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Today's big OS X news is of course the release yesterday afternoon of the OS X 10.2.3 update. I skipped the 10.2.2 update after many reports of problems with that build, and not being particularly enticed by the list of changes.

However, I will be updating to 10.2.3, in aid of remaining reasonably current, if nothing else, and in hope of improved performance. Happily, Apple has posted a "combo" updater that will upgrade directly from 10.2.0 or 10.2.1 to 10.2.3.

You can find a complete list of OS X 10.2.3 enhancements and other upgrade information here:

A few highlights that caught my eye.

• Provides a zero all data feature in Disk Utility, for supported hard disks.
• Improves compatibility for OpenGL-based software on some computers that use ATI Rage 128 graphic accelerator chips; improves reliability for OpenGL-based software while Screen Saver effects are enabled on some computers that use ATI Rage 128 graphic accelerator chips. (My Pismo has a Rage 128 card)
• Improves keyboard navigation behavior in Column view of Finder.
• Reduces instances on some computers in which keypresses are not detected by the "Are you sure you want to shut down your computer now?" dialog box when some applications are running. (I haven't noticed this particular glitch, but I've certainly had problems with keystrokes not being detected, so improvements in this regrad will be welcomed)
• Adds a Canadian English language spell checking dictionary. (Go Canada!)

I didn't find any slam-dunk "gotta have it" changes or improvements in the published inventory, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the customary undocumented improvements and bugfixes will outweigh any new bugs that have been induced. I'll wait a few days to make sure there are no potentially disastrous consequences associated with this upgrade, but I'm going to try it soon.

For more information on the 10.2.3 update, visit:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107263

Yesterday, to readers forwarded reference to an OS X Hints article on troubleshooting a slow application loading problem in Jaguar. This has been plagueing me since I upgraded to 10.2. Applications open fairly decently when I first boot up, but after a day or so, launches (and much else) slow down to an excruciating crawl.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20021218055429153

The author notes that he found applications were taking between three and five times as long to load in Jaguar as they had under 10.1.5, and identified the culprit as preference file for Unsanity Software's FruitMenu.

After deleting this file
~/Library/Preferences/com.unsanity.fruitmenu.plist

the author's launch times returned to their pre-Jaguar times, speculating that it may have been because he had installed 10.2 over 10.1.5, where FruitMenu had been originally installed.

The author also reported "what appeared to be a relatively slow memory leak within numerous applications. Over time a number of applications would take up progressively more and more RAM until my system would begin to pageout."

On the basis of the FruitMenu problems, he decided to remove all of his Unsanity haxies (FruitMenu, Xounds, WindowShade, the Application Enhancer, the Menu Items Enabler, and Cee Pee You).

"After removing them all and their associated preference files (any file starting with ‘com.unsanity’), my memory problems were resolved."

He then reinstalled all of them, but the memory leak did not return. Presumably, the bug had something to do with preference files held over from 10.1.x.

This certainly seems like a plausible hypothesis explaining the symptoms that I've been experiencing. I have been only actually using WindowShade X and FruitMenu from among several Unsanity haxies I've checked out, but there were preference files for the others still in my Preferences folder.

As an experiment, I trashed all the Unsanity preferences, and ran the uninstallers for both WindowShade X and FruitMenu.

It's early days yet, but when I rebooted, I noticed that everything was happening much quicker that it has been recently, even after fresh startups. Windows and menus open more briskly, and Finder performance in general seems significantly snappier, although still far short of OS 9 performance. I am going to wait a day or so before reinstalling the Unsanity haxies, to see if the gradual slowdown problem really has been eliminated.

This means I am working today without WindowShade X, to which I am totally addicted, and it is driving me nuts. Does anybody really find that collapsing open windows to the Dock, where they all cluster in tiny icons that look exactly the same, a satisfactory substitute for window shading? I often have a dozen or more windows open on my Desktop collapsed to their title bars, a method that I find efficient and intuitive, and much faster then rooting around in the Dock for the one I want. Additionally, there just isn't room in the Dock to store 10 or 15 colapsed document windows, along with running applications, without the icons going microscopic.

In short, I like FruitMenu, but don't find it essential, but I simply can't get along without window shading, so I'm hoping fervently that the OS X Hints author's experience that a reinstall of his Unsanity haxies under OS 10.2 did not precipitate and return of the memory leak problem will hold true for me as well (if that was my problem at all). I'll let you know.

Also, please read Jim's letter below cautioning that problems like this tend to be ideosyncratic to particular setups, and that many folks ( would guess the vast majority) who are using Unsanity's excellent haxies are experiencing no slowdown issues.

Re: slow performance in Jaguar

From Jim

I hope that everyone is reading the link you posted from two other AppleLinks readers (re: slow Jaguar: Unsanity's "haxies") carefully. The problem might be with exporting the users folder from 10.1.5 to 10.2 when installing Jaguar and not necessarily with the apps themselves (the author of the article said that he/she elected to use the "import existing users" option.) A lot of folks (myself included) are using Unsanity programs without issue (I did a totally clean install of 10.2.) Please read the article, but read it carefully before concluding. Everyone's system is different. There are a lot of variables and perhaps we shouldn't just point to the software itself as the villain --which is what we always tend to do at the first sight of trouble.

Cheers,
JB

Re: OS X Odyssey 226 Swapfile partition

From Peter Gøthgen

Hi Charles,

You don't need any mucking about in Terminal. Just download and use SwapCop ( http://homepage.mac.com/jschrier/index.html ). It'll do the job instantly. I think its a pretty foregone conclusion that the reason you're getting the slowdown is your Swapfile partition getting too big for the free space and having to be split. 1GB isn't nearly enough for that swapfile, especially since it increases over time. I would also suggest running MacJanitor daily to take care of system maintenance tasks.

Thanks Peter;

I'll see about pursuing those suggestions if the fix outlined above doesn't hold.

Charles

OS X troubleshooting

From Michael Snider

Hi Charles--

Just in case you missed it, there is an excellent one page trouble-shooting guide to Jaguar here: http://www.macattorney.com/tutorial.html

Best,
Michael

Thanks Michael;

I'll check it out.

Charles

OS X Frag and VM

From Anon

Charles,

I just read your OS X Odyssey on defragmentation. When I saw that screenshot, my jaw hit the keyboard. How is it that you've been a Mac guy for over a decade, and never learned that keeping your disk defragged is a necessary task for reasonable, consistent performance??? As you've already learned, your resident applications are launching faster. I'll bet dollars to donuts that if you'd defrag the other volumes, as you seem to suspect, your Classic apps will also behave better, and, not only that, but many of the things you've been whining about, such as time to access Open, Save and Print dialogs will increase dramatically, too. In addition to that, it seems that we apparently need to remind you, too, that keeping your Directory and Desktop DB/DF and AppleShare PDS files in good order can also lead to noticeable increases in performance and stability. I prescribe a reboot from your DiskWarrior CD to address the former (on all volumes), and an application of Trash*Desktop to completely delete and rebuild the latter of every volume. Speed Disk is fine for the remaining need to defrag (optimisation preferred), but will not replace DW for the optimised Directory.

Quick Steps:
• Boot from DW CD
• Drag all your Volume icons except the DW CD to the DW app icon (if you want to graph them first to see how bad they are, launch DW first and graph each one)
• Follow the DW instructions for repair and replace (could take an hour or more if very bad on your OS X volume)
• Launch T*D; set the prefs to delete both Desktop and AppleShare files
• Select 'Move All Files to the Trash'
• Reboot from DW CD; allow DT to rebuild
• Run Speed Disk on all volumes

I'm also amazed that you've never heard of or tried Memory Stick, a lovely piece of freeware which will not only graph your memory for you, but is also the only tool I'm aware of that will show you exactly how many VM page files have been generated. I've included a screenshot of both Memory Stick and Memory Monitor, showing my memory status on a G4 with 1.5GB of RAM. Notice the tiny green stripe at the top of MM; that's the available free space; the white vertical lines and dramatically large page numbers are the page I/O stats for the instant I took just a simple screenshot (the OS had to make room in the memory buffer for that operation); the four dots on tom of the MS window indicate that I have four swap files out, each at 76.4MB.

Now, if I have four swap files out, currently running Entourage, Explorer, Finder, and a number of background apps, having 1.5GB of RAM, how many do you suspect you might have will less than half the RAM, and twice as many (or more) apps open as you've previously described. You're about a 400k free download from finding out.

You should now see why professionals of any real world, attentive OS X experience advise and use a dedicated VM swap partition. Even if you allow your OS X volume to degrade to the point you did (and it can look bad enough just a week from now, if you bother to check again), aside from apps slowing down, a dedicated swap volume is always clean and contiguous, and thus will not degrade your system performance unless you have enough of a memory leak (or shortage) such as to fill that partition fully.

BTW, have you ever noticed your consistent and frequent misuse of the abbreviation of 'MB' (Megabyte) when you mean 'GB' (Gigabyte)? You very often describe your "4MB" OS X partition, with only "1MB" free space. Lord!! If I could fit OS X on only 4MB, I've got a fleet of old SE30s and the like from which I could run OS X from within a RAM Disk! (;

Anon

Hi A.

I've actually been using Speed Disk for years to occasionally defragment hard drives in the Classic OS. I usually wait until the program diagnoses "moderate" fragmentation before running the defrag, because it is time consuming, and I have very little spare time.

However, even with repairing "severe" fragmentation, I mean as much as five or seven percent of files fragmented, I've never noticed any really significant performance increase in the Classic OS after defragging. Made a little improvement, perhaps, but nothing dramatic. Consequently, I've never regarded regular defragmentation as a major maintenance priority. It seems to have a more substantial effect with OS X, perhaps because of the many thousands of tiny system files.

I actually ran Disk Warrior a week or so ago. Worth doing, but didn't seem to boost performance noticeably. I will have to check out Memory Stick.

My general observation here is that while I don't disagree with you that intensive maintenance and upkeep of OS X and will doubtless help keep performance optimized, this is not real world relevant to the way the vast majority of people use their computers. In my experience, non computer enthusiast users rarely do any disk or system maintenance at all. The time aspect is one thing. The fact that you need a bunch of third-party utility applications, that most people don't have, is another. If this sort of regime is absolutely necessary in order to extract decent, consistent performance OS X, then Apple should bundle the necessary utilities along with instructions for their use. Also, the OS X versions of maintenance utilities are not getting very good reviews.(see reports here: http://www.whiterabbits.com/macnetjournal/ and here:http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06954) I'm still using my arsenal of old Classic utilities, which is another reason why I am unenthusiastic about the end of dual-booting.

One of the things that I love about the Classic Mac OS is that it is extremely low maintenance in my experience. Since OS 8.6 I have found that I only need to run Norton Disk Doctor and/or Disk Warrior two or three times a year to clean up any directory damage from crashes, and aside from that basically just use it.

As for the in GB/MB transposition, I plead guilty. I am prone to doing the same thing with dates (eg: 1987/1997, etc.) Must be a mild form of dyslexia or something, probably incurable. I know what I mean, at least. ;-)

Charles

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

CM

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear