[SmileyDude]

Originally posted by Millennium:
To do that, they'd need to know how big to make the window, and they need to load the prefpane to get that information. It's a chicken-and-egg situation.

but, they shouldn't need to load the entire pane to get that information. Just get the width and height, start resizing the window in one thread -- load in another.

[Kate]

Originally posted by SmileyDude:
...... start resizing the window in one thread -- load in another.

If the application is threaded at all this would be a solution. But Apple has no put much effort into threading, let alone threading well, its own apps. The state of threading in the Finder is poor and some other apps in the OS are quite similar. There could be done much in the field of responsiveness if this was handled better.

[Big Mac]

Originally posted by Link:
Argh, sure they aint no MS, but they aren't too great at programming, the really irritating thing about apple is they outright deny to tell the progress of anything -- nobody outside of apple knows even if the software engineers *KNOW* about the problems with safari (and other browsers that have the problem with a bunch of animated gifs) -- or the finder probs, or anything else, because APPLE IS SO DAMN SECRETIVE..

Link, I think it's time to take your Master Sword and go the hell home to Zelda. Apple's engineers aren't too great at programming? Surely you jest! How could you possibly make such a broad generalization? What programming accomplishments can you boast about? Do you have any notion of the amount of effort it takes to maintain the codebase for a premier, mission critical OS like OS X? Or do you simply find it entertaining to post absolutely asinine comments?

This thread is one of the worst I have ever seen on MacNN. Bitch, bitch, bitch, whine and complain. Suddenly a group of trolls pile on to talk about how slow OS X. We must not be using the same OS. Perhaps you guys are stuck in a time warp, using 10.0. OS X feels more responsive to me on my lowly iBook 466 than XP does on faster PCs, and I feel so much more productive. Unlike many of the posters to this thread, I have real tasks to accomplish on my computers. I have neither the time nor the inclination to obsess over the speed at which various graphical elements redraw. But with the limited amount of time I spend thinking about interface agility, I have formed the perception that OS X is quite fast for most things. My perception is not skewed that much from owning a DP 2.0 because I also use my iBook on a daily basis. Yes, every so often I am still a bit annoyed at window resize sluggishness (in certain applications), but redrawing has sped up over the years. Concurrently, it seems Windows has actually slowed in this regard - the PCs I sometimes need to use don't always keep up with the pointer when resizing browser windows. And that's with the ugly graphical tearing that always occurs in Windows but never on OS X.

Originally posted by Kate:
If the application is threaded at all this would be a solution. But Apple has no put much effort into threading, let alone threading well, its own apps. The state of threading in the Finder is poor and some other apps in the OS are quite similar. There could be done much in the field of responsiveness if this was handled better.

Is there some empirical study of application threading I could be pointed to that would show Apple has done a poor job threading its software? If there is some way you can substantiate that claim I would be sincerely interested. Now we have all known for years that the Finder has major issues, and by now we need to come to terms with the fact that Apple is not going to perform the overhaul we would all like to see. It just is not fair to use the Finder in a general critique of Apple programming; it's almost as bad as offering up AppleWorks as proof of Apple's incompetence.

[IamBob]

It's a chicken-and-egg situation

Except they control the hen house.

[Kate]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
It just is not fair to use the Finder in a general critique of Apple programming; it's almost as bad as offering up AppleWorks as proof of Apple's incompetence.

You are exaggerating. Nobody accused Apple of being incompetent nor did somebody claim that Apples programming in general lacks competence.

The Finder is the most often used application with ties into Dock, networking, volume mounting to name but a few. And the issues with the Finder are well known. And the Finder can contribute a lot to what people refer to as "slow". And it is not a well threaded app to say the least and had this shortcoming for a long while.
You can find the obvious lack of threads in some of the iApps quite easy. Quite frankly, you must have experienced this yourself here and there.

I do not think Apples programmers to be hindered by any sort of incompetence. I think that resources are streched thin and that all these new apps and OS development keeps them from giving some of their software that "already works" more attention.

