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Would you care to share your machine specs?
Would you care to share your machine specs? From Michael Koren Charles Based on the latest rash of letters to you, how about letting us know specifically the specs and reality of your Pismo that is so slowed by System X. How much RAM you have, the size of your hard disk, how much of it is left available. Sounds like this could possibly be related to some of the speed issues you are complaining about. Some of your readers will no doubt want to offer suggestions. For myself, I have 10.1.5 and yes, system 9.2.1 is faster, but I no longer am shocked by the speed difference as I used to be with earlier versions of 10. In fact, sometimes they seem nearly the same speed. Now I have a Pismo 400 with 768 MB ram and my 18GB hard disk only has about 1.4GB room left, which according to one letter anonymous writer, the moving of the swapfiles needs more than that (nearly 1.7GB free space) to keep the speed up. So I am indeed moving into thin ice. And with due respects, after nearly 20 years of Macs - Plus, IIX, Performer 640, Wall Street 250, and Pismo 400 (the 2nd to 4th running networked simultaneously till about 4 years ago - Macs LIVE ON!) - running System X is the FIRST time I'm feeling a high level of comfort that my system won't come down on me. I run seminars with my Pismo at the hub doing a variety of functions in the hands of Windows-trained technicians. Simultaneous word processing, audio,video, Powerpoint, and even at times internet. Connected to a data projection and an audio system, over the 3 days of constant use, the system would crash about once per day (sometimes twice - yes Microsoft is a pain and powerpoint and iTunes HATE each other). The last seminar I did was the first using System X and Classic. And we ran an unbelievable number of apps during the 3 days including powerpoint and iMovie and iTunes and Classic with Photoshop and Word and Acrobat Reader and Text Edit and Preview and do I need to continue? - AT ONCE!! - I'm nearly out of breath! And there were NO crashes for 3 days. Unbelievable. I mean, Windows-savvy people who opened things on my computer they didn't realise they were opening and thinking that closing a window quit ('exited') the program! Using 10.1.3 - and I now find 10.1.5 much steadier and definitely faster. Michael
Hi Michael;
Sure, here goes:
PowerBook Pismo
My speed complaints are largely related to Finder response, slow scrolling and menu activation in documents; little lags and hesitations all over the place in contrast to OS 9.2.2 which is right there right now.
As I have said here many, many times before, if I was having the stability problems some users have experienced in the Classic OS, I would embrace OS X gladly. However, I don't. But for the sort of use you describe, I would say that using X is a no-brainer for the increased stability alone.
Charles From L. G. Baker Greetings from one of the small cities spoored across the wilderness of Western Canada. I am always seeking sources of informed opnion about Apple and it's computers. I have really only brought my attention to bear on the Macintosh over the past couple of years but I must say that I am impressed by the quality of the commentary on Apple's announcement to run with OSX next year. I have learned many things following this thread - perhaps the item that startled me most to learn was that a person can use two mice simultaneously in OS9. Eureka! I am amazed and humbled - once again brought to the hard reality that I have deeper exploration of the Apple operating systems to conduct. I reside in a one mouse town no longer! I can hardly wait to dispense this wonderful news to the other Mac users of Cranbrook. Meanwhile I will continue to follow your OSX odyssey with even more attention.
Regards,
Hi LG;
Greetings from the wilds of Eastern Nova Scotia (Cranbrook is comparatively a teeming metropolis)
I actually have two mice (one foot-operated), a freestanding trackpad, and the PowerBook's built-in trackpad hooked up to this Pismo right now. If I had three hands, I could input simultaneously from all four devices in OS 9. This partly works in OS X too, but multi-mouse click-dragging is not supported.
Charles From David W. Murray Dear Charles, My $0.02 (US) on the removal of OS9 boot capability, posted to "Applelinks" forum. I suspect that both Liberals and Exies will take umbrage, but they do enjoy it so.
