Fast Macs that appear slow


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A few days ago I sat in front of a PC (it's been a while) and my first impression was "Damn, that thing's fast!" Of course the PC wasn't that fast, in fact, it wasn't any faster than my 1.25 GHz iMac. What caused my inaccurate verdict is the fact that in general PCs running Windows *appear* faster than Macs with OS X. I am pretty darn sure that if I had a PC standing next to my Mac and asked an inexperienced user to play with both for a couple of minutes, his reaction would be "The PC is faster."

Here are some most evident factors adhering to the impression of Macs being slower:

- for example now that I'm typing this message the characters appear with a delay (Safari 1.2; is it the animated emoticons on the left that occupy the processor so much?)

- when a Flash animation is playing in a browser window, clicking outside the window causes the framerate to reduce by 50%

- scrolling the contents of a window (with Safari and iTunes being especially unpleasant in this manner)

- window resizing (system-wide torture)

What's peculiar is the great discrepancy between the performance of the UI features of OS X that utilize Quartz Extreme and the ones that don't. I'm no expert, so I have no idea what's made it so hard for Apple to get rid of the abovementioned glitches since X's debut. My first version of OS X to experience was Jaguar. I can't imagine how slow the OS must have appeared before Quartz Extreme came into force.

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Windowresizing is still incredibly slow :/ I don't know 100% why, I think timdorr offered a good explaination a while back. The first 3 only seem to be fine on G5s, scrolling with a G4 seems sluggish compared to a windows PC, but scrolling on a G5 machine is fine (Yet window resizing still isn't).

It's not helping the perception that macs are slower, on first impressions they will be because the GUI is slower.

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Then there's Finder. If I get it right, Finder does not refresh the contents of open folders (including the Desktop) automatically, and for changes (e.g. a new file being created) to appear without having to activate Finder, an application has to "inform" it of the changes made. Some do (like Safari of TextEdit), some don't (like Fireworks). The result of the latter is:

- a new file is created: as described above, its icon does not appear until Finder is activated

- a file is overwritten: again, no change appears until Finder is invoked - then, for a second the file icon duplicates (we see the old one and the new one) and the old one disappears

That wasn't an issue in Jag, Finder's behavior was modified in Panther. The result is that file operations appear to be happening with a delay.

Edited by Koyder
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yes yes yes, my 1GHz Centrino laptop is like two times faster than my 1GHz PowerBook. i'm really starting to get sick of the "slowness" of my Mac, i need a G5 PowerBook so bad...

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[kidding mode]oh! and now the truth about Macs are revealed!!![/kidding mode]

Just kidding, it depends on your personal tastes and what you look for in a computer when you choose a Mac or PC, but one thing I can definately give to Mac is that if you look at a Mac 5+ years old, it could pass off as being designed yesterday in it's style. If you look at a PC 5+ years old, you go "eww!! what an old hunk of ****!!" :p

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[kidding mode]oh! and now the truth about Macs are revealed!!![/kidding mode]

Just kidding, it depends on your personal tastes and what you look for in a computer when you choose a Mac or PC, but one thing I can definately give to Mac is that if you look at a Mac 5+ years old, it could pass off as being designed yesterday in it's style. If you look at a PC 5+ years old, you go "eww!! what an old hunk of ****!!" :p

that's so true. :D

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there's an option in cocktail that allows to change the window resizing speed. i can't really feel the difference tho!?

post-60-1083586967.png

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Hopefully Apple does something to OS X and optimise it for the G5 and make the GUI faster.

I do hope that the Expose and Dock window icons become updated real-time

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Windowresizing is still incredibly slow :/ I don't know 100% why, I think timdorr offered a good explaination a while back. The first 3 only seem to be fine on G5s, scrolling with a G4 seems sluggish compared to a windows PC, but scrolling on a G5 machine is fine (Yet window resizing still isn't).

It's not helping the perception that macs are slower, on first impressions they will be because the GUI is slower.