And you could speculate that there may be some kind of marketing that wants things "out" very fast and therefore giving less time for proper development.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by Kate:
You are exaggerating. Nobody accused Apple of being incompetent nor did somebody claim that Apples programming in general lacks competence.

Actually, Link did.

Originally posted by Link:
Argh, sure they aint no MS, but they aren't too great at programming

[mAxximo]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
This thread is one of the worst I have ever seen on MacNN. Bitch, bitch, bitch, whine and complain. Suddenly a group of trolls pile on to talk about how slow OS X.

What you call trolls I'd call Discerning Users. The crying troll for anything is so tired...give it a rest.

We must not be using the same OS.

Yes we are. The difference is you can't/don't want to perceive the same problems we do. It's OK.

Now we have all known for years that the Finder has major issues, and by now we need to come to terms with the fact that Apple is not going to perform the overhaul we would all like to see.

We don't have to come to terms to **** as long as what Apple are doing is utterly wrong. I know this is a difficult concept to grasp for the apologist camp but there is no way I'm going to silently accept whatever Jobs/NeXT want to cram down our throats as long as it detracts from my previous user experience.

It just is not fair to use the Finder in a general critique of Apple programming; it's almost as bad as offering up AppleWorks as proof of Apple's incompetence.

It's not only fair but a clear indication of how deeply they've lost touch since NeXT took over. Haven't you noticed how the only part of OS X that works fine is the Unix-related stuff? As soon as you start being a Mac user with OS X it lags, chokes, breaks or beachballs. Or all of the above.
Besides, there's plenty of examples of bad Apple programming, I'd wish it was only the Finder that has serious issues. Mail, Font Book, Safari, Final Cut Pro, iPhoto, iTunes, iCal, you name it. Remember the Calculator before Panther? My god.

The Finder simply hurts more because it's such a fundamental part of our user experience. It's not only a perfect example of Apple's incompetence, it's also proof of Jobs/NeXT's despise for everything Mac.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
[whatever]

YOUR COMPUTER IS OBVIOUSLY BROKEN.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
YOUR COMPUTER IS OBVIOUSLY BROKEN.

Do you really think that is the problem?

[analogika]

Originally posted by SMacTech:
Do you really think that is the problem?

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by analogika:

Damn, I have to quit apologizing for my computer being able to do these things shown in the links below.

http://macposx.com/jpg/desktop.jpg
http://macposx.com/jpg/tabbar.jpg
http://macposx.com/jpg/top.jpg

I mean really, 40+ programs running, 80+ plus windows and it does this for days on end. Expos� does get a little slow on my GeForce 4MX with its paltry 32mb with that many windows.

What am I perceiving wrong and how am I not a discerning user ?

[lookmark]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
Besides, there's plenty of examples of bad Apple programming, I'd wish it was only the Finder that has serious issues. Mail, Font Book, Safari, Final Cut Pro, iPhoto, iTunes, iCal, you name it. Remember the Calculator before Panther? My god.[/B]

Yes. Weirdly, almost impossibly sluggish. Remember Open/Save dialogues before Panther? Blargh.

There's no end to listing things that were once deficient --obviously, painfully deficient -- in OS X. How exactly that relates to Panther today, and (by and large) really good applications like Safari, iTunes, Mail, and FCP, though, is a puzzle to me.

What machine are you using in your parallel OS X-is-insanely-horrible world?

[cla]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
Haven't you noticed how the only part of OS X that works fine is the Unix-related stuff?

That's an interesting observation.

[Chuckit]

It's also an inaccurate observation. iTunes has never given me any trouble whatsoever (well, trouble that isn't part of the DRM scheme, that is).

[Agent69]

Moderators,

Is it possible to get mAxximo banned? Every single post of his could be labeled trolling.

[Chuckit]

I think the link you want is "Report Abuse."

