Cool Mac Gear

Another no-drama OS X version update. After sitting out the OS 10.2.5 update due to the kernel panic flap, I ran the OS 10.2.6 combo updater on my Pismo PowerBook on the weekend.

Happily, in this instance, I don't have a whole lot to report so far.

The updater ran as smooth as silk, taking about fifteen minutes to upgrade OS 10.2.4 to OS 10.2.6. I also ran the full slate of Cocktail 2.1.1 disk maintenance routines before doing the system update install.

So far, no kernel panic; I can still dial up to the Internet; nothing broke; and all my software and utilities still work. However, yesterday, after a little more than a day of uptime, when I tried to open my Applications Folder, the Finder quit and restarted (all the Desktop icons disappeared and then reappeared). This had never happened before in OS X, although I've experienced similar phenomena in the Classic OS when the Finder memory is getting corrupted.

According to Memory Stick, my memory was maxed out, which is as usual after a day or so of uptime. I tried quitting about half a dozen applications, including memory hog (and leaker?) Mozilla Firebird, but no joy. The Finder would still quit when I tried to open the Applicartions Folder.

I quit everything and logged out/logged in. No cure. Finally I booted into OS 9, ran Disk Warrior on the OS X partition (it found only two very minor directory issues), and rebooted into 10.2.6. The problem was gone, and I expect that a simple reboot would have fixed it. However, the cause is still a mystery. There have been reports over at MacFixIt about memory leak problems in 10.2.6.

In general, my seat-of-the-pants impression is that 10.2.6 is no faster than 10.2.4. That subjective evaluation is corroborated by benchmarks posted by the Swiss website Macinfo.de (in German and English), comparing the various Jaguar builds to Mac OS X 10.1.5 as a scratch system for booting and login, (re)launching of applications, ripping a song from an audio CD, framerates in iTunes and Quake 3, framerates with transparent windows (Aqua, Quartz Extreme), Virtual PC CPU emulation.

The test hardware was a PowerBook G4/800: PowerPC G4/7455 800 MHz, 256k onchip L2 Cache (800 MHz, 1:1), 1MB L3 Cache (4:1 DDR-SDRAM = 2:1, 400 MHz), 133 MHz Bus, 512MB SDRAM, ATI Radeon "M7" Mobility 7500 (4X AGP, 32MB DDR-SDRAM, 1280x854 Pixel @32Bit), 60GB Harddisk.

The interesting thing is that these benchmarks in general find that the more recent Jaguar versions are actually slower than the early builds, and even OS 10.1.5, especially for booting, starting programs, and routine Finder tasks.

You can check it out at:
http://www.macinfo.de/bench/macosx.html

The next milestone for me will be to update the OS in my iBook, although the aforenoted benchmarks indicate that speed-wise I would be better off sticking with OS 10.2.1. I'm hoping that the battery-breaking bug that affected the 10.2.4 update has been squashed in 10.2.6. If anyone knows differently, I'd be grateful to hear about it.

So, will 10.2.6 be the last OS 10.2 update before Panther is sprung on us? I'm guessing likely not, and that there will be a 10.2.7 update, but that's just speculation. In the normal scheme of things, I doubt that we would have gone past 10.2.6 before Panther, but presumably Apple intended for a longer interval to elapse than a month or so between the 10.2.5 and 10.2.6 releases, only the kernel panic problem forced the issue. The modest size of the 10.2.6 updater indicates that it is mainly a bug fix.

In any event, OS 10.2.1; 10.2.3; 10.2.4; and 10.2.6 have all been good - running systems on my Pismo. I can't speak to 10.2.2 and 10.2.5 because I skipped both of them.

It's now more than a year and a half since my first installed OS 10.1 on this PowerBook. I haven't done a clean install since then, so the OS X installation I have now is the end product of more than half a dozen fractional and one full version updates. I suppose that someday I'm going do have to bite the bullet and do a clean install of OS X, but since 10.2.4 and 10.2.6 are the best working versions of OS X I've had yet (except for that Finnder quit glitch), I still don't see any compelling reason to do so.

Concept of Indexing

From Joseph R. Marceny

Hello Charles,

In response to the inquiry by Irwin Mortman, the solution for indexing is to forget indexing /System. It just won't work. I guess Steve J. doesn't want us mucking around with /System. However, indexing /Applications, /Library, and /Users does work.

I was surprised of your detestation of the concept of indexing. In OS X it takes about 2 minutes to do the job. As I remember, indexing in your beloved OS 9 was an ordeal that necessitated extreme patience.

Best regards,
Joseph

Hi Joseph;

Thanks for the tip for Mr. Mortman.

As for indexing in general, my experience with it is indeed based on the OS 9 version. I've never initiated indexing of my hard drive in OS X. If it's been speeded up, that's good news for those so inclined, but I remain not one of them. I really don't like stuff going on in the background automatically, and as I understand it, the Mac OS index still only indexes the first 2000 words of a document (I invite correction if this has been changed).

I prefer the freestanding text search applications.

Charles

Firebird

From: Mr Won

I want to point out a design flaw in Firebird early in the developement process. The Preferences dialog uses Apple's "Sheets", display paradigm in a somewhat counter-intuitive manner. The dialog box should not be tied to a single window, since changes made in that box affect all of the application's windows.

<rant>I wonder why Photoshop and Illustrator don't even implement Sheets in any manner or form, despite costing several hundred dollars more than any browser. Grrr....</rant>

While I'm at it, I'd also like to point out that Mozilla's warning dialogs (I don't remember how Firebird handled this, I've not used it for long enough) pop out from the title bar.
When tabs are in use, this seems to suggest that the dialog box applies to all of that window's tabs, which it doesn't.

I've no idea how hard these things are to implement, but I think it would be more accurate to have the Sheets slide out from just beneath the specfic tab to which the message refers.

Perhaps I should also let the developers know.....

Regards,
won

Thanks for the comments and observations. In general, I'm pretty impressed with Firebird so far, although my main beef it that it appears to be a major memory hog and/or memory leaker.

Charles

Software Modems

From John Dennis

I am studying for my Network+ test and I came across this information that you might like.

Hardware vs. Software Modems

Natively, an unconditioned phone line can support communications of up to about 1,200 baud. Data rates greater than that require the modem on each end to employ compression and decompression. This codec function can be implemented in the modem's hardware or in software running on the computer hosting the modem. Hardware-implemented modems are usually more efficient but cost more; software modems use computer CPU resources and if the system is less than robust, performance can suffer.

Winmodems are a class of modems developed by US Robotics (now 3COM). They're supported by the Windows operating system and offer a low-cost modem solution. Winmodems are software-implemented and can therefore drag performance down on systems with insufficient CPU and memory resources.

Hi John;

Thanks for the note.

I don;t think the issue with my iBook is either insufficient memory or processor power. The darned thing just doesn't hold onto connections as tenaciously as a real modem.

It got Firebird down with no problems on the weekend, however.

Charles

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

CM

Charles W. Moore