Reimroc Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 I use OnyX, but I don't find i need to use it that much. It's pretty fast by itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dyn Posted June 16, 2009 Share Posted June 16, 2009 Only if you mean generic software that has some mass appeal, when it comes to more specialized tools there are lots of things that there are no good Mac equivalents to.That's just the way it is. That's not an OS X problem, that's a known problem for every operating system there is on this planet! If you want to do some unix stuff you can't use Windows because it simply lacks nearly everything you need to be able to do unix stuff. There are some tools that come close and you need to install afterwards but they are not real replacements. Also color management on OS X goes beyond what Windows can do. Just to name a few. That's why webservers mostly don't run Windows but something like FreeBSD or Linux, why most desktop machines do run Windows, why some embedded devices run something unix-like, etc. etc. The job that needs to be done and the application one needs will mostly dictate what operating system one needs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bob_c_b Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 Only if you mean generic software that has some mass appeal, when it comes to more specialized tools there are lots of things that there are no good Mac equivalents to.That's just the way it is. You are going to have to get specific with this claim as I find way more specialized and niche tools on my Mac than I do on Windows, unless as someone else mentioned you are talking about specific engineering or CAD tools. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fhpuqrgrpgvirzhpujbj Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 Only performance tip I can think of is keep your desktop clean as each icon is its own window. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zagor Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 It is also a little bit related to the fact that OS X does not allow so much of a tuning. At least such options are not easily accessible to the end user. But from time to time, I feel like my OS X installation can use some tweaking and tuning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dysphoria Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 It's interesting to see the ignorance on some of the people bashing MacOS. Mac OS is a unix based operating system, and the way it localizes the data blocks on the harddrive minimizes the file fragmentation, since data files are not scattered all over. There were also some front page posts/news that were absolutely trashed by PC owners. I did not comment myself but some of those comments I read were very funny.... Yes apple has a different/"pretty" case design but it's also the efficiency of the OS that completes the product. Apple OS is specifically compiled for the hardware that is being used, so it uses the resources much more efficiently than Windows does on any of the laptops available out in the stores. Apple can afford this since it makes its own laptops and software so they can afford to optimise the OS for their specific hardware. On another side MS has Windows which is still amazing in its own way since it's able to be installed on any hardware without any major issues. A great test for how resources are being used by Windows Vista/XP and MacOS X can be seen if you install DUAL boot on your Macbook Pro and you try to run regular applications. With Mac OS your battery life will be close to 7 hours while when running windows your battery life would be no more than 5 hours. You should stop with the trashing comments and be happy with what you have. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the evn show Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 Mac OS is a unix based operating system, and the way it localizes the data blocks on the harddrive minimizes the file fragmentation, since data files are not scattered all over. Every modern operating system does this. It's like saying "The way Mac OS X handles multitasking an application doesn't specifically need to relinquish control back to the system once it's time slice is up." Yes apple has a different/"pretty" case design but it's also the efficiency of the OS that completes the product. Apple OS is specifically compiled for the hardware that is being used, so it uses the resources much more efficiently than Windows does on any of the laptops available out in the stores. No, its not particularly special in that sense (certainly no more than Linux or Windows). A great test for how resources are being used by Windows Vista/XP and MacOS X can be seen if you install DUAL boot on your Macbook Pro and you try to run regular applications. With Mac OS your battery life will be close to 7 hours while when running windows your battery life would be no more than 5 hours. Compare the multithreaded performance of AfterEffects on Mac OS X and Windows and you'll see that while you mac might last 30% longer it's also going to take twice as long to get the job done. Mac OS X excels in some areas but falls down in others - at best you can show different priorities but not that one is conclusively "more optimized" than another. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Berserk87 Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 [citation needed] this. http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/ as much as some people would debate it, apple tries to advertise macs as anyone one could use them, and they require little to no maintenance. im not trolling or trying to start a debate, so probably dont reply to this post. keep the thread on track. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dysphoria Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 Every modern operating system does this. It's like saying "The way Mac OS X handles multitasking an application doesn't specifically need to relinquish control back to the system once it's time slice is up."No, its not particularly special in that sense (certainly no more than Linux or Windows). Just this statement alone shows that you have no experience with Unix based systems. Compare the multithreaded performance of AfterEffects on Mac OS X and Windows and you'll see that while you mac might last 30% longer it's also going to take twice as long to get the job done. Not true. Use google and you'll find your answer.. I am at work now so I dont have the time to post links... Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the evn show Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 (edited) Just this statement alone shows that you have no experience with Unix based systems. I'm sure my post history here over the last however-many years clearly shows I don't know a damn thing about OS X or UNIX systems whatsoever. You got me. But since you're an expert in this topic—please explain how the block allocation policy of NTFS differs significantly from HFS+ or Ext3. Feel free to assume I've read the source code for the OS X HFS+ and Linux Ext3 drivers, and that I'm familiar with the tech notes describing the functionality and tuning of NTFS systems. The implementation details very, but the end results are similar. I'm sure we'll all be better off after reading your authoritative explanation. Not true. Use google and you'll find your answer.. I am at work now so I dont have the time to post links... At work I use a single processor 4-core Mac Pro with 3GB of RAM and Mac OS X 10.4 to run After Effects CS3. I've installed Windows XP (32-bit) to try the Windows version of the same software - the performance difference was staggering. But since I'm not much for unsubstantiated claims, Creative Mac's performance showdown concludes with the following (using the same hardware I do no less): While I'm not at all surprised that the Mac OS X version of After Effects CS3 didn't keep up with either version of Windows, I am slightly disappointed that the results weren't closer, what with Adobe's re-embracing of the Mac platform in the CS3 Production Premium bundle and some shiny new Intel chips to play with.If you want the fastest possible speed, it appears that Windows XP is still the way to go, though Vista didn't do too shabbily either. "But wait, 10.5 is so much faster! And CS4 takes advantage of Mac OS X improvements so it must run better!" I'm sure somebody will say. Fortunately they did a follow up performance test with the Windows x64, Mac OS X 10.5, and After Effects CS4: Cripes, the Mac OS X version of After Effects is absolutely smoked again, and the results are slightly worse than last time in places.…Hell, even single process rendering on Vista generally spanks multiple processes on Leopard, for the love of Pete. …In any event, it's clear from these tests that Vista x64 offers significant "pound-for-pound" time savings for your After Effects renders. So how exactly was I wrong when I said: "Compare the multithreaded performance of AfterEffects on Mac OS X and Windows and you'll see that while you mac might last 30% longer it's also going to take twice as long to get the job done." After Effects performs substantially better on Windows than OS X. If you want to niggle about the magnitude of the performance difference—Windows averaged between 15 and 20% faster than OS X—fine, but the fact remains, you can literally save hours on complex AE renders by using Windows instead of OS X to run After Effects. edit For bonus points. Mac OS X has no problem scattering files across the drive, in fact it does so intentionally. OS X tracks frequently accessed files and relocates them to the faster portion of the disk in order to maximize read/write performance of those. That means you can end up with things like your console log and iTunes Music library in the "good" part of the disk while the remainder of the program is scattered in other areas. It doesn't really matter where on disk things are stored and there are some advantages to be had for specifically NOT clustering things (for example: leaving a few meg of "dead" space after a log will allow it to grow without being bitten by the auto-defrag write penalty later on as you append to it.) The block allocation algorithm isn't substantially different from other file systems ("give me a bunch of blocks to store this file, I'd prefer contiguous regions if possible") The only really interesting thing going on is the way it handles small file defragmentation. When you get a handle to a file (that doesn't mean read or write it) Mac OS X will automatically try and defragment it. While there are certainly some advantages to that approach the obvious downside is that just looking at a file can cause a 40mb read/write operation "no god damn reason". Windows farms out defragmentation to a system service that runs somewhat regularly. This approach ensures that file access is never burned by a huge "defrag penalty" but you may pay a hefty fee all at once when that service kicks in. It's a difference in philosophy: 1000 little cuts, or one big one. Neither is really superior to the other—the my preference lies with Apple's approach for a home-user—and again, at best you can argue that there were design decisions and you weigh the good against the bad. Edited June 23, 2009 by evn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AltecXP Posted June 23, 2009 Author Share Posted June 23, 2009 7hrs? LMAO I get 4.5under OSX, and just over 4 in Windows. It's close enough it hardly matters, and this is with 1/2 brightness, and no bluetooth on the OSX side, and Bluetooth ON under Windows7 (cant see how to disable it). both using wireless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PyX Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Yeah, there isn't a lot to do in OS X because it does it automatically. You may download OnyX or Xslimmer, or uninstall unnecessary apps, but nothing else really. OS X runs automated scripts to optimize the performance of the OS. OnyX can give you a few options like cleaning