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Tom Bender, developer of my favorite text editor -- Tex Edit Plus -- has taken time out from programming to offer more commentary on OS X speed issues and other matters.

Tom writes:

Dear Favorite Journalist:

I wanted to let you know that I agree with John Farr's recent article ("Commentary: I'm With Charles").

I far as I can recall, you never shade your opinions or let our cherished computer company off the hook for making bonehead decisions. (Let's face it--they've made plenty.)

Please don't ever stop doing exactly what you're doing -- praise 'em when they do good and rag 'em when they screw up. A single person offering thoughtful, constructive criticism can do more to improve the Mac (and Apple's bottom line) than a whole army of boot lickers.

And, speaking of OS X speed...

;-)

In OS X Odyssey 192, you wrote:

Incidentally, Tom Bender, developer of Tex-Edit Plus...ran some actual speed comparisons between OS 9 and Jaguar, which appeared in OS X Odyssey 175...

1. Launch and open in ClarisWorks
OS X - 3
OS 9 - 4
2. Scroll entire doc
OS X - 42
OS 9 - 12
3. Find and replace 8640 occurrences OS X - 3
OS 9 - 2

That scroll time tells the tale for me -- more than 3.5x as long...

As stated in my letter, the OS X times were recorded while _simultaneously_ doing a lot of other things. The OS 9 times were recorded while OS 9 was doing nothing more than updating the menubar clock. No, wait, OS 9 doesn't even update the clock while scrolling.

;-)

I was trying to make a point about "speed" meaning different things to different people. (Maybe I should leave article-writing to the professionals!)

Anyway, here are some other OS X speed thoughts:

1. Windows and dialogs appear more slowly in X, but they also disappear more quickly thanks to buffering. (A reporter once asked Bum Phillips if it bothered him that Earl Campbell got up so slow after each play. "Nope. He goes DOWN real slow, too.")

2. "Active feedback" makes things seem slow, but can actually speed up workflow. For example, resizing a foreground window to reveal a background graphic is quicker in OS X. OS 9 forces you to go through the standard ritual: resize, wait for content redraw, wait for background update, notice that you need to resize a little more, resize, wait for content redraw, etc.

3. Anti-aliased text may draw and scroll more slowly, but for many people, including myself, it's easier to read--again speeding up workflow. In addition, most OS X-ophiles have grown accustomed to the more useful "live" scrollbars, which are inconsistently implemented in OS 9 programs. (I've also gotten very attached to my scroll wheel and right mouse button--both of which are natively supported by OS X but curiously absent on Apple's pointing device. Apple, are you listening?)

4. Menus drop more slowly in OS X, but I sometimes have trouble getting menus to drop _at all_ in OS 9, depending on background activity. And heaven help my unsaved documents if the background process doesn't take kindly to being interrupted!

5. Some programs may take longer to launch, but once you convert to the OS X "way of thinking," you realize it's not necessary to meticulously quit idle programs. In a production environment, it's certainly feasible to just leave everything running. Put the computer to sleep every night and then wake it up (much faster than OS 9, BTW) every morning.

6. Column view provides faster file navigation.

Perhaps a good metaphor would be a comparison of the "speed" of a new 325Ci (OS X) vs. a '68 Hemi 'Cuda (OS 9). If home and job are on the opposite ends of an abandoned airport runway, then the 426 is the way to go -- it'll suck the headlights out of the Beemer. If, on the other hand, you live in Houston, you might want to be able to stop or turn occasionally.

I have nothing but fond thoughts of OS 9, which, until recently, sported the most elegant computer interface ever created. But the time's come to retire those 8-tracks.

Sincerely,
Tom

Hi Tom;

Thanks muchly for the supportive remarks about my scribbling. Greatly appreciated.

Thanks also once again for taking the time to comment on the OS X speed issue, and my apologies for any misrepresentation of what you intended to say in the benchmarks I cited. Your qualifying paragraphs in the letter that appeared in OS X Odyssey 175 were separated from the timing stats by four other paragraphs, and I missed them when I pulled the quote. Here they are:

"OS X has introduced us to the concepts of true concurrency and true crash resistance. With OS X, I can listen to my iTunes AND download 100 megs of graphic files AND recompile a million lines of code AND burn a CD while simultaneously writing a letter to my favorite journalist.

"As a matter of fact, that is EXACTLY what I was doing while timing the OS X half of the 'benchmarks' above!"

Charles

Re: Firmware updates

From Jonathan Tyzack

Hi Charles,

I've seen a few complaints about this firmware issue around the Mac web - apparently some people have suffered fried motherboards because they didn't update (so you have been warned ;-). However, this is mostly a PEBCAK issue and somewhat Apple's fault too.

Take a look at your MacOS X installer disk - what is that file called "Read me BEFORE you install" for (my emphasis, btw)? It is to tell you various important bits of information about the install process and what you should check/do beforehand. Guess what? Check and update your firmware is one of them - the installation disk even has the updaters on it so, in a big way, this is the person's own fault who didn't bother to read or pay heed to this info. However, where Apple is remiss is by allowing the install to proceed without a warning or actual block of the install process in the absence of the Firmware update. They shouldn't have allowed it, pure and simple.

Anyway, if you want to check your current firmware, run Apple System Profiler (Applications>Utilities) and it is this bit of info here:

(That is, my firmware is 4.1.9f1 and up to date)

My advice is to update it ASAP if it isn't current, though what effect that would have on your current install, I don't know. Perhaps do it if/when you repartition your drive and are thus going to do a clean install anyway. FWIW, if it disables any of your RAM then it is because it isn't of good enough quality and should/will cause you problems otherwise. No reason other than that! However, the issue I think you remember is when Apple sneakily prevented B&W G3's (IIRC) from accepting G4 upgrade cards via a firmware update when the G4 was first released. That is history now and not something that has been repeated since and hopefully not something that will be repeated again.

Now, onto the important bit of my e-mail - I have recently installed the latest ATi October 2002 Retail update (search Versiontracker) and Jaguar is now noticeably zippier in actions such as rendering of web pages, opening of windows and menus and, to a lesser extent, scrolling. Still not OS9 "speed", but definitely milliseconds faster than before which does add up. Btw, don't be deceived by the name Retail - it is suitable for built-in cards as well (like in my iMac). Of course, any improvement will depend on the type of graphics card you have in your machine (Rage 128 in mine) so your mileage may vary... greatly.

However, one very important word of caution, and this is probably worth pointing out as a FYI anyway - ATi have stuffed up with their installer as it doesn't create files with the correct permissions. I'm not sure if you know this yet, but Disk Utility is now able to repair file permissions on the boot disk which is good news as I am finding that quite a few third party VISE installer or .pkg installations are causing permissions problems afterwards. To repair your permissions, launch Disk Utility, select the Disk First Aid tab and then highlight your OS X partition/disk. Hit "Repair Disk Permissions" and let it do its business. I wouldn't bother with verification first as this process is quite slow and all you will find at the end of it is that you need to repair some files anyway which is equally as slow. The worst situation I have had so far is when an installer completely altered the permissions on my Applications folder (preventing me from copying anything to it) and more worryingly, several files in my ~/Library folder. Evidently a situation that Apple and other companies need to be much, much more aware of! I now routinely run DU after any .pkg or VISE installation which is a pain, but apparently necessary! Btw, this is not the same as repairing the disk (which, unfortunately, is still not possible without rebooting from the Installer disk or by running fsck -y in Single User mode at boot time). Oh yeah, although it is in the Readme, when it has finished the ATi installer doesn't tell you that you need to reboot to get the benefits of the update!

Cheers,
Jonathan

Thanks for the excellent and helpful info, Jonathan. OS9 System profiler doesn't seem to show the Boot ROM info, and I'm running in 9.2.2 this morning, but will check mine as soon as I'm back in X. Guess I'v living dangerously on the firmware thing.

I wonder if the October 2002 ATI Retail updater would boost performance with the video card in my Pismo, which is a portable version of the RAGE 128. Worth a shot I guess.

Thanks also for the info on repairing permissions with Disk Utility. I must check that out soon.

Charles

Inkwell On iBook

From Richard Chapman

Dear Charles:

I'm having the same problem as you with Inkwell on a 700Mhz G3 iBook. I know I've done all the right stuff: Installed the Wacom driver (latest beta), enabled handwriting recognition in the Global preferences page, even tried starting the InkServer app by hand (deep in the /System directory). The InkBar never shows up. I've also used Inkwell with no problem on a G4 iMac, so I think I am following the right directions.

I notice on Apple's page that they say Inkwell works on new iMacs and Powerbooks, which was strange (no mention of PowerMac's or iBooks or eMacs). I wonder if you need a G4 to run InkServer. Just a thought. I'd appreciate it if you post any solution you find on Applelinks.

Yours,
Richard Chapman

Hi Richard;

It's reassuring in a way to hear that it's not just me. However I think someone wrote to say that they had Inkwell working on a Pismo.

A mystery. If I discover a solution, you'll hear about it here.

Charles

Re: Data Loss?

From Bill DeVille

Charles:

After updating to OS X 10.2.1 (and the latest version of Internet Explorer) I saw some flaky behavior. Didn't lose any data, but couldn't find some files that I knew should be on the hard drive.

Every week or so, and immediately when something strange happens, I do three maintenance operations:

[1] Run Disk Warrior from the CD. This will clean up any directory errors on the OS X startup disk. Disk Warrior usually finds at least minor errors and corrects them.

[2] On reboot, press Command-S and run the "fsck -y" routine. If any change results, do it again. When no problem is found, enter "reboot" and press return for a restart into OS X.

[3] Open Disk Utility, select the OS X startup drive or partition, click on the First Aid tab, and click on Repair Permissions. I've been installing, updating or uninstalling a number of programs recently, and this routine has routinely been finding permission errors when I run it.

I've got 16.18 GB on my OS X startup partition right now, so the Disk Warrior and Repair Permissions routines take a while to churn through to completion. But it's worth it; My TiBook 500 MHz with a 60 GB 5400 RPM HD and 1 GB RAM runs quickly and I'm not losing data.

Regards,
Bill DeVille

Hi Bill;

Good advice. I do run Disk Warrior and fsck fairly frequently. I haven't been doing the Disk Utility thing, which Jonathan also mentioned in his letter above, but it sounds like a good idea.

Charles

Some interesting freeware

From Eric Daniels

Dear Charles,

As much as I disagree with you about your OSX complaints/perceptions, and even though I think your rigid conformity to your work habits in OS9 are a burden to your ever moving forward and liking OSX, I am willing to concede that you do have your preferred way of doing things and that this is your prerogative.

So, being a decent guy, I figured I would forward you some info on a program you may like--which may improve your OSX experience. If you do not check RAILheaddesign.com regularly, you should check out the update from this Friday. Maury has a review of iChoose 0.5, which is freeware and sets up a useful little menubar item with links and automated tasks. I figured that you're into these little timesavers, so you might like it. You may like it, you may not. I can never tell with you, to be honest.

There: now you have proof that a Jag-lover who vehemently supports the OSX-perience can still have the good will to share some tidbits here and there. Even if, in my mind, your writings border on the bizarre, techno-phobic Luddite vein, I still think you should keep doing what you are doing. People seem to like it (whether because they agree with you or because you make a good bugbear for the disgruntled).

Reagrds,
Eric

Hi Eric;

Thanks for the iChoose tip. I'll have to check it out.

I'm really not as hidebound as you seem to think. Since I installed Jaguar, I've been running in OS X *roughly* one third of the time. I'm now in that awkward phase where when I'm in OS 9 I miss stuff about OS x and vice-versa.

Charles

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

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