 28, 2002, 06:27 PM

X is usable already for me and has been for a year. I did clean reinstall a few weeks back and got rid of OS 9 forever!

pundit · Mar 28, 2002, 06:45 PM

Originally posted by diamondsw:


Heh, don't I know that. I work in large scale web hosting, and every time someone wants geographic load balancing I cringe, because *no one* wants to pay for multiple dispersed sites, what with the data synchronization problems and pure costs of having a completely second site sitting idle.

Of course nobody *wants* to pay; I'm talking about 'ideal'.

September 11 changed mentalities in NYC, however.

pundit

macthelastredman · Mar 28, 2002, 08:13 PM

very useable for me thank you

juanvaldes · Mar 28, 2002, 08:56 PM

For my needs back during the summer when I got the dev builds of X.1

But the app I use the most is project builder

eno · Mar 29, 2002, 05:59 AM

It's already "useable", but it's not great.

There are three computers in this household, and Mac OS X 10.1 running on my 500MHz G3 Pismo with 1 GB RAM is the slowest of the lot. It's only "useable" because 10.1 brought a bit of a speed boost, and I run a raft of time-saving apps and productivity helpers (eg. LaunchBar, DragThing, Zingg!, XRay, AppSwitcher, FruitMenu, MenuVersum, Yapsu etc) which save me a lot of time.

Many so called "native" apps are still dog slow compared to how there were under OS 9 (eg. Acrobat 5, Photoshop 7 etc). Classic is (and always will be) so flakey that all commonsense suggests it should only be used as a last resort.

The other two computers are a G4 867 and a 600 MHz PIII PC running Win2k. Those machines feel about on par with each other in terms of speed, but the truth is the PC is more "useable" if you actually want to get any work done. The UI is simply more responsive, and that is what you need when you're doing thousands of ops a day in Photoshop (or any other workhorse app).

Until Apple optimises their OS and catches up on the hardware curve, we're stuck with a beautiful, and "useable", but still frustratingly-slow OS.

iHolger uMax · Mar 29, 2002, 07:20 AM

X is so much better on duals than on single processor machines. My dual 450 beats all higher clocked machines except for the faster duals. I�m not talking about the actual raw processing power but the feeling you get from working with the GUI, starting multiple programs at the same time and the (dare I say it) snappiness of the system.

Simple test: Have a DVD running in the background and start Illustrator. This will make a 800 or 933 to jump a couple of frames and make a breif stutter in the soundtrack. This do not happen on duals :-)

cutterjohn · Mar 30, 2002, 12:57 AM

Originally posted by eno:
It's already "useable", but it's not great.

There are three computers in this household, and Mac OS X 10.1 running on my 500MHz G3 Pismo with 1 GB RAM is the slowest of the lot. It's only "useable" because 10.1 brought a bit of a speed boost, and I run a raft of time-saving apps and productivity helpers (eg. LaunchBar, DragThing, Zingg!, XRay, AppSwitcher, FruitMenu, MenuVersum, Yapsu etc) which save me a lot of time.

same, but 640M, and I have found it to be quite useable IMHO DP3 forward, of course I don't run all that extra junk that you do, as I was never over attached to all the OS8/9 bloatware.

same holds true for an ibook 2001 G3/500 384M, powermac G4/500 AGP 320M both are quite useable and have been since purchase & DP4 respectively.

HP deskjet 935c

AMD 1GHz T-Bird, 256M, win2k pro

what do I run? Terminal.app, mail.app, Mozilla, Omniweb sps, Thoth, MT-Newswatcher, ircle, dev tools, smb/afp file sharing

Now, this is NOT to say everything is great and speedy, e.g. lists are HORRIBLE under OS X and need some serious work, open a folder in finder that has more than 50 or so files, then try to select a range, same with file open sheets/dialogs, and other selectable lists of objects. This and some other areas of the libraries need to have some optimization.

Now compared to windows: even a rev B ibook G3/300 felt as fast as a win98 Celeron 500, and my current machines more or less as fast as the Athlon.

c't article: yep altivec disabled, MMX enabled, plus the x86s got optimized compilers(Intel/MS) v. the current poorly optimizing gcc(worse for powerpc.) All that being said the integer performance was pretty telling just on the compiler optimization front, imagine what the score with a good optimizing compiler like mrc would have been...

cpac · Mar 30, 2002, 01:50 AM

TiBook 500/512 - extremely usable for running: Omniweb sps, Mail, Adium, Palm Desktop, OmniOutliner, Graffle, MS Office, Quicken, Illustrator, InDesign, Tony Hawk PS2

and connecting to: home airport, school (windows) LAN, Windows 2000 servers, windows wireless network w/o changing any settings.

