Is this as fast as it gets?

[glbronze]

Jaguar is faster than 10.2 in many areas (especially graphics), but there are still some areas that need improvement in my opinion:
1. Application loading: it got better with 10.1, and even a little better with 10.2, but it's still not what it should be I think
2. Internet scrolling(!): This has been improved thanks to QE, but it's still not what, or even close to Mac OS 9 or Windows XP. This still needs a lot of work.

Okay, those are the two things that still urk me, but other than that, all is great. I heard 10.2.1 improves things a bit. Anyone know about this?
My machines:
iMac 800, GeForce 2MX
PBG4 550, Radeon

[vanguard]

I was also dissapointed by the mild speed increase. I don't have a good reason to be, I was warned that my iBook 500 wouldn't gain much but I was still hopeful.

I keep hearing that the iMacs aren't as fast as one would expect a G4 800 to be. I wonder why? The processory rivals the lower end power mac (SMP gets you nothing for sequential tasks like browsing) so you would expect it to perform about the same as the lowest powermac.

I wonder what's going on? Are they really slow or is it just a couple of guys with high standards that compare their iMac to a PC?

Vanguard

[kendall]

I was slightly disappointed with Jaguar's speed on my PowerBook G4 667
DVI. Especially with 256MB of RAM. I had to buy 512MB more just to make
it run "properly."

While ok for the most part, things like scrolling, the Dock, and resizing
have a tendency to lag, especially when multitasking. While visually
stunning, the GUI performance wise is no where near OS 9 or Windows XP.

The upside is it boots faster and Apple's apps like iTunes and Terminal
launch a lot faster. Also, the finder search function is pretty quick and
very useful.

The eye-candy comes at a cost and I question whether PDF is a good basis
for model rendering. I don't really notice the QE improvements other than
maybe a shadow under my mouse cursor.

10.2.1 does noticeably improve Jaguar. After reinstalling 10.2 it took me
a second to realize why everything felt different. Basically 10.2.1 seems
to clean up the few loose ends 10.2 has.

I'd love to see how the rumored "Marklar" builds of Jaguar run on Intel.

[gatorparrots]

First and foremost Apple has to engineer their products to be stable across a diverse range of hardware and then they worry about features and usability. Code optimization is one of the last things to come and lower in general on the priority scale. Witness the many point upgrades of 10.0 before 10.1. 10.1 was the first update to really improve noticeably in terms of speed. Again, things were largely untouched for code optimization between 10.1 and 10.2 (aside from some relatively minor tweaks here and there).

This is somewhat typical of the software industry in general. Features are what sells the software, so code optimization is left perpetually for 'later'. The answer instead has been to throw more hardware at the problem -- faster processors and more RAM. This works in the Intel/AMD realm where the answer comes in the form of nearly 3GHz of processor power. It takes nearly 3GHz to edit video or audio on a PC, because the software is so badly written (from the OS up). So much more horespower is required to compensate. 500MHz or better on a G4 is sufficient to edit audio or video reasonably well, mainly due to software prowess and integration.

Apple has been one of the few in the software business to really hone their software and optimize their code (QuickTime is a steller example of this -- every major upgrade since v4 has seen remarkable speed bumps, even on existing older hardware.)

So, no this isn't as fast as it gets. Things will get faster over time with the OS and key components of it like the QuickTime media engine; but by then the killer apps will want more CPU & bus speeds, so software optimization alone won't do it for you. The upgrade cycle marches on...