Quartz Extreme - is Apple on Crack?

I've been using my Mac for DTP (desktop publishing), which means using Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark XPress / InDesign all day, as well as scanner/printer+PDF.

Much software was missing for OSX, which I started using a month ago (X.1.4).

<b>File browsing</b> is fine, I'm helped by the preview functions (browsing images and getting the preview is great !) though not perfect ones (I often get some garbled previews of TIFF with LZW for instance).

<b>General productivity</b> is, in my opinion, lower in OSX itself but higher in the software you can use with it. In my case, Photoshop 7 and Illustrator X, as well as Office vX and InDesign 2, brought so much to DTP that productivity has stayed the same. Not increased, note, because I think OSX has something childish in it too.

<b>General speed</b> is disappointing in many cases: Quake, games, drivers (scanners)… <b>Errors</b> with the rainbow cursor: iTunes 2 gets stucked, the Java Runtime gets LimeWire to crash, the force-quit won't solve everything… I've got a lot to complain at, though I like OSX in general. And I still think multitasking coud get faster. I've seen better on Windows platforms with Photoshop / InDesign for example.

There's a toy in OSX: you can't get rid of the childish animations, even though you can reduce them in a way. But the system wasn't really built aiming at 100% productivity: the Aqua + the design is meant for families, not for industry workstations.

So I get back to OS9 to work + Unreal T., and OSX to have fun :)
 
If you're not as productive in OS X, you might need to stop thinking like it's OS 9. It isn't. It's better. If you try to use OS X like OS 9 it will slow you down. I agree that some of the animations and things in OS X aren't necessary, but are they really that time consuming? It seems like you guys are just itching to complain about something.

I am more productive in OS X than I ever was under OS 9, because I can have upwards of 10 applications running simultaneously with no appreciable slowdown. I don't care what anyone says; that fact alone more than makes up for anything else that seems to be slower under OS X. And then there's the fact that I crash at most two times a month anymore!

OS X needs improvement, sure. If it was as zippy as OS 9 was, that would be great. But I really think you people are selling it short by not taking the time to figure out how to use it to its full potential.

-the valrus
 
yea, what valrus said:D

seems like the last time we went thru this speed/productivity thing we spent nearly 200 or more posts til we discovered the guy was using a ufs disk for his sytem which is known to be dog slow.

this site is filled with tips and solutions to many of the common problems that people have when just getting started. searches and just plain going back and reading the old threads will teach you alot. Perhpas the reason Valrus and i have been able to make so much of our simplier machines is because we have been reading them and following the directions. for instance, there are several threads on how to get rid of the problems with itunes.

no one is likely to give you a personal tutorial for the things we have spent months going over and getting the little things straightened out, but most of it is here in the past threads. Toast - glad you picked up on one of the first clues and started asking about defragging. believe me, it will bring a slowing system back to life. moving your swap files to a seperate drive with lots of space will help as well.
 
I have to say that I love OS X, too. I recommend David Pogue's _Mac OS X: The Missing Manual for anyone adjusting to OS X. Pogue writes about lots and lots of good shortcuts. I also agree with Valrus that it's best not to think of OS X as OS 9, but instead something unique and powerful.

I do, though, take exception to people brushing aside criticisms of the dreaded spinning beach ball. Occasionally, I get a beachball that spins for a good 30 seconds. Now, that's not awful in itself, but when it happens three or four times in a row. . .

It seems to be Finder that's the culprit, waiting for something. . . Samba file sharing or something. Whatever. . . I haven't nailed it down exactly yet.

By the way, I have defragged my drive (speedier!), am not running UFS, and I haven't done anything obviously bizarre to my iBook (2001 500mHz). **Edit: I forgot to mention: 320 megs.**

Again, I love my Mac and OS X. But, even though it happens rarely, watching the spinning beach ball while using Finder is frustrating.

Doug
 
I run OS X.1.4 on an iMac DV+(450Mhz) with 384 MB of RAM. I have seen the spinning wheel, ball, disk, rainbow thing of few times now and then, but as far as productivity goes, X beets 9 hands down. I can give a few reasons. 1. File browsing is much faster, once you are used to it. 2. If you click the wrong app in the dock, right click it and force quit it, unlike in 9, you don't have to wait for it to boot up to quit. 3. If I have to force quit an app, I don't lock up the system, like it did in 9. 4. My iMac has been up and running since Decemberwhen I moved it, the only restarts have been due to updates that require it. Being able to put my system to sleep and then only having to click the mouse to wake it saves me 3 or 4 minutes each time compared to booting 9. I know I could put 9 to sleep, but it only would run for a while after a wake up before it would lock up. Not having to reboot every few hours(or minutes sometimes) is a HUGE time saver. And for every one b*tching about X running so slow on your machine if it's above 450Mhz with 384 MB of RAM or more, send me a message and I'll trade you. I have no speed complates about X on my Mac.
Just my nickel of thought, where's my change? :)
 