your cache in every app, cleaning trash, running the nightly scripts, verifying bad sectors, verifying disk permissions, etc. Xslimmer can remove non-Intel parts of an application... But in all honesty, you can live without it. Things like these don't change OS X a lot... That's pretty much it. No need to fiddle with an antivirus and its performance, no need to defrag anything, no need to clean up registry, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dysphoria Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 (edited) I'm sure my post history here over the last however-many years clearly shows I don't know a damn thing about OS X or UNIX systems whatsoever.You got me. But since you're an expert in this topic—please explain how the block allocation policy of NTFS differs significantly from HFS+ or Ext3. Feel free to assume I've read the source code for the OS X HFS+ and Linux Ext3 drivers, and that I'm familiar with the tech notes describing the functionality and tuning of NTFS systems. The implementation details very, but the end results are similar. For bonus points. Mac OS X has no problem scattering files across the drive, in fact it does so intentionally. Lol, :) sorry I dont have as much time coming here and posting, but this was interesting. Talking about optimising UNIX systems vs Windows Systems, since you said your self that you have read the source code of MAC OS X and The Unix OS ext3 based systems, LOL, LOL, LOL :) you probably have manually compiled kernels and installed Linux on different systems. Then you will know that when installing an Linux/UNIX based system you have control over how the kernel is compiled and how will it work, exp, what modules will it use and what resources, thus making it much easier to optimise than Windows. Most of the optimisation on UNIX based systems is done at installation, while on windows you get a fully bloated OS which than you spend days and months optimising and tweaking. That is why MAC OS X and any other UNIX OS such as Linux does not require as much tweaking/optimising as Windows. You are right one thing MAC OS X does scatter the files it intentionally, lets actually see how defragmenting is done on PC and MAC. PC operating systems generally treat the hard drive as one big linear array of data. That is, they ignore its three dimensional nature and pay no attention to where in the drive files are placed. About the only effort they make at optimizing storage is to try and write each file contiguously... that is all in one long, unbroken sequence of blocks. But over time files get moved around or deleted, free space gets chopped up into many disparate chunks, and pieces of files end up scattered all over. Thus many vendors sell "disk optimizers" which try to rearrange all the files so that each one is contiguous (in one chunk). They may even try to group files that seem related "near" each other in the big long line of bytes. The problem with this linear approach is that it is both inflexible and sometimes wrong. For example, a file may be stored in a sequential collection of blocks but still cross a track boundary. Thus even though the optimizer software says the file is fine, accessing it still requires head movement. More importantly, when the OS goes to write a file, it has too look for a contiguous line of free space so that it can write the blocks in linear sequence. But in reality, only the sectors need to be in sequence and the file should all be on the same (or nearby) cylinders. As a result of this operating system ignorance, PC's generally must have their disks optimized every so often in order to prevent performance from degrading. Traditional unix file systems would take disk geometry into account. This gave them a lot of flexiblity in where to place files and allowed them to keep a drive performing very well without having to run external optimizers. The downside was that when the hard drive was formatted, its exact geometry had to be known and written into the file system. That is, the system had to know how many heads, cylinders, and sectors there were in order to correctly place the files. If this information was not available, or was not accurate, then the drive might perform very poorly. But modern drives can have more complex geometries, such as variable sectors per cylinder, that are difficult to categorize and are rarely documented. As a result, most modern operating systems take the linear approach. Mac OS X (HFS+ under 10.4 and later), for example, prefers to write new files at the start of long runs of free blocks and moves frequently used files ("hotfiles") to a reserved area nearest the "front" of the partition. The drive's firmware presumably knows everything about its geometry, so it is then responsible for mapping linear blocks onto the geometry in a (hopefully) efficient manner. When I said about the 7 hour battery usage I was referring to the new MacBooks Pro, which is quite an impressive time. I read a test done on one the 13 inch macbook pro on which they installed Vista and MAC OS X and under Vista it gave less than 5 hours while when using MAC OS X it ran for up to 7 hours. Anyhow, I have no intention of starting flame wars... as I said be happy with what you have. BTW I dont own Macs but have worked on them and after the recent updates especially with Snow Leopard coming I am thinking of getting the Mackbook Pro. I need a mobile, durable system I can take with me when going to different NOCs, and being able to run the laptop for 6+ hours without recharging is a big plus for me. Cheers edit: As you nicely stated, for bonus points :) Here is a nice article talking about what OS is the best for SSD. I thought it is an Interesting Read Edited June 23, 2009 by Euphoria Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dyn Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 (edited) Compare the multithreaded performance of AfterEffects on Mac OS X and Windows and you'll see that while you mac might last 30% longer it's also going to take twice as long to get the