The last 10 or so restarts I've done have been to software installs and/or system updates. Otherwise my uptime would be in the range of 2-4 months.

cpac

edddeduck · Mar 30, 2002, 09:37 AM

Originally posted by Millennium:
Approximately negative six months.

Snap

spb · Mar 30, 2002, 10:21 AM

useable as in backing up the hype with real action..?

One year later and still cannot scan poperly.. joke.!

take today , transferring images from my digi-cam to ibook, 'cos it hasn't got a pc card slot , I have to go through all the hassle of connecting via a usb printert- whilst my pal who uses a pc laptop
( costing �500 less than my ibook ! ) can simply place the card into his machine & xp instantly opens the images .. no 3rd party software , no hassle , just gets on with it..

when the ibook was released -it was with the digital hub blab & a pic of the ibook with all these devices attached - including a digital ixus - only problem was that os- x didn't have a driver for the camera at the time..! Had to wait until 10.1.2 ...

JLL · Mar 30, 2002, 03:04 PM

Originally posted by spb:
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

moki · Mar 30, 2002, 03:07 PM

Originally posted by spb:
X seems to be going through some very public growing pains

How long before it is ready for prime time?

This side of 2010?

I should note that many of us find OS X to be eminently usable right now -- I have been using Mac OS X on all of my machines for at least 8 months now, with nary a regret. I'm loving it, in fact.

andreas_g4 · Mar 30, 2002, 05:25 PM

i'm using os x since it was out. first on an 350 iMac with 384 megs of ram. damn slow. i used to work in os 9. then, 10.1 came out. hell was it fast. but only compared to 10.0.x. then i got my ibook 500. faster with 10.1. after all, i got my tibook 500 with 512 megs of ram and it is *very* usable. i work in indesign 2, ps 7, illu 10, office v.x and do all my internet stuff (web, email, edonkey, carracho etc.). i made complete prospects on my ti and it is really fast enough under x. i'm sure, there are a few around here that say you cannot handle large files on that old machine under os x. you can (preconditioned you have enough ram

)

my 2 cents

spb · Mar 31, 2002, 03:00 AM

oh jll , that renowned danish wit!

mind you , the danes must know how to take a joke - look at bang & explosion !

JLL · Mar 31, 2002, 06:05 AM

Originally posted by spb:
oh jll , that renowned danish wit!

mind you , the danes must know how to take a joke - look at bang & explosion !

Well, one thing is better in the UK. You have better neighbours

[ 03-31-2002: Message edited by: JLL ]

Northform · Mar 31, 2002, 01:55 PM

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
The Mac CPUs have fallen behind in terms of raw power. That's why X seems slower than it is.

My brother has installed Win XP on his 1.5 or 1.6 GHz Athlon and the GUI (GDI+) needed about 50% of the horsepower of this CPU at times! I work with a Win 2k PC at work which feels worse than X on my iBook (K6-2 400 MHz vs. G3 500 MHz).

If you take a look at the SPEC marks of Apple's top of the notch 1 GHz-G4, then you understand why: it's performance (SPECint) is comparable to a 1.26 GHz PIII -- that's the part that matters most to normal apps. The SPECfloat marks are about *half* what the PIII could do and about one fourth a PIV does! (These measurements were performed by the German magazine c't which is a rather credible source; the author of the article was rather surprised about the results.)
Of course this doesn't say much about real-world performance, but it indicates, the G4 lags somewhat behind.

It's about time for the G5 ...

SPEC marks are completely stupid (in terms of measuring mac preformance). It isn't multiprocessor for starters, but most importantly it doesn't compile properly for the mac.

Clive · Mar 31, 2002, 04:16 PM

Originally posted by IonCable:
I put it this way which you like to have a new, clean, efficent 4 cycled Sports car that has all the niceities, and looks good (OS X) or a '79 Camero that's rusting out, gets bad gas milage and has 100,000 miles on it and is always in for repair, looks bad, but has a 350 V8 (XP).

Well, if I could have a small block V8 67 Mustang, that's a bit the worse for wear, done well in excess of 100,000 miles and been the most reliable car I've ever owned in the 14 years I've had it (MacOS 9)... then I'd take that rather than your 4 cylinder sports that I can't fix when it's broken.

Clive · Mar 31, 2002, 04:24 PM

Flame away if you like, I care not.

IMO X is still at least a year away from being ready for frontline usage. While I think I will be switching some server processes over to X in the next couple of months, I don't think there's any way we're switching our design/production studio.

Right now there are far too many bits missing for me to take a production environment to X, that's without considering the bugs/missing features in the X Finder.

-- Clive