User Interface performance?

I

IchiroBoston

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I have been thinking about the whole Speed issues with macs.
I have been using macs for years... since the Mac+ and now using G4's and G3's all running OS-X with computers running up to 1ghz. I also have various Windows XP computers using P2 233 up to a P4-1.5ghz.

Im just wondering why the Mac OS's (especially OS-X) user interface is so slow? Opening windows, scrolling...etc. I know these are different CPU's and OS's but a Windows XP running on a P2-233 still feels snappy, windows open quick. scrolling does not lag...etc. True the processor is slow, it takes a while to load Java, or flash stuff....but just from the interface "FEELING" fast makes it FEEL faster, MUCH faster than my mac feels.
Even LINUX on PPC has a nice snappy feel to it.

Even if it takes the same amount of time to run a photoshop filter, I think everyone would like a faster UI.

LOL, just a Lunch time rant.

Thanks! :)
 
I've noticed it too. I tend to also get a lot of spinning beachballs that last a while just because I am opening windows while I have a process running (something as simple as iTunes playing). Even though it is beautifully designed (I love it regardless), I would like the OS to feel a little more responsive...
 
yea.... i've just updated my ram to 896 just to use Photoshop...
I think that OS X is definitively for newer computers...
and I all of us who have PCI macs less of 500 MHz don't will enjoy the real power of X...
Is sad because in Argentina buy a new Mac is allmost IMPOSIBLE due the relationship betwen peso (our money) and dolar...

sorry my bad english...
:rolleyes:
 
Well, you could of course use Mac OS 9.2.2, which is definitely quite a good operating system for a machine like that. Sure: You want the newest and greatest and all, but I must say that for a G4/350, OS 9 is a good alternative that still runs the newest software like Photoshop 7 very, very well. Why not switch to OS X later, when you can buy a machine that fits better?
 
For old iMacs especially with graphics which do not support Quartz Extreme and G3 CPUs OS X GUI "feels" slow but...

Even on G3/400/512RAM OS X multitasks like no Wintel up to P3/550MHz/WindowsANYversion or Mac up to G3/700/OS9 can!

I can watch DVDs and do other stuff at the same time while almost no drop in sound or frame-rate on DVD or MP3 playback for crying out loud!!!

I don't care if a GUI closes, opens, scrolls windows faster than my brain can register letter A of A-Z as long as I get my work done fast AND easy! Even on Wintels you can have Win98se act faster but will anyone serious about computers exchange that speed with Windows 2000/XP stability and multitasking capabilities? I for one, NO WAY!!! :rolleyes: I prefer OS X on any machine of G3/G4 level for most tasks than OS 9 infinity times more! But then again OS 9 has its charms now and then ;) And yes, I would like Apple to make the GUI "feel" faster and I think they are going to do it in Panther... Patience is virtue! Until Panther, Jaguar is ok for me even on older iMacs :cool: :D
 
I'm not complaining about the GUI itself. I love OS X and esp Jaguar (I've noticed a great speed increase in the OS with this upgrade), I just wish that my machine (aged as it is) would be able to run it a bit more smoothly. Heck, when the G3 tower that I currently have was designed, OSX wasn't even coded yet. Guess its time to buy a new system...
 
Two things I've found help a lot with percieved performance...

1. Memory. The more the better. Go into debt if you have to, but max out the memory on the machine. Well... maybe not go into debt, but you get the idea... The more memory you have, the less time the machine spends swapping things out to the harddrive. Swapping is, time-wise, one of the most expensive operations there is. Adding memory is probably the single most effective thing you can do to help performance. 192MB is, in my experience, just barely keeping up. We can complain all we want about bloated code and eye-candy, but memory is cheap, so there's little reason to go without..

2. QuartzExtreme. I couldn't believe the improvement I saw on my G4/500 when I dropped a Radeon card in it. It went from being just sort-of-ok to being quite acceptable. It's still not the fastest thing going, but it really helps. I know that this doesn't help in your situation (QE requires AGP gfx), but it's worth a mention.

Also, you might look at doing a processor upgrade. You don't mention the speed of your B/W tower, but even 200MHz additional would help.

My $0.02...
 
Wow, what great replies! :)
This is a great forum.

I understand that if I had the newest MPG4 with a kick a** graphic card...etc it would feel faster... but thats a lot of $$ to dump just to make it feel faster. Dont you think?

My question is how does MS make their UI snappy, even on a P2 266? and why can't apple do this?

My point, How to WIN more PC users to the Apple side? The biggest complaint that I get from PC users..... "it feels slow, scrolling sucks...etc" and there is nothing I can do but agree. (or I can say, go buy that brand new $2000 computer....but I can buy a dell for $800 with monitor and printer... :( )
And I know that photoshop...etc works better but for most users, Internet and Word processing is all they need.

:( And I feel this would be SUCH an improvement to the MAC OS.