I'm currently running a PowerBook G3 Pismo (AGP 8MB VRAM) hooked up to a 21inch monitor @ 1600x1200 (millions of colours - that's how we spell "color" in my neck of the woods). I don't have the PB screen going (startup with lid closed). Will Jaguar mean better, the same, or worse screen performance, zappiness etc given my set-up?

I hardly ever see the spinning cursor (how's that for generic, non-specific interpretation of the beach ball, hard disk platter thingymebob), but maybe because I don't have much software for OS X yet - only running Office v.X - and so can't really do much more than spreadsheets, charts, word docs, powerpoint presentations.

I've been using Macs (also played with Apple ]['s at school) since my 512K E and like Ed :) have been pretty much entrenched with the OS9 look and feel until I bit the bullet and bought OSX at Xmas. But I've moved on and I generally enjoy the new scenery that the Aqua GUI is giving me even if it is a bit slower.

My biggest problems were all solved when I upgraded my 6GB hard drive with a beautiful 30GB harddrive (IBM with fluid dynamic bearing 2 weeks ago - sooo quiet now and much more zippier) and when I used SpeedDisk to optimise my OSX partition. Let's face it - my PB is never going to be a speed demon.

And my navigating thru the folder hierarchy got much better since I dragged my mostly used folders to the Dock and set them up to use the real estate afforded to my by my large monitor. Good luck to those who get to play with prerelease software - I mean, it's just a taster/tester of what's to come anyway. Zeal
 
hey Zeal - let's hear it for the 512kE!! my first computer - it worked hard and earned it's keep. I still have my carrying bag for it - i used to pack it up and take it on road trips to my publisher. That was long before the day of laptops:p

Did you have the add on fan hood? and i'm guessing you printed from either an imagewriter or a dot matrix - both of which make a thrashing HD sound like near silence:D (i had the sound muffling cover for my imagewriter and you could still hear it 2 rooms away. )
 
Ed,

I didn't have the fan hood, but I did have the wide version of the imagewriter DM printer, AND a Summagraphics (spelling?) digitised graphics tablet that I must admit, apart from the pen being lassoed by a cable to the tablet, is still pretty modern looking after all of these (14) years. Also have an internal FDD and external FDD - both 400K single sided. I knew I was into something special back then. Went to a Classic (4MB Ram, 20 MB HDD) then onto a Performa 5200CD and now my pride and joy (still) PB G3 400mHz Pismo. :D
 
I'm currently running a PowerBook G3 Pismo (AGP 8MB VRAM) hooked up to a 21inch monitor @ 1600x1200 (millions of colours - that's how we spell "color" in my neck of the woods). I don't have the PB screen going (startup with lid closed). Will Jaguar mean better, the same, or worse screen performance, zappiness etc given my set-up?
Click to expand...

My TiBook 500 - which has the same video card as your Pismo - sees some speed improvement in Jaguar 6C35. I don't know how to decide whether Quartz Extreme is turned on or off at all, I'm guessing it's off from the specs of QE.

Perhaps the G4's AltiVec adds to the performance, but from what I've seen, Jaguar will show more speed on all machines. It's not your general 'better but needs more RAM' upgrade: It's a refinement of 10.1. Plus, it adds more to its applications like Mail.app, Address Book and the like. Those aren't memory hogs, either. Also the new (like System 7) Find File in the Finder speeds finding files up very much. Same for the Finder itself: Much faster plus spring loaded folders (still quirky in 6C35).

You can also turn off some things like previews in Column View etc.

All machine that can run 10.1 pretty well will be even better with Jaguar.
 
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File browsing is fine, I'm helped by the preview functions (browsing images and getting the preview is great !) though not perfect ones (I often get some garbled previews of TIFF with LZW for instance).

General productivity is, in my opinion, lower in OSX itself but higher in the software you can use with it. In my case, Photoshop 7 and Illustrator X, as well as Office vX and InDesign 2, brought so much to DTP that productivity has stayed the same. Not increased, note, because I think OSX has something childish in it too.

General speed is disappointing in many cases: Quake, games, drivers (scanners)… Errors with the rainbow cursor: iTunes 2 gets stucked, the Java Runtime gets LimeWire to crash, the force-quit won't solve everything… I've got a lot to complain at, though I like OSX in general. And I still think multitasking coud get faster. I've seen better on Windows platforms with Photoshop / InDesign for example.

There's a toy in OSX: you can't get rid of the childish animations, even though you can reduce them in a way. But the system wasn't really built aiming at 100% productivity: the Aqua + the design is meant for families, not for industry workstations.
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Well said, Toast. Finally someone with a rational mind to agree. Productivity is down. Noone can tell me that when you compare running Photoshop 6 in OS 9 isn't significantly faster than the PS7 in OSX. Never since my PowerMac 7100 have I had to wait that long for the color pallette to come up, files to open, etc.

Toast made a good point. The availability of DTP software such as InDesign have the mac platform much more competitive (in this case it is also kicking Quark's butt which is a very good thing).

Whoever made the post on the file system being vastly improved:
When I have 100-200 files in a folder and I need to quickly find the last saved file - it just isn't possible. I have to remember the name - which is not even much of a help if the file name is too long and the window can't be widened much. It's just crap to navigate. The fact that you can reach files 10 different ways does not make it more user friendly.

Another gripe of mine is the fact that OSX now behaves much like the Windows 2000 Server that I am running in that the computer _SEEMS_ to be fully booted but is really still loading a bunch of stuff for another 20 seconds. When you open an application to show a Windows friend how fast your mac is you'll get nothing but laughs.....

G
 
Noone can tell me that when you compare running Photoshop 6 in OS 9 isn't significantly faster than the PS7 in OSX.
Click to expand...

1. It's not significantly faster. Not on all the machines that I've tested, anyway. (PM G4/400 AGP, TiBook 500, PM G3/333 beige.)

2. While Photoshop is applying a filter on a 80 MB file in OS 9, I had to go out of the office, smoke a cigarette, make some coffee, drink some coffee and then sit down in front of my machine to wait a minute longer for the task to succeed. In OS X, I can check my mail, look up information on the web about health risks of smoking and the consumption of coffee, smoke a cigarette, drink a cuppa coffee and write a post to this thread while Photoshop 7 is happily applying the filter on the same 80 MB file. And I even see the progress of it in the Dock, because PS7's icon has an aqua-style bar that gives me that information. Ever thought about what productivity really is, Gedankenspiel?

Btw.: This all is only going to get better over time. Jaguar won't be here for our production systems in late summer.
 
Since this thread started with a Quartz Extreme focus, I'll respond to that first.

1. QE is a response to make the GUI faster. AFAIK, there are no new whiz-bang effects, just increased speed. This is, by definition, better. I actually hope Apple are on crack so they can work even faster.

2. Speed in general. I've been *****ing about OS X's graphics layer speed for a year. But that's the only issue with speed I have found worth noting. Productivity issues are a clear winner in X. Finder navigation in X is inarguably better in X because you can do it just like OS 9 if you want, plus you have other options.

My prediction:
When QE hits, those of us who have a machine capable of really taking advantage of it will finally quit our whining forever. X will have everything 9 ever had and more.
 
Figure I would add my two cents:

Productivity: up up up

Complainers in Forums: up up up

Beachball: saw it a few times but not for too long

OS X time saved over 8 hours of use:
05 minutes: Waking up instead of booting up
15 minutes: Restarting 3 times a day due to various memory leaks
20 minutes: Restarting individual applications in between restarts
05 minutes: cleaning up desktop after a half day of work (too easy to save stuff here in os 9)
~1 hour: attributed to multi-task management (may be more)
20 minutes: opening preview instead (compared to acrobat and graphics apps)
30 minutes: better networking (faster downloads, fewer standstills)
10 minutes: fixing control panel settings (includes chooser)
10 minutes for good measure

= ~2.5 hours of time better spent on tasks instead of dealing with crap

Compare all this junk with 10 minutes of watching the beachball worst case?

..and yes, multi-tasking does save me lots of time...bryce, photoshop, downloading, uploading, and editing documents all at the same time....it's huge. Flipping between programs takes no effort at all.

Dunno what all the complaining is about
 
Now that I've had Jaguar for a couple of months, I have to say that Quartz Extreme is a bust. I see virtually no benefit at all after testing on three machines. Yeah, maybe it's a tiny bit faster overall, but "Extreme" is a joke word.

Having said that, MP in X is a joy. Multiple apps not fighting with each other, burning, rendering, downloading, all at once is now a reality. X is easily more efficient and productive for me than 9.
 
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