QE Performance - the true picture!
- Thread starter karavite
- Start date
Decado
Kallikanzaroi
Karavite,
was just wondering why you went for the radeon 8500 card after you had read apples page? Im dumber than dumb when it comes to three-dee cards and stuff (so it's really not meant as a sarcastic question)
Would that card have been really good if the chart had been what you thought it was (based on some obscure knowledge about operations per second)
was just wondering why you went for the radeon 8500 card after you had read apples page? Im dumber than dumb when it comes to three-dee cards and stuff (so it's really not meant as a sarcastic question)
Would that card have been really good if the chart had been what you thought it was (based on some obscure knowledge about operations per second)
karavite
Registered
Decado - I bet you I am dumber than you! All I really paid attention to was that QE needed a supported card in order to see the benefits - in the lower right corner of Apples QE page it has a blurb on supported cards and it lists any Radeon. That and a quick review of the charts on the same page led me to believe something like "Oh boy, my window resizing issues are over - I do not need to buy a G4 DP 1.5 GHZ (and risk a divorce since we are saving for a house)!"
After reading Apples QE page I looked up prices and reviews. The better NVIDIAS were a little pricey and the Radeon 8500 seemed to get rave reviews (plus I found it for $168). Remember, I was being an impulsive shopper and not neccessarily a well informed one! I still really like the card and I am amazed that one card can run two monitors better than my two old cards. I also will have a use for its S Video out, but I am not a gamer (not that there is anything worng with it) so I will probably never enjoy the 3D benifits of the card.
since we are saving for a house)!"After reading Apples QE page I looked up prices and reviews. The better NVIDIAS were a little pricey and the Radeon 8500 seemed to get rave reviews (plus I found it for $168). Remember, I was being an impulsive shopper and not neccessarily a well informed one! I still really like the card and I am amazed that one card can run two monitors better than my two old cards. I also will have a use for its S Video out, but I am not a gamer (not that there is anything worng with it) so I will probably never enjoy the 3D benifits of the card.
Decado
Kallikanzaroi
Just for the sake of making this a complete thread, i add this little bit of information (i bet 10 swedish crowns it's allready been posted elsewhere, but i thought it was related):
If you hold down the command-key while changing the size of the itunes window, you get the quicker outline graphics.
Maybe it works in more programs, i dont know. It didnt work in iphoto (i really thought it should!)
See ya!
If you hold down the command-key while changing the size of the itunes window, you get the quicker outline graphics.
Maybe it works in more programs, i dont know. It didnt work in iphoto (i really thought it should!)
See ya!
pigdog
Registered
Originally posted by karavite
Gibbs - you are my hero!
Since Apple still sells G3 ibooks with OS X booting up on them, it seems only fair they provide some option for window resizing. Like pigdog said - let me turn it off.
So nobody thought my MacWorld 2007 press release was funny?
Karavite, I feel like we're brothers in arms! Down with the resizing!
I also have the bad old habit of doing alot resizing whilst working.
Oh well, guess we'll see what happens.
karavite
Registered
Decado - I don't mean to steal your last word and a fine wrap up to this rambling thread (due mostly to my obsession with this issue), but alas, the command-resize thing does not work with Mail or IE. I will use this on iTunes so thanks! Still, a command key option would bug me, though if it did become available on more apps I suppose I could get a fancy mouse and set one of the buttons up as the command key.
Brother pigdog! Your habit is not a bad one. It is in your biology my man! Your brain (and everyone elses) is hard coded to expect a reaction within a certain time and if that doesn't happen, it irritates and/or confuses the heck out of us. After all, when our ancestors threw a rock at a gazelle, swung a stick at an invading ape, or were pounced on by a saber tooth tiger... there was no delay - everything happened instantly. That's the way our world works and our computers should too.
So when you go click on the corner of a window to resize it and it takes a little while to respond (I think this is more irritating than the actual clunky resize part of this - though the two are connected - biologically and technologically) your reaction of irritation is proof that you are the pinnacle of human evolution! (eg. your great grandfather x 100,000 was able to evade the saber tooth tiger and/or kill the gazelle for din din).
Usability expert Jakob Nielsen states important limits of a systems response time:
Now Apple knows all of this and a heck of a lot more - that is why they put the outline