[analogika]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
It's also an inaccurate observation. iTunes has never given me any trouble whatsoever (well, trouble that isn't part of the DRM scheme, that is).

iCal, Mail, Address Book, Preview, iPhoto 5, TextEdit, iMovie, and Safari have been working very, very well for me, too. As does Logic Pro.



Font Book is indeed a bag of ****, though. Had to mess with fonts on a client's Panther machine the other day. The horror.

I hear that a mature font management system is in the works for Tiger, though, so pretty much the last *major* qualm for graphics pros will be addressed soon.



If you're in any doubt as to mAxx's grasp on reality, btw, I suggest you head over to thalo.net and give the OS X forum a five-minute glance.

I do that every three months or so, just to see what the former MacFixit psychotics are up to.

Hilarity ensues.

-s*

[MPMoriarty]

Well here's a question, has Tiger improved the Finder's performance any. I would figure that they have done a lot with the Finder and Spotlight that they would have had to improve some of the Finder's code.

Personally I don't really have a problem with the Finder.

[sideus]

Even with its flaws (though they are only a few) I'll take OS X over OS9/WinXP/Linux anyday.

[Webscreamer]

Originally posted by MPMoriarty:
Personally I don't really have a problem with the Finder.

I'd like to second that. Only thing it's missing for me is write capabilities on a FTP volume.

[bborofka]

The finder has so many bugs and nuances that it makes me beg for a complete rewrite.

[Sharky K.]

Originally posted by bborofka:
The finder has so many bugs and nuances that it makes me beg for a complete rewrite.

seconds that.
Just the point that cocoagestures only works with cocoa apps makes me want to have a rewritten Finder.

[cla]

Originally posted by bborofka:
The finder has so many bugs and nuances that it makes me beg for a complete rewrite.

Bugs can be annoying, but I can take that knowing they are _bugs_. They will get fixed, and there's not one software in the world that doesn't contain them.

It's the inconsistencies that worries me.

The column view in Finder, for instance, which I navigate using the letter keys and TAB to move to the next column. Lovely.
Try doing the same in the same column view of the same directory structure in an open/save dialog. TAB has all of a sudden changed function, forcing me to use the right-arrow key to move to the next column.
Why offer me the TAB key in the first place, if it will only force me to consider what mode I'm in (Finder or dialog) before deciding whether I can use it.

Another one is that system-wide auto-complete service invoked by alt-esc. It's a lovely feature, but it suffers from the same illness as the column view:
If auto-complete suggests more than one word, I select a word then insert it into my document and move the caret to the end of the word in one keystroke: either tab, space or the right-arrow. When auto-complete has only one word to suggest, pressing tab or space erases that word. All of a sudden I MUST use the right-arrow.

This adds to bad user behaviour, and forces me to consider what mode I'm in before I decide what action to take to accomplish the same task.

[Tyre MacAdmin]

Sounds should be included... i should not have to add that with xsounds. That's my only gripe with the finder besides the snappiness of course.

[Link]

When MS first started doing IE/explorer "sounds", it was an addon you'd download through windows update, and it wasn't just a "TICK" when you loaded a page, but a "pop" when the load was finished too....

Apple should do that right! Put sounds for EVERYTHING and bundle really noisy hard drives with their machines, make OS X seek like crazy on the HD every time you try to do something...

*double click folder on finder*
*CLICK!*
*hard drive seeking*
*seeking*
*POP!*

*takes all of 1.5 seconds but feels instantaneous due to SNAP-POP-NESS!!!*

[Tyre MacAdmin]

It does sound stupid but sounds do add to the user experience. As psychological as it is I like "instantaneous" feedback from my computer.... hearing the sound means everything is working correctly


example: Yesterday I was surfing the internet and I came across a movie I wanted to see... I played it but the sound was too high.
I went to the sound buttons to adjust the sound and I got no sound feedback... something was wrong. The machine kernel panic'd and I had to reboot. The kernel panic however happened much later then when I was banging away at the keyboard though. But because I did not get any instantaneous feedback I knew something was wrong, and after reviewing the kernel panic feedback it was some error with the sound.