I dunno what I said then, but I'll try to explain it again:

The Apple Aqua interace is built on a windowing system that uses PDF. That is, the entire GUI on a Mac is really one big PDF. Kind of a funky way of doing things, but it has it's advantages. It makes for much simplified UI programming and makes certain other things, that were hard in the past, rediculously easy. The downside, of course, is the speed of this interface. Becuase there are so many API layers to go through, things are slowed down as a result. Quartz Extreme alieviated this a bit by moving the compositing process to the video card, but drawing and rendering the windows are still done in software. Apple's only option now is to move the rendering process to the video card, but I don't see how that's going to happen just yet. I suppose it could be done, but from my basic understanding of the render process, it's not an easy task to do so.

However, I'm of the opinion that the Mac GUI is one that features a greater usability, which makes up for much of the shortcomings in physical speed. General usage and interaction is faster with a Mac GUI because there's a better following of HCI guidelines and laws that dictate how to make an interface more productive. Plus, there are also some of the whiz-bang features that grab people's attention, such as the Genie effect and Expose. Those can offset the physical slowness with distraction ;)

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At the risk of a near-Troll post...

OS9 was quick. Overall I still think that OS/X is two steps forward and one step back. Although, I haven't yet used 10.3 for any extended periods and they do claim that to be 30% faster than 10.2. I wouldn't mind being able to colour code folders again.

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The Safari slowdowns your experiencing are bugs, they will no doubt be fixed soon.

I hope so. Since I've updated to 1.2, each time I open a site rich in text and graphics (like Spymac.com) in a new tab, the browser becomes unresponsive for a moment.

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LMAO, I love coloring folders...best part of OS9...

Didn't they bring it back in 10.3? I've been waiting patiently.

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They brought back labels, but it doesn't tint the folder color. You'd like Labels X for that: http://unsanity.com/haxies/labels

However, Labels X isn't 10.3 compatible.

Lol. Two steps forward one step back again.

That was an great feature of OS9 (and going all the way back to System 5 or 6 or whenever it was introduced). It is was quick an easy way of visually identifying important folders. Windows, Linux and even OS/X doesn't have anything (well anything built in) that offers the quick and easy usability of colour coding and prioritizing folders.

Edited by fred666
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Well, color coding is there. It gives color to the item's label (with a gradient), but just doesn't tint the folder icon color, that's all.

finderwindow10082003.jpg

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What else would you like to drag back from the Classic OS? I started my Mac 'life' with Cheetah (Ironic considering the speed of the bloody thing!! :laugh: ) so I don't have alot of experience with it...

Collapsable Windows?

Application Menu?

Both are cool, but redundant with:

Expos? / Minimize

Dock / 'Option + Tab' / Expos?

...hmmm....

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Both are cool, but redundant with:

Expos? / Minimize

Dock / 'Option + Tab' / Expos?

...hmmm....

But Expos? isn't exactly fast which was the point of this thread.

Alt-Tab may be a heck of a lot less sexy but it is quick.

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But Expos? isn't exactly fast which was the point of this thread.

Alt-Tab may be a heck of a lot less sexy but it is quick.

what do you mean? Expose runs very fast on my eMac!:rolleyes::

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But Expos? isn't exactly fast which was the point of this thread.

Alt-Tab may be a heck of a lot less sexy but it is quick.

I thought the point of this thread was the exact opposite. Quartz Extreme effects are GREAT on Mac OS, but its the stuff left for Quartz thats the problem. Expos? works fine for me, what Mac do you have? I've not heard anyone have speed quirks with Expos?...

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Yes, OS X is slower than OS 9 but it crashes less. It also crashes/locks up less that XP.

Have you ever looked at the scrolling in XP? It is not smooth nor is is displaying the entire image as it strolls. when you scroll text really fast, it only displays every other line. Go ahead, give it a try.

If I compare my 867Mhz with 640MB (first generation 12" pbook) against my workstation at work an IBM NetVista 2.2 Ghz P4 with 512MB, the pbook often feels faster. Is is faster at everything? No, when listing directories with a lot of files, the P4 is a lot faster but bit is also over 2x greater clockspeed.