Best,
It has been well said that a Liberal does not really care what anyone does, as long as it is compulsory. (Steve jobs' political views are known to diverge somewhat from Charlton Heston's) OS X has been compulsory in nature from the get-go. Stevie's NEXT minions invented the Dock (Steve isn't a Mac OS man, he's a NEXT man), and this fairly trivial app is seen by them as the greatest innovation since sliced tofu. Now, Steve is smarter than you, he's been to India, you know, so to make sure that you use the Dock, all alternatives to it, such as the configurable Apple Menu, the Launcher, the Application Switcher, and Windowshading, were not included. You VILL use the Dock! I note that Jagwire broke both ASM, and Classic Menu. What a co-inkey-dink. The X.2 installer allows one to edit printer drivers and language packs, but that's all. It requires the installation of all the silly bells and whistles which are supposed to divert our attention from the fact that X is still slower than 9.2, and lacks such basic capability as the printing of custom paper sizes (at least on Epson.) Compulsory. Despite the fact that the vast majority of Mac users run a single computer, OS X is set up for multiple, paranoid users on a corporate network. There is no single user environment option. Compulsory. Don't even get me started on such compulsory restrictions as "You do not have sufficient privileges to empty the freakin' trash!" So why are we surprised when Steve goes one step farther in compelling users to "do it his way" by REMOVING an existing capability, that of booting into 9.2? The signs have been there all along. It's like a bad "Sopranos" script, fer Crissake; "Vinnie, ya gotta use X, da boss don't like it when people don't use X." I propose that we start a pool here at Applelinks, where we choose the date when Steve will disable Classic entirely. I figure about mid-03. The Mac OS used to be about freedom and choice. There were hundreds of ways to configure and use a Mac, and we all did. Now, in the same manner that Political Correctness reduces freedom to the right to do anything that Hillary approves of, you are free to configure and use your Mac in the manner approved by Steve, AND NO OTHER! The above dictum would be understood by, and approved of by any old Politruk from the Central Committee in Omsk or Tomsk (Or was it Minsk and Pinsk?) Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have a hellofa lot more in common with each other than either does with us. Redhawk I brake for hallucinations.
Hi David;
You have captured a substantial element underlying my initial volatile response to the end of dual-booting announcement. PC P.C. if you will.
The irony of the company that commissioned the famous 1984 commercial exercising these Big Brother-esque policy decisions (not limited to the dual-boot issue by a long shot) is immense.
Charles Your objection to MacOS X booting again? From Wayne Folta Charles, I read your long mailbag and your notes and I appreciate your publishing it, but I'm more puzzled than ever. You apparently object to a future MacOS-X-only booting policy on future machines because you say an older MacOS X (10.1.4) on your old tattered G3 runs MacOS X too slowly. But how MacOS X runs on your current (outdated) system has nothing to do with how it will run on a future (radically faster) system. Not to mention that it will probably be a future version of MacOS X, and X has been progressing at great speed, so this is a big issue. Heck, 10.2 is fast enough on my old G4 dual 500MHz, much less 10.3 on a G4 that's 3x faster with RAM that's 2x faster and a graphics card that's way faster as well. (Faster graphics card is very important, since Quartz Extreme offloads screen drawing, freeing up even more cycles in the faster G4.) So what was your objection again?
Hi Wayne;
In a nutshell:
1. One biggie, as I intimated in my musings, is the way Apple has done this. I'm not unreasonable. If there is a hardware technical reason (say new chipset) that makes it impractical to support OS 9 booting, I'm OK with that. Sad, but the old order passeth. What riles me is that it appears that Apple will arbitrarily block dual-booting even on machines that carry over the current hardware after the Jan. 2003 line in the sand passes, even though there is no compelling technical reason to do that.
2. The guy with an 800 MHz G4 TiBook who benchmarked 10.2 against 9.2.2 provided a detailed breakdown of how much slower Jaguar is than OS 9 in most categories tested. If I buy a new system in the next 12 months or so, it's likely to be an iBook. Do you think we'll see 800 MHz G4 iBooks or faster by January 2003 (or even July 2003)?