job done. That just made me laugh very loudly. How can you be that certain this has got nothing to do with something like bad programming skills from Adobe? Adobe Reader is one of the most crappiest applications out there, so are the Adobe products for the Mac since they are more Windows-minded nowadays (if you check out their forums...it says a lot). Problems with an application can also be caused by bad programming, not by the OS (Windows, MacOS X, etc.). Not a very good example to try and prove your point. Apart from that operating systems can be optimised to do stuff a certain way. Windows does multitasking/multithreading differently than MacOS X and Linux. You could optimise in such a way that the OS always stays operable, even with high loads. You could also optimise that an app with the most threads simply get's the most power with the risk of not being able to use any other applications without them being awfully slow. Applications might also have the option to optimise performance for the app itself or for OS X. As you can see, a lot depends on how it's implemented and why they've done it that way. It's great to have a lot of performance for one application but if that means the rest of the OS is nearly unusable that would be a major disadvantage. It's great to be able to use the OS and other apps side by side but it's sometimes nicer to have a bit more power for some apps (more power during lunch or something). So there really is no better multitasking/multithreading way of doing it because it really depends on what you want. Take a look at VMware Fusion, that's an example of an application with the ability to choose what to optimise for: the OS (slower vm's, everything else is faster) or the vm's (faster vm's, everything else is slower). The same goes for every other part of what makes up an operating system. Each operating system has it's own implementation. Filesystems...exactly the same. Both HFS+ and NTFS try to reduce fragmentation as well as filesystems like UFS2 (with or without softupdates). The difference is in the details. That's why unix people use different filesystems for different purposes. In case of NTFS, the implemenation is quite bad causing it to fragment a lot more than what was designed. Something similar goes for HFS+, both NTFS and HFS+ are not the greatest filesystems around but it doesn't really matter, they work just fine ;) When I said about the 7 hour battery usage I was referring to the new MacBooks Pro, which is quite an impressive time.I read a test done on one the 13 inch macbook pro on which they installed Vista and MAC OS X and under Vista it gave less than 5 hours while when using MAC OS X it ran for up to 7 hours. I've read that test as well, even the reviewers were quite amazed about the battery life they got. If only Apple would have the option to replace the glossy glass for something with a matte finish... I think it was the following review: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?...+macbook+pro+13 Edited June 23, 2009 by dyn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rudy Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Apple OS is specifically compiled for the hardware that is being used, so it uses the resources much more efficiently than Windows does on any of the laptops available out in the stores. That's wrong, OSX is not "compiled" for their hardware, the binaries are just regular x86 binaries BUT they do take advantage of the fact that there's not a single mac out there without SSE3. So the apps will use SSE3 optimizations but that's about it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dysphoria Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 That's wrong, OSX is not "compiled" for their hardware, the binaries are just regular x86 binaries BUT they do take advantage of the fact that there's not a single mac out there without SSE3. So the apps will use SSE3 optimizations but that's about it Apple used to use some universal binaries during their transition from Power PC to Intel based MACs and there were some performance hits for doing so. I might be wrong but I think that today most of their binaries are precompiled for MAC OS X on Intel platform. I am not sure what you are trying to say, but No Unix system will run on random hardware unless it was precompiled for that CPU and is using the correct hardware binaries/drivers that were compiled for that OS. Anyhow as I said before, if you Google, or "Bing" if you like it more...., you will find more details on how you can compile drivers for different OS platforms. Cheers edit: @dyn - yes that was the review I was referring to. I am actually getting the 13inch macbook pro tomorrow, so I'll do a similar test myself. I am really curious to see if I can squeeze 6+ hours out of it... It would be great if I can :) I'll let you know. Now I need to sell my 12 inch Dell 700m. I've really gotten attached to it... it will be hard to part away form it... :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the evn show Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 Apple used to use some universal binaries during their transition from Power PC to Intel based MACs and there were some performance hits for doing so. There are absolutely no measurable performance hits for compiling universal vs intel or power-pc only. Fat binaries are composed by concatenating the compiled code for each architecture, and bolting on a header that notes the architecture, sub-type, offset, and size of each. The header is tiny (a few bytes) and the read, compare, and picking the appropriate offset amounts to all of 50 cycles ahead of calling execve() posix_spawn() or whatever else you use to start executing the mach-o binary appropriate to the platform. Even essotaric sitations like using ICC for your intel code and XL for the PPC can be accomodated with an extra 2 lines in your build script so even tool chain optimizations can be preserved. I might be wrong but I think that today most of their binaries are precompiled for MAC OS X on Intel platform. All applications on OS X 10.5 are universal applications supporting both Intel and PowerPC systems. Furthermore, I can't think of any Intel-only applications that Apple sells. Their consumer range including iLife, iWork, etc. are all Universal as are their professional applications including Final Cut Studio, Logic, Aperture, and Xsan. Can you please answer my earlier questions: What does OS X offer in terms of optimization that a PC running Windows does not and what is the impact of those differences. How was I incorrect about the fact that After Effects is significantly faster on identical hardware when run under Windows rather than OS X. Please cite sources, when you're right it's easy to find something to back your claims. A number of people have made nebulous claims about What OS X does that other systems don't but nobody has gone into specifics or cited any sort of authoritative document confirming their claims. Details about the load process can be found in Chapter 2.6.1,2&4 of "Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach" by Amit Singh. Details about the the Mac OS X Application Binary Interface format are detailed atApple's Mac OS X ABI Mach-0 File Format Reference (may require a free ADC login to view) and are also summarized in the book listed above. Details about the performance impact of Universal vs "one architecture only" non-fat binaries can be confirmed by attaching a debugger to a "hello world" application compiled as a universal vs straight mach-o binary and watching the calls made during launch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dysphoria Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 Can you please answer my earlier questions: What does OS X offer in terms of optimization that a PC running Windows does not and what is the impact of those differences. How was I incorrect about the fact that After Effects is significantly faster on identical hardware when run under Windows rather than OS X. Well apparently you did not read my previous post. I thought you are familiar with the source code of unix based systems. Ask the same question on a Linux form, and you'll get your answer. I really have no time going into details... I am working on my final project for my grad. degree. But I keep coming here to read up on some news and take a break. As my statement for Universal Binaries, I stated it wrongly....universal binaries, place native code for both architectures in one package, so a Intel system will pick up its own native code and Power PC will pick up its own code. It was the non-universal code binaries emulated through roseta that had a performance hit and in many cases did not run on both platforms.. Anyhow I was at work and while my mind was thinking something else my hands were typing something different. My point was that without native (precompiled) code you will always have performance and stability issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the evn show Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 Well apparently you did not read my previous post. I thought you are familiar with the source code of unix based systems. You did a lot of hand waving but didn't bother to carefully explain the difference. I did check over the Ext3 code for common operations like writes and appends and didn't see it do anything interesting wrt. worrying about track/cylinder boundaries. Can you please link to an authoritative document or relevant sections in the source that show it does anything special here—comparison to the NTFS tech notes and HFS+ driver would be interesting. I really have no time going into details... But you have time to make up technical details that don't exist? I checked over Ext3's allocation routines, scanned over the code and confirmed it by reading the documentation: no mention was made that supports your claims but it did back up the ones I made about generally preferring long blocks of contiguous space and second item where the allocation policy looks for some free blocks searching forward for "appropriate" free space starting at the parent's location. Where, for example, can I find where Ext3 worries about track boundaries for the purpose of optimizing performance? Be specific and cite sources please, you're making the claim so it should be easy for you to find this: ialloc.c is very easy to follow and balloc.c isn't horrible either. find_next_usable_block(), ext3_try_to_allocate_with_rsv(), or ext3_new_blocks(), should be where you expect to find anything interesting but you don't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dead_Monkey Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 So far as I know Windows and Linux both make similar optimizations (though not necessarily in the same way) so there's not really a lot to give Mac OS X credit for that you couldn't also give to Windows or Linux. True, at least in the case of NTFS. Routine use of any modern system should not result in significant file fragmentation. Of course, the kind of PC users that are out there looking for tweaks are not routine users, they're doing a lot more of the kind of things that cause fragmentation in the first place (using drives that are nearly full, storing many small files like music or photos, multitasking, etc). I think there's evidence for both "Mac users don't do the things that would require tweaking" and "Mac users just buy new Macs when their old ones don't work instead of trying to fix them." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PyX Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 What does OS X offer in terms of optimization that a PC running Windows does not and what is the impact of those differences.How was I incorrect about the fact that After Effects is significantly faster on identical hardware when run under Windows rather than OS X. I would not know about After Effects, as I have not tested it and I don't know what is significantly faster exactly. Rendering, previewing the video, the interface, the whole thing, ??? Now, about OS X, I think it has been answered a few times already in this thread. It's not only what OS X has to offer in terms of optimization, it's also what Windows has to counter optimization. - Registry is my best example. Macs don't have registry, thus any "Registry cleaner" application would be really, well, suspicious on the Mac, considering it has no registry. - Same for registry defragmenting. - OS X does a simple defrag on files by itself so that the hard drives don't need defragmenting. - OS X is running nightly scripts automatically to do a basic cleanup. There's a daily script, weekly and monthly if I remember well, each of them doing different things (I don't know what they do, but I know they exist). - More Windows users require an antivirus (if I was using Windows all the time, it wouldn't be a question for me - I would install an antivirus right away. Now it's on my second partition and I'm using it 2% of the time, so no thanks). But on the Mac, I'd be surprised in the % of people running with an antivirus. It has to be below 0.1%, and on Windows over 30 - 40%. These things slow down computers as hell. I remember when I was on Windows XP... - More Windows users require anti-malware and anti-spyware applications. Installing these applications also means more crap in the registry, and more slowdowns. So you see, it's also the way Windows is built that may require to install more applications to un-optimize the machine in the end. I remember when I was on Windows XP, by default it was really fast and everything. I'm not against that. But once you start installing stuff, things get a lot slower. Obviously I can't say this doesn't happen on a Mac (if you're using startup items, etc. it HAS to happen, Macs don't use magic after all), but I've never noticed such a big difference compared to Windows. Also, I think I've been a year and a half without formatting my iMac now and I don't feel it becoming sludgy. When I did format it back then, I regretted it because I got no speed increase at all. I don't even know what pushed me to do this... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dysphoria Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 But you have time to make up technical details that don't exist? :) well I am not making up things, if that's what you are implying. I know this is mostly windows user based forum, but what you are arguing is a very simple matter that anyone that has manually installed linux from a source code should know. I can optimize UNIX based systems way more than Windows OS, and if you really want to argue this go to a Unix forum and you'll get plenty of info on it. Linux is an open source OS so I can get the source code and compile it using my own preferences. I've installed Linux on a 16 MB USB disk, and I've installed linux on a bootable floppy disk, try doing that with XP or Vista. It is not just about the file system it uses but also about how the OS handles all of the resources available. Also ext4 has been in use with the latest distros so look into that too. I think phoronix.com had some really cool benchmarks on ext4 and other file systems, check it out. Cant find you direct links now since my work blocks access to most of these pages. But really have you tried using google? Also go to kernel.org and you'll get plenty of info on Linux. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the evn show Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 I know this is mostly windows user based forum, but what you are arguing is a very simple matter that anyone that has manually installed linux from a source code should know. Then it should be easy to support your claims that: Linux or Mac OS X default file systems do something "extra special" that NTFS on Windows doesn't. After Effects doesn't perform significantly better on Windows than Mac OS X. I can optimize UNIX based systems way more than Windows OS, and if you really want to argue this go to a Unix forum and you'll get plenty of info on it. "I've made some arguments I can't support: why don't you go track down somebody that can do it for me" is not how you win an argument. I've installed Linux on a 16 MB USB disk, and I've installed linux on a bootable floppy disk, try doing that with XP or Vista. It is not just about the file system it uses but also about how the OS handles all of the resources available. Also ext4 has been in use with the latest distros so look into that too. Good for you, what does it have to do with how files are tossed on the drive or the standard optimizations that Mac OS X provides that make it special compared to a popular Linux distribution or Windows? As for Ext4 data loss issues discovered in the last 3 months make that a non-starter for anybody that cares about a file system that actually stores files. The problem wasn't caused by a fault in the design or code of the Ext4 driver, but in how applications expect the system to behave vs how it actually does. Maybe you've got data you're willing to trust on a file system that had major data loss issues in the last 10 weeks: I don't, and I suspect most users will prefer file systems that can be trusted to actually store files. It was the non-universal code binaries emulated through roseta that had a performance hit and in many cases did not run on both platforms. Another profound statement. First we had "Mac OS X likes to write files in contiguous blocks" and now "emulating code is generally slower than running it natively. I guess you've got a point but I'm not really sure how it proves anything about Mac OS X performing better than Windows. PsykX Thanks for being specific, now there's something worth addressing. I would not know about After Effects, as I have not tested it and I don't know what is significantly faster exactly. Rendering, previewing the video, the interface, the whole thing, ??? Rendering is the part you notice most because that's the longest task: The difference between 15 minutes (a walk to the coffee shop and back) vs 20 minutes (a walk to the coffee shop, back, and then