Maybe Apple should fix this problem, I have a hard time thinking that this is a limitation of the PPC chip, but more of a programing issue.

Is this just some "S.Jobs" politics with how programers in apple program??

Ichiro
 
MS did it by cheating. I know that sounds like a slam; it is not. Seriously, they cheated.

What happened is, with either NT4 or Win2k (can't remember which), they moved much of the core graphics code (the rough equivelent of a windowserver) into kernel-space. This ensures that everything UI-related will get a slight boost over everything else. This was done expressly to improve UI performance, improving the "user experience". With Win9x, the graphics code had direct hardware access.

Unfortunately, this also means that video card drivers live in kernel space as well, making a buggy video card driver a devastating problem. Granted, the situation with video cards on Windows has improved greatly, and if you're using a well-supported card, it's likely that you'd never see a problem. But, the flawed design is still there.

Apple, on the other hand, has done the right thing in keeping the UI separated from the core as much as they have, but this can cause some performance degradation. Also, they have chosen to use the PDF (yes, the same as Acrobat documents) renderer for the UI, making everything scalable and pretty in real-time. Both of these decisions are quite expensive from a performance standpoint, and the best way to overcome that is by having a gfx card capable of the heavy-lifting involved.

The good news is that a crashed windowserver rarely impacts the rest of the system. I can still use the webserver, file server, etc. that a machine is hosting even while the spinning-beach-ball-of-despair prevents me interacting with the system directly. The few times this has happened, I just ssh into the box and reboot it gracefully, preventing damage to the filesystem with an unclean shutdown.

The point I'm trying to get to here is that comparing the UI performance of Windows vs. MacOSX is quite tricky. There are significant differences in the way they're designed that make it difficult, if not impossible, to draw a fair comparision.

As for the costs, I think the cost disparity has been beaten to death here in other threads, so I won't go into the point-for-point comparision, but I will say that $800 will get you the bottom of Dell's line, and for that, you should be comparing to the bottom of Apple's line - the eMac, which has a starting price of about $1000 (monitor included ;) ).
 
Great reply! Thanks for the info.
Makes more sense to me now, I hope Apple can find a solution to this "problem".

I guess thats another reason why MS-OS sucks. HA HA HA.

Ichiro
 
Mac OS X is coming along very well, and is orders of magnitude faster then 10.0. The reason why Microsoft is running faster in regards to the GUI is because they are still using a bitmap based graphics engine for their GUI, while Apple uses a vector based. The big difference is in clarity in the GUI. Everything in XP looks like something that could be done in the Paint program or something, while everything on Mac OSX has a great feeling of depth. Apple also has a few features that make the expierence on the Mac better then that of Windows, like double buffering all windows. This is great when you have a lot of windows on your screen, and you move a window. On windows, if you have a lot of things running at once, and you try to move around a window, a weird stuttering affect will happen, this doesn't happen in Mac OS X. Microsoft is actually going towards a composited desktop like Apple, but they aren't going to have anything ready till 2004-2005, and it will require all users to have GPU in order to use the computer. Apple on the other hand has done two things to help benefit users. One is Quartz Compositor, which does all the compositing on the CPU, while still letting everything work properly (with a slight performance hit), and two, Quartz Extreme, which takes all the compositing that was being done by the CPU, and putting it on the video card. Yes, for the time being, XP is more responsive then X, but the graphics layer on X is so much more robust, and has you covered no matter what system you have (as long as its a G3). In the long run, non-Extreme users may some day have a desktop as responsive as XP, maybe not, it all depends on your processor and video card. Quartz Extreme users are the ones who are going to see the BIGGEST improvements in the Mac OS in terms of responsiveness.
 
This is very true and is also important for the future of media production environments (okay, this IS off topic, I know). While there's still a lot of bitmaps in Apple's UI, the way for higher resolution displays (I'm talking 300 ppi rather than 120 ppi which would only make things smaller, not better) that would actively double or quadruple the resolution of the GUI and applications. I'm sure a lot of graphic designers like myself am looking forward to once again bring the fastest computer to its knees in Photoshop by looking at A4 pages in full 300 dpi resolution on screen. ;-)

(I'm also sure we'll see a lot of abuse in webdesign with 300 dpi bitmap graphics that brings broadband back to the feeling of 56K browsing.) :p
 
I must be easily satisfied, or something, maybe it was all those years using lightwave on an Amiga but, I'm pretty happy with the speed of 10.2 on my pismo powerbook, it's only got 320mb ram in it and it does slow down now and again as I reach the limit, and yeah, the window redraw is ok. But, there's no way I could go back to OS9 or even think about another OS. I'll gladly pay the performance price if it means I have this stability, the best GUI ever made, the way it works, just everything. I've used a lot of computers over the years from the old texas ti99/4a to SGI's and os X is the best experience yet, it just feels right, very personal, damn, did I say that? I'll probably die if I ever use X on a faster mac though, one day maybe.

lol
 
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