As it has been said above, the display in OS X is prerendered/composited on the GFX card so you are going to see some lag with window resizing and what not.

Do an experiment. Take an XP machine with decent gfx card, enable "View window contents when dragging and resizing". See the lag? Now load up Yzshadow or WindowsFX and add an OS X style shadow. Is it geting more laggy? Now load up an OS X style .mstyle or windowblinds skin. Do you see what I'm getting at? If you added Objectdock, it would slow down even more.

Just wait until Longhorn when they switch from GDI+ to a compositing engine similar to Quartz Extreme and you will see lagging all over the place there too. :D

I prefer putting up with a little lag versus GDI redraws getting blocked by unresponsive explorers or being unable to switch programs with ALT-TAB.

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Even I'll admit Apple has its shortcomings in physical speed, but you make up for it in the long run-- literally. A Mac will consistently perform faster, longer than a PC.

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Personally, I'd just like them to drop PDF-based drawing for 11.x. It's got some design advantages, but is horrifically slow. Maintaining that layer is just too much overhead for the system.

What would also be interested would be multi-threaded rendering in Safari. Basically, you could scroll the window in one thread and it would render the page in the window in another thread. That would improve responsiveness to the scrolls, giving an improved perception of speed.

What would also help out a LOT would be the "outline" effect that certain windows do on resize. Rather than laying out the window during a resize, it simply shows an outline of the final window. This is a lot faster than doing the layout while moving and maintains a better responsiveness of the GUI.

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Have you ever looked at the scrolling in XP? It is not smooth nor is is displaying the entire image as it strolls. when you scroll text really fast, it only displays every other line. Go ahead, give it a try.

Actually, I prefer the way windows scrolls to the way OS X scrolls any day. Especially with Internet Explorer, pure beauty. The very first thing I noticed was how poorly the GUI seems to scroll things. I either have it looks smooth by turning "smooth scrolling" off for sidetrack and other things like a power-mate, or the other way around for a mouse wheel. I really wasn't aware that it was so hard to get a nice scroll going on until I came to Mac and was severely disappointed.

I'll share my opinion on the matter and then give link with myriads of information. To me, the OS does not seems 'slower.' I think that is the wrong choice of words, because in timing actions and that sort of thing, it is every bit as fast as Windows. But, the OS definetly feels less snappier than windows. Windows is just plain snappy. I am not sure what it is about it, but when you click on something, its there, almost like it anticipated the click. It might be the lack of shadows or fancy GUI effects, but I can definetly relate to this. I have often played with a PC at the store, and even when I still had mine and thought, "wow, this is so quick."

However, as a former PC user, I know this does not hold up accross the board. As soon as the computer gets bogged down with spyware/adaware or even just lots of programs running, the OS begins to lag. Click on a menu, wait 10 seconds for it to come up and that sort of thing.

As far as speed, I find multi-tasking with OS X to be great however. I cannot stand the dock. I hate everything about it. But I do love the cmd+tab feature. Especially since you can send app commands to the app while tabbing. I love hiding and hiding others, a very nice feature that windows compensates with maximize. But sometimes I want to see 3 or 4 windows of just one app at the same time and hide everything else or so on, so IMO, multitasking on OS X has windows beat any day in the speed area.

I have 'heard' that the dual G5s get this snappy feeling that I have been describing. So, if that is true, my complaint is not neccesarily against the OS, but against the speed of my particular computer. I would love for a faster computer. However, actual productive work, I find I am way faster on a Mac than a Windows box. I don't know if it is because I am used to it, but even without the snappy feeling, I just get things done faster. As far as actual app lag, I experience none whatsoever. (I think the key to this is having enough RAM).

ArsTechnica has a wonderful Macintosh section in their discussion board. Someone started a thread awhile ago asking this very question of "Why Mac OS X [feels] slow?" It is actually a very interesting and good discussion. You will find a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo in there as well as many practical solutions and complaints. I was just going to summarize it all, but the thread is huge. So if you really are interested in knowing some reasons why, check this out... --> (LINK)

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