time to sit around complaining at how bad AE sucks) is noticeable in day-to-day use. The interface feels "equally crappy" on Windows and OS X. I find the OS X one is more likely to crap it's pants than on Windows but I can't offer objective support for that claim and it could just be that I notice it more because I tend to use the Mac version most of the time. Not that it matters - the UI has issues on both platforms far too often. I'm not sure command-tabbing back to something like this: counts as a performance issue - but it certainly makes getting something done take longer than it should. Registry is my best example. Macs don't have registry Macs have their own collection of configuration files in a handful of directories that serve exactly the same purpose. Is there any significant performance improvement to reading your configuration data from several thousand configuration files vs a couple of giant binaries? I can't find numbers one way or the other: the only good way to get them (that I can think of) would be to bolt on a debugger and see how long loading a plist vs loading data from the registry takes - I'm willing to be the figures will be almost too small to measure. Neither operating system ships with software to automatically clear out orphaned configuration files or fix invalid file associations so it's not really an interesting point. Same for registry defragmenting. Neither OS spends time doing this. I suppose Windows does automatically compress the registry which could be considered "internal file defragmentation" but it's not really worth mentioning. Mac OS X doesn't do anything with it's plist files but toss them to disk. OS X does a simple defrag on files by itself so that the hard drives don't need defragmenting. Windows defragments automatically by default. It doesn't do it on file access but it does do it with files larger than 20mb. You end up choosing a UI improvement at the cost of performance in the case of Mac OS X individual file read/writes can take substantially longer on OS X, but you never think about defragmentation, and a performance improvement on Windows: the system defragments (hopefully) when you're not using it - there is a UI to manually force a defragmentation (which is worse than "just works") but Windows will be more thorough and shouldn't negatively impact day-to-day operations with huge read/writes just because It's an implementation difference but they both do the same thing. - OS X is running nightly scripts automatically to do a basic cleanup. There's a daily script, weekly and monthly if I remember well, each of them doing different things (I don't know what they do, but I know they exist). They're in /etc/periodic and they don't do anything particularly interesting. Daily nukes some log files that have gotten old and stale, cleans out old files written to temp (but not things you want to disappear like old cache data in safari). Weekly rebuilds the locate database for finding files (not the one used by spotlight, that's handled in "real time" through fsevents), the whatis database (again, not the one used by launch services to make sure that "mp3s open with itunes"). Monthly rotates some log log files and compresses old ones. It also writes some information about user usage to a log (which you'll probably never see). Unless you spend your day in terminal you'll never notice anything. You could stop them from running all together and the only thing that would happen is that your logs would eventually fill the drive. On the other hand, the automatic file clean up utility on windows nukes stuff you probably do care about: Temporary internet files created by IE desktop shortcuts you never use files recovered by chkdsk after an improper shutdown that you haven't bothered to look at for months log files temp files (from places most applications write them to) Once again: the UI sucks - but it gets rid of more "crap" than Mac OS X does by default. More Windows users require an antivirus Windows doesn't ship with antivirus software and complaining that the user might install something that makes their computer slow is irrelevant. More Windows users require anti-malware and anti-spyware applications. Installing these applications also means more crap in the registry, and more slowdowns. Data just sitting in the registry doesn't really do anything more than data sitting in text files in /etc on Mac OS X do. Background processes can slow things down, but by default Windows doesn't ship with any that cause an appreciable impact in performance. This is one spot I wish Apple would steal from Microsoft. The ability to detect and remove rootkits and other malware should be bundled with every modern desktop operating system because most users simply don't have the expertise to do it themselves. Even so, I'd entertain this idea - can you provide benchmarks that show Windows Defender degrading overall system performance? I googled quickly and the only thing I could find was some minor forum posts about how much ram it used (25mb) and comments that it wasn't a big deal. There's a difference between "Macs are nicer to use because of <x,y,z>" and "Macs perform better than Windows because of <x,y,and,z>". I think you can make a strong case for the former, but the later is very difficult to support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dysphoria Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 Lol again :) You keep refering to this Adobe application as the holy grail of OS performance benchmarking. :) Personally I dont use it and I dont intend to use it. Anyhow it has nothing to do with the performance of the Operating System. I am not sure why are you stuck so much to the File System.... But as of the moment HFS+ under MAC OS X behaves slightly better than NTFS under Windows, and ext4 behaves way better than HFS+ and NTFS together. Here is a link from a guy that did a little research on HFS+ fragmentation Although he says that "Although NTFS is more advanced than NFS+ in many respects, there is much left to be desired in real life." His conclusion "De fragmentation on HFS+ volumes should not be necessary at all, or worthwhile, in most cases, because the system seems to do a very good job of avoiding/countering fragmentation. " So on paper NTFS has more features than HFS+ but when implemented in Windows shows higher fragmentation and not that impressive results. I am trying to bring you back to the point I am trying to make, Unix based systems can be configured, compiled and optimized way better than a windows os based systems, and I dont have the patience of arguing with you since it's apparent that you've have a low understanding of Unix/Linux systems. If you live close to New York I 'll be more than glad to demonstrate this to you, since I have few systems I can show you. Also look up into what OSes are corporations mainly using for their database servers, especially for the ones that require low latency on data transfer, it's highly unlikely that you will find that many Windows based servers. Anyhow I can see that you are a windows fan, and I have absolutely nothing against that, but the simple thing of you trying to prove me that Windows performs better than UNIX/Linux based systems, especially by using an Adobe app as an example is more than ridiculous. If you read up the website I gave you before phoronix.com you will see that there are several benchmarks done on EXT4, ext3 and also on Linux Battery Usage vs Windows, and you can clearly see the benefits of using Linux. FILESYSTEM BENCHMARKS Java Performance Ubuntu Linux vs Windows Vista ext4 benchmark Ubuntu vs Vista - battery usage Ubuntu 64bit vs MAC OS X Indept Comparison of File Systems I really don't spend much of my time arguing on forums, as you can see from my history of postings on Neowin. Apparently your mind is already set on Windows and you are trying to defend your point with out reading the information on any of the websites I gave you. BTW, I've been using ext4 for already 7 months, and not a single crash... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the evn show Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 I'm going to keep dragging you back to your original claims until you support or withdraw. I'll re-list them here. you Mac OS is a unix based operating system, and the way it localizes the data blocks on the harddrive minimizes the file fragmentation me Every modern operating system does this. youthis statement alone shows that you have no experience with Unix based systems. me Please explain how the block allocation policy of NTFS differs significantly from HFS+ or Ext3. (links to source code to show that HFS+ and Ext3 do the same thing—more or less—) and that Mac OS X is nothing special in this respect. youparaphrased: A bunch of stuff about track boundary hurting performance and how Mac OS X can somehow better position files on the drive. MeAnother call to substantiate your claims. I note Ext3 preferring to keep block close to their parent groups when possible as an example of Mac OS X doing nothing noteworthy (and point to relevant source code for each). I point out the small file defragmentation (with source) and contrast it with Windows weekly system defrag service again indicating that the implementation varies but the end result on OS X isn't particularly exciting. YouAnyhow I can see that you are a windows fan…Apparently your mind is already set on Windows and you are trying to defend your point with out reading the information on any of the websites I gave you. The "you're a fan boy" ad hominem. Veiled but obvious all the same. With respect to being "specifically compiled" for Macs: youApple OS is specifically compiled for the hardware that is being used, so it uses the resources much more efficiently than Windows does me Mac OS doesn't do anything particularly special - certainly nothing more special than Mac OS X or a popular Linux distribution. Rudy That's wrong, OSX is not "compiled" for their hardware, the binaries are just regular x86 binaries BUT they do take advantage of the fact that there's not a single mac out there without SSE3. you Apple used to use some universal binaries during their transition from Power PC to Intel based MACs and there were some performance hits for doing so. me There are absolutely no measurable performance hits for compiling universal vs intel or power-pc only. (Links to an authoritative book on the inner workings of the Mac OS X application launch process and to the offical description for universal binaries showing to show how this claim is impossible) you It was the non-universal code binaries emulated through roseta[sic] (I didn't post it, but this would be a good counter argument that Apple doesn't go out of their way to over-optimize for their hardware. Through their history they've often resorted to abstraction layers or emulation in order to secure backward compatibility at the expense of performance) With respect to after effects: youA great test [is to]DUAL boot [and use] regular applications. me Compare the multithreaded performance of AfterEffects…while you mac might last 30% longer it's also going to take twice as long. you Not true. Use google and you'll find your answer me I did and I found (links to a pair of benchmarks supporting my claim). Note that "twice as long" is an exaggeration, but 20% difference is certainly supported by the data. Psykx I don't know what is significantly faster exactly. Rendering, previewing the video, the interface, the whole thing me some clarification about the nature of using after effects on both platforms. youYou keep refering to this Adobe application as the holy grail of OS performance benchmarking. me (just now:) Did you say a day or two ago that a great way to compare the performance of an OS was to dual boot and run "regular applications"? And didn't I show that even if I accept your claims that a Mac can last 30% longer on a batter charge, Windows is going to get more done before it runs dead. Why the sudden about face? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts