G5 2.7 and Tiger Impressions

[mindbend]

Just got a DP G5 2.7 a few days ago. Thought I'd post my initial impressions of it, especially in regard to Tiger. I kept a list of observations as I was installing apps and using the system in general.

Specs:
Dual G5 2.7
4.5 GB RAM
Default ATI Radeon 9600
Tiger 10.4

1. Booting is not super fast. 45 seconds at best from cold to launching Textedit. I don't really care either way, it's not like I need to boot very often.

2. Very quiet overall. Fans kick in from time to time in a slow crescendo. It's interesting to see when the computer really has to "think". I am now annoyed by computers across the room from me (older wind tunnel models) in stead of my own machine.

3. I like how the setup screen pulled my info from my .Mac account and had it all filled out for me. Nice touch.

4. Spotlight is very fast. It is a feature mostly worthy of the hype, however I would like an option for the good old fashioned in-line searching (maybe type colon first or something). Also, Spotlight needs to be smarter. For example, I typed "ea the donkey" in a file note field. When I spotlighted "eat the donkey" it couldn't find it because of my typo. However, in other cases Spotlight did find things for me far faster and easier than older methods, so it'll be a good thing overall. I like how Spotlight remembers your last search. I'm sure it's been discussed, but I don't recall seeing any mention of how Spotlight is essentially a more robust version of OS 9's indexed file searching, right?

5. Initial application launch times not much faster than older systems (Dual G4s I'm used to). Once they are cached, they relaunch very quickly. For example, Photoshop went from 7 seconds to 3 seconds (initial launch versus cached launch). InDesign went from 8 seconds to 2 seconds. Unfortauntely, this is mostly meaningless as it is highly unlikely that I would be able to take advantage of a cached launch. The good news is that with 4.5 GB RAM I can leave a lot of shizzle open. Most of the smaller apps launch in a second or two at most.

6. IMO, an unfortunate hodge podge is happening with Sherlock, Dashboard and the self contained Dictionary app. There are now at least three places to go for dictionary services. I presume the Dashboard widget simply accesses the Dictionary app, which is fine, but Sherlock really needs to die. Sherlock is just Dashboard with tabs. Let it go.

7. I see Help is as clunky as ever. A simple search on "Network" is still searching after a minute. Some other searches that I can't recall gave me flat out wrong information. In fact, now it isn't even working for me at all. Nothing works in Help. Maybe a reboot will help, but it isn't the first time I've had trouble using Help in Tiger on the new box. Update: Now I see it's working, just very slowly. Why does it take so damn long to show results in Help Viewer?

8. Chess is choppy when moving the board around in 3D. This is unacceptable in principle, even though I could really care less given the app. Note I have the lower end 9600 card, but still, it's just Chess.

9. After installing some apps I get a note about the OS wanting to fix security settings on a given file. Choosing the help (?) option gives me a blank Help Viewer. Of course, I fix the security thing (I assume it's a privileges thing or something?), but it's a shame they don't really explain what the point of it is or otherwise put people at ease (not that I'm worried about anything, but others wil be).

10. Resizing the window in Safari shifts the background texture in the bookmark bar area. Bug?

11. iWork already installed, just had to enter my existing serial number. Thanks Apple!

12. One of the Automator Tutorials was inaccurate. It was missing actions that the tutorial specified. I have since tried to find that turorial, and can't find it (in the Help Viewer). Go figure.

13. The 16x DVD drive is LOUD. Real LOUD.

14. Great case design, but that was a given. I still think the previous model finger-pull-latch system has yet to be beat in a case, but the G5 is nice too. The thing is a beast, but looks sharp.

15. Dashboard. I still think it's slightly overrated, given how much they hyped it, but it's kind of neat. Looking forward to various third party utilities. I might even have a programmer build me a widget or two if I think of anything worth the trouble.

16. iSync is kind of screw now IMO. I'm trying to go from memory, but I think I had to use Sys Prefs to set up general syncing info, but I had to use the iSync app to add a new device (ipod). Does that sound right? Whatever I did, it wasn't as obvious as it should be and seemed kind of clunky. All syncing and device setup should be handled in one app/interface.

17. Just realized that 22" cinnie (ADC) won't connect to the G5 (DVI). Argh!!! There goes another $100 on an adapter. I've got this stupid little 15" monitor on this beast for now.

18. Does Dashboard have to always be on (always in the dock)?

19. No bar code printing for envelopes from Address Book? Otherwise, glad they added envelope printing. I use that al the time. Would just be nice to save the post office some work.

20. There's no feedback when you use Help Viewer and it can't find anything for you. It just stays blank or leaves whatever is up. It should at least give some sort of "No Results" message.

21. I can't view the online Tiger seminar video even though I obviously have Tiger and QT 7! Claims I need to install them. You already installed them for me, Apple!

22. Adding 6,000 font to Suitcase took maybe thirty seconds. I accidentally screwed something up and had to delete and reimport them. It took like three seconds (pre-cached?). Wow. Welcome to lots of RAM.

23. Wacom tablet double-click is now finicky. It semi-randonly decides it doesn't want to double-click. I can command+tab back and forth to kind of kickstart working again. Argh!

24. Came across a weird temporary bug that I can't reproduce. For a bit in the Finder I tried to move an app from the main Apps directory into Utilities. It instead it just launched toast when I dragged the file onto the folder (and did not place the app into Utilities). I repeated it many times just to be sure. I quickly installed Snapz Pro to see if I could get a screen recording of it, but it had fixed itself by then. Weird.

25. Grapher not as smooth as you would think on complicated graphs. And no antialiasing.

26. Can no longer print to my Lexmark S 1650 directly, but I CAN print to it when set up as a shared printer. Huh? Whatever, as long as I can print.

27. Ran some performance tests in Motion. Holy crap!

28. FINALLY. After four years of continual complaining about window resizing not being as smooth as it should be…well, it's finally there. Damn well better be at this price.

29. Over all impression. I expected Tiger to be a more obvious upgrade. It's actually pretty subtle (but still substantial and important). Panther was a far more dramatic upgrade (e.g. Exposé, Inline searching totally changed my workflow). That doesn't mean it's not a quality upgrade, it just means it's not as obvious to me (yet perhaps).

I'll update over the weeks with any more useful observations and general performance reports. Hopefully this will be helpful.

[thebiggedbig]

Truly great review. Thank goodness, a not hot-headed or super zealous review of two products. But anyways, I was wondering. What are the Burn and Flash effects like in Keynote 2? And the droplet effect with Dashboard, is it worth it? If you wouldn't mind terribly...could you email me a screenshot or two of the Keynote transitions? If you can't, thanks anyways. But, graphically, I've heard people say that Tiger is a little choppy, despite top-quality graphics cards and Core Image and Video. What do you think? Is it worth getting a new graphics card? Thanks!

[Convert]

BRILLIANT review.


Enjoy the Powermac.

[Lt Major Burns]

what.

i.

wouldn't.

give.

for 4.5gb of ram.

very level headed i must say. i have the radeon 9600 in my G5 dual 1.8 and it has both ADC and DVI. swap? i have the DVI cinema disp and i need a second dvi to connect my other monitor (a cheap 20" XGA lcd) :P

[mindbend]

Go here for an mp4 of the Burn/Flash effects in Keynote:

http://www.mindbendtoo.biz/test/keynote.htm

To me the Burn effect is a little campy, like the old Amiga Video Toaster type of thing. The Flash effect is more useful and professional, but a little dramatic. Use sparingly!

The Droplet effect in dashboard is pure eye candy. Sure, it looks nice, but so what? It serves no real purpose whatsoever. Not that I mind that, I'm just saying don't go out and upgrade your video card for it.

---

Ly Major Burns,

I'd almost consider the swap except I've already got the dang adapter arriving tomorrow, so I'll just stick it out. Thanks for the offer though.

4 GB RAM for $500-ish these days. Looks to be a good investment so far.

---

More impressions coming soon!

[Lt Major Burns]

ha ha ha! you also live the other side of the atlantic, so it was never going to be viable... :P

ram has got cheap hasn't it? i may just invest... when i get some money of course i can only get 3gb more, so we'll see

[thebiggedbig]

Thanks! That's something I think a lot of people would be happy to see. However, I'm disappointed! From my point of view, I can't understand what about those two transitions takes so much GPU power! If I saw all of the transitions, I would put the page flip and droplet transition in the section that requires Core Image. Well, thank you very much. I think that there is no question now, I have no interest in buying a better graphics card for those two effects.

[HateEternal]

Window resizing is SOOOOO much better, especially on my iBook. I am in love with my iBook all over again because it feels so much faster now, I always was kind of bothered by the performance it got (lousy laptop hd and the weak 256kb L2 cache) but it is a lot better now.

You can simply drag the dashboard icon from the dock and it will go away, the only app that does this, it still runs though.