Originally posted by mindbend
No offense, but I've come to the conclusion that you can all give up your dreams for good performance running OS X on a G3. It simply isn't going to happen.
Here's why:
Apple sells hardware. OS X is simply a catalyst to sell said hardware. G3s are not new hardware. They are dead. Anyone wanting to run OS X simply has to make the commitment to a G4 minimum, preferably a DP G4.
Believe me, I'm as annoyed as everyone else. I was under the misguided notion that my old G4 450 would at least run X comfortably. Not. Some people seem to think it runs OK on such a machine, but I think they are fooling themselves, it's really not very cozy at all.
I hate all the marketing gimmicks such as the huge chasm between "will run on" and "will run comfrtably on". Similar to the absurd "minimum requirements" for a game, which we all know will barely get you 5 fps if you're lucky. I also hate the recent trend to show megabits per second, instead of megabytes. Very sneaky. And the equally annoying "realtime" for video editing, when in fact, there is no such thing on any platform at any price (though you can get very close if you spend a lot, but let's not go there).
Bottom line: dump your G3s (easy for me to say, I guess) if you want to run OS X. Let me rephrase that. If you make your living on a Mac and want to run OS X, you absolutely have to get a G4 700 minimum. Don't fool yourself about getting anything else. In fact, do whatever you can to get a DP, it will make a big difference. If you simply browse the web and use Quicken and Appleworks to write letters in OS X, your RevB iMac willd do just fine.
I know many people will say their machines run OS X just fine. All I can say is that, for me on a G4 450 and an iMac 400 DV, OS X did not perform acceptably for production work. I was forced to buy a better machine and man I'm glad I did. There is no comparison.
What did you DO to your poor little G4 450?!?!?!
While I acknowledge that OS X doesn't have the performance of OS 9 on the same machine, OS X is
UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY USABLE. Yes, I'm pissed off when the spinning rainbow cursor comes, but it's not that bad. Yes, I am amazed at the speed in OS 9 when I boot back into it. But although OS X lacks overall speed in the Finder and such, it makes up more than enough in the way of productivity. I can get so much more done in OS X purely because of stability, even though yes it is sluggish.
What's more, OS X is completely usable on my mom's iBook 600 MHz (*ahem* G3 processor *ahem*), and even more so on my dad's TiBook 667 MHz.
I seriously have to wonder what you do to your poor machines, mindbend. While I don't use music tools or graphics intensive rendering applications, I do think that I push my comp to the limit. I often have 20 apps open in OS X, just because I can leave them open. I have iTunes playing, I'm browsing the web, sometimes SETI is crunching in the background, I have an IRC client open, Project Builder and Interface Builder, Graphic Converter, etc. etc. OS X performs exceptionally well when running StarCraft, Oni, EV Nova, and other games too (of course, it's just like OS 9 -- quit all other apps and you'll have much better performance).
Yes, I would love to have an iMac G4 running at 800 MHz with an nVidia GeForce 2MX card in it. Yes I would love to have a dualie-gig Mac with a GeForce 4 Ti in it. But my trusty cube does just fine in OS X 10.1.3. It's nowhere as near as painful as you make it out to be.
Let me say one other thing: we have to put the pressure back on Apple. As far as I'm concerned, they should have delivered on all of the features and performance issues by 10.1. I know all the arguments of "Apple had to release an operating system before the developers start writing apps for it". Now it's bordering on unacceptable.
When running the Mac OS X public beta with horrible speed on my cube, I was just thinking.. "Oh... I'll just wait until the final version, and then I'll switch." When Mac OS X 10.0 came out, I was itching to have 10.1, which promised to be screaming fast (and of course mosr.com and alllll the other rumor sites totally overexaggerated). Now in 10.1.x, I'm waiting and waiting for OS X 10.2, which won't be here for another few months (don't bet on OS X 10.2 being released anytime soon).
While I totally adore OS X, I'll be seriously pissed if OS X 10.2 doesn't deliver all the features and performance I expect. I want OS X 10.2 to be up to par with OS 9.2.2. Apple should have gotten it right with OS X 10.1 AT THE LATEST, and now we have to wait 'til OS X 10.2.
Don't think I hate Apple and OS X. I truly think that Apple's hardware, operating system, and software pack a 1-2-3 punch that's really hard to beat (and dare I say unbeatable). But Apple really needs to get OS X 10.2 complete with all the features so that developers can rapidly port and we'll finally be gone of the old Classic system.
There, that's my two cents, written in OmniWeb on a cube running OS X 10.1.3.
Oh yeah, let me clear up a couple things:
1. The Finder is actually a Carbon/Cocoa hybrid. One MacOSX.com user pointed this out to me (I'm not sure who), but where do you think the Finder toolbars came from?
2. OS X 10.2 build 6B11 shots have been out LONG before December. I remember seeing them shortly after OS X 10.1 was released. They are soooooo old, and I'm surprised that people are just starting to pick up on them now. Just to put it in perspective, 6B11 builds were released to developers with iTunes 1.1. Apple has surely moved much farther along than 6B11.
3. Anim8r: OS X on Intel will only be in your dreams. While Apple may be secretly developing an OS X build that goes on Intel alongside the Mac version, rest assured that that line of builds will only be released when Motorola goes up in smoke. And by that time, Apple or IBM will have bought the PPC assets, in which case we'd have to wait 'til IBM or Apple itself go up in smoke.
In short, it's not gonna happen. So stop dreaming about it.