3. OS X is progressing, but from what I've gleaned in many reviews and anecdotes, the speed gains with Jaguar over 10.1.x are modest, and it's still slower than OS 9. Consequently, I'm skeptical that we'll see even speed parity with the old OS by four months from now.
4. My critique of the boot policy pronouncement is not just in reference to my personal circumstances. I am, I think, articulating the frustrations of a large proportion of Mac users, especialy pro users, who object to being dragooned into switching completely to OS x before it's ready, which I (along with Steve Wozniak, David K. Every, John siracusa, and a cast of thousands maintain that it isn't.
Charles From Jeff Walker Hello, I feel that I have to point out that you want it both ways. One time you say you can't afford to upgrade to a new machine. Next you say Apple should allow dual boot for all their new systems. Since it does not seem that you will be in the market for a new machine anytime soon what does it matter? The machines you have now will dual boot just fine so you are all set as long as you are happy running your current applications. In two years when you are ready to purchase a new system or a new used system (which will most likely dual boot just fine) OS X will be a very mature (OS X V. 10.4) operating system and most if not all of your issues will be history or at least better be since you are a member of the Mac press and clearly OS X is the future and in a couple years you won't have much to write about. So the bottom line is that this decision by Apple to release machines in 2003 that only boot into OS X has no impact on you. Jeff
Hi Jeff;
Actually I am reluctantly in the hunt for another computer to replace my dearly departed WallStreet PowerBook. I can't really afford a new computer right now, and plan A was to try and pick up another older PowerBook or to soup up my UMAX PCI tower machine.
However, the end of dual-booting has obliged me to re-evaluate my plans (again), and perhaps break the piggy-bank and grab one of the last dual-boot machines. Even if OS X, as I expect it will, eventually offers acceptable performance, I still deem it a big advantage to be able to boot into OS 9 for as long into the future as possible.
Interestingly, an awful lot of professional Mac users, including Mac Web writers, are still using OS 9 as their main axe, and just dabbling with OS X.
Charles Non-9-Booting Macs stole my lunch money From Matthew Gallyer Hi Charles, My question is who abandoned who ? Lets look at the compatibility of Apple's current (transitional) Mac lineup.
1. Legacy Macs can run the legacy OS
Lets look at the compatibility of Apple's forthcoming 2003 Mac lineup.
1. Modern Macs WILL NOT run the legacy OS
It's obvious you have plenty of choice here. It's also obvious that this change wont happen on 1/1/2003. It takes Apple a good while to transition it's entire lineup to a new architecture. I'm willing to bet you ten of your funny dollars, that one year from now you will still be able to buy a Mac from Apple that runs MacOS 9. Just as you can still buy a CRT iMac from Apple today 3 years after Apple moved to the G4 chip and a year after all new Macs were to be LCD. It seems Apple has gone to great lengths to make people like you happy. By providing the Classic environment, Apple (and the people who want to use X full time) have compromised and probably delayed the release date of X by one full year just to get Classic working properly. If you look at Carbon you could probably add another two years onto that. So to say that they are abandoning you after putting in at least 3 years effort to make the unavoidable transition as smooth as possible is pretty crazy. Think about when the last time you bought a new Mac, and then think why Apple should spend more time and money to make your life easier. Haven't they done enough work on this transition to finally put it behind them and get on with the modern system they envisioned six years ago ?
Regards,
Hi MG;
If indeed the termination of dual-boot support pertains only to new models for which it would be too expensive to engineer OS 9 booting, and if OS 9 boot support is not arbitrarily removed from models with the existing engineering as you suggest it won't be, I will not complain.
Charles From James Rae Smith Hello Charles I followed your OSX Odyssey series for the first few months, as it was interesting to read the views of someone who (despite your protestations to the contrary) clearly hates OSX and all that it stands for with a passion, but of late in my opinion your mental needle has got stuck in in a rather dispiriting groove over this. You seem unable to mention any of the improvements it introduces without a note of sarcasm in your writing and your distress at Apple's logical, inevitable, well heralded and totally necessary switch to OSX, while utterly heartfelt, is completely misplaced. You say your main grouse is about the speed hit OSX imposes on you, but you are talking about an OS (10.2) that you openly admit you have not tried, running on machines that have not yet been released. While I do not think this is very fair or even particularly fine journalistic practice, I am willing to bet that these new machines will compare very favorably with your current PowerBook, which I believe is the comparison you should make, to suggest otherwise suggests that Apple should return to a System 6 for all its hardware to make them really scream or perhaps to a pure CLI interface. In reality I believe what you really dislike of OSX is more a matter of aesthetics and underlying philosophy, the fact that the Aqua icing which I suspect you find too garish, does not really disguise the complex ugly unix core of the OS, so for those of us without a propeller extension to the cranium, it will never have the classic OS's simplicity or flexibility, and in addition for you in particular, unlike the vast majority of us, there is little or no compensating gain in stability or functionality. While obviously I do not share your experience of OSX, although I will admit that there are still too many rough edges to it, (and by the way I have been using Macs for the last 12 years or so), far more important to me is that it represents the best chance Apple has had in many a year to increase its miserable current market share of 3% or so. For a platform to thrive rather than survive or slowly wither away it needs good original compelling mainstream software written for it, not just ports of Windows apps and nifty shareware utilities. Ports always carry some of the character of the platform they were designed for, and generally seem to fit and work better on that platform. The importance of Photoshop, conceived and designed around the Mac is hard to underestimate, (even if you don't use it it should give you some pride in your platform), but it is hard to imagine a similar groundbreaking app being created for the Mac today. We do not currently have the market share to justify this, which is why Apple has to spend so much of it's energy on the iApps and the purchase of niche software companies as well as running the "Switch" campaign. OSX is responsible for the increased respect that Apple is garnering from mainstream PC centric journalists such as David Coursey and from the Unix/Linux types running servers in business, and as such this is a bargain well worth making. You have a choice. Either start a Grumpy Old Man's Mac User Group which will be the political front organisation for the more youthful and extreme OS9 Liberation Front, (and you have plenty of correspondents to your column who will join) or quit your moaning and get with the program. All the best
James Rae Smith
Hi James;
Actually, I'm fairly indifferent about GUI aesthetics. I would be perfectly content with the looks of System 6 (actually I liked the looks of System 6). I've never been especially in love with Platinum, and I find Aqua quite attractive, but what I really care about is the way they work, and for reasons that I've articulated in this space on numerous occasions, I'm not smitten with the way the OS X Finder works.
I don't hate OS X, and I approached this Odyssey saga with an open mind, but the assessment of an open mind does not necessarily guarantee an uncritical embrace of the innovation under review. I have no prejudicial bias against OS X, but I'm not going to express admiration for the Emperor's new clothes, so to speak, without the substance there to justify it.
I've tried using OS X for production repeatedly, and it's a lot slower and clunkier, for a whole myriad of mostly finder-related reasons, than OS 9 is, on my machine, and for what I do. When it provides as good or better performance than OS 9, I'll happily proclaim that, and use OS X.
I share your concern with Apple's dwindling market share, but precisely on that point, I am apprehensive that arbitrararily angering and alienating a subststantial proportion of the proven Mac user base (did you read the letters?) on the unproven premise that hordes of new users will be flocking from Windows/Linux/Unix to take their place, is a very dangerous gambit. So far, OS X has not proved to be any sort of panacea for boosting market share, which has continued to erode in the OS X era.
I fear that Apple is selling the skin of the bear before they have him on the ground.
Charles From Michael Shelton Charles, I keep seeing your use of speed and 'efficiency' in OS9. I have been using OSX since release of 10.0. Based on my past experience, my jaw drops each time I see your use of 'efficiency' to describe OS9. Since I started using a Mac again back in 1997 (a 6500), I could not count the hours and days spent resolving system extension conflicts, crashes, etc. In 1998 with the introduction of the original iMac, I convinced my then partner to buy one. Before even one third party program and been installed, it was crashing on startup. It wouldn't even load all the extensions. I spent several days before finally wiping the drive and doing a full system and software reinstall (which only partly corrected the problem). My partner kept asking me "I thought the Mac was supposed to be so much easier than Windows". Sorry, but I didn't have a good reply. He was right. I was using Windows 95 at work myself and must stay it was far more reliable. Simply embarrassing. On my next Mac, an original 400Mhz graphite iMac special edition, one day after installing a driver for a UMAX scanner, system went down. Restart would freeze before loading all extensions. I removed every extension I could find for that scanner. Did not solve the problem. Used Conflict Catcher for countless hours, could not resolve the problem. Finally had to do a full system restore and reinstall all of my third party software. Countless hours lost and white hairs on my head. Upgraded my old 6500 and gave it to my brother with a copy of MYOB to run his small business. Guess what, MYOB had aconflict with some other third party software. Fortunately after only 1-2 hours with Conflict Catcher I resolved the issue. Most recently, I convinced another friend to buy a Mac for her two sons ages 3 and 5 last Christmas. Graphite iMac (?700Mhz). She bought several Fisher Price educational games for them. Guess what? I get a call saying the computer 'keeps crashing'. Conflict Catcher was long history by this point for me as I had been using OSX for some time and when I was unable to track down culprit extensions I finally just did a full system restore as they had only loaded a few third party programs at that point. Needless to say, this is not what they expected from a $1500 machine and they were left wondering if they should have bought a Wintel. BTW, did I mention this costs me an entire afternoon and evening? The above are only examples and by no means all the crashes I have dealt with from OS8 and 9. Crashes to me are a vague memory now. The minimal performance issue between 9 and X is nothing compared to the time and frustration and embarrassment I have endured in the past. I am no longer hesitant to recommend a Mac and recently convinced another friend to get one. He has had no problems and NO CRASHES. People can safely 'switch' now, and prior to OSX (and Jaguar to be honest), Apple could not have put out its 'Switch' campaign (please reference above for why). I breathe a sigh of relief with OSX. Yes, it is still lacking in some features, but it will continue to improve. I am happy you have not had the problems I have encountered, but I know I'm not the only one who has endured these problems. You said: In the meantime, it seems nonsensical to use OS X and take a 20 percent slowdown in work efficiency for the sake of..... ????? ????? = STABILITY (and lots of it) I do however, feel badly for the wonderful people at Cassady and Greene...
Sincerely,
Hi Michael;
I don't doubt what you say. Certain combinations of Mac hardware and applications have been wretchedly cranky under the Classic OS. In my experience, the 6500 was one of the most unstable Macs ever built (I do tech support for a friend who has one), and I've seen certian iMacs exhibit the behavior you describe.
However, my personal experience running the classic Mac OS on a succession of machines since 1992 has been the polar opposite of yours. Earlier this year, I managed to go just short of two weeks of 10-12 hour work days doing production on my WallStreet PowerBook under OS 9.1 without a restart. Crashes have simply not been a big issue for me, especially since the release of OS 9.0 in 1999. Consequently, the crash resistant stability of OS X, while welcome and nice to have, is not a compelling reason for me to switch and put up with the significant performance hit. Using OS X really does add hours to my workday. That's not efficiency in my books.
Charles From Gene Steinberg Two things: 1. You don't know whether he made his comment about Mac OS X after using Jaguar or before. 2. It's up to you, but as a Mac journalist, you should be using the latest and greatest, at least as far as Mac OS X is concerned, before you can accurately comment on speed and productivity.
Peace,
Hi Gene;
Can't say about Woz, but Dave Every and John Siracusa made their similar comments after fairly exhaustive test drives of Jaguar.
My only comment on Jaguar speed has been linking to and quoting the evaluations of people like that who I consider reliable critics. My comments on the productivity issue have all explicitly noted that I'm still using 10.1.4.
In your experience, can you affirm that Jaguar offers significant improvements in speed over 10.1.5 overall?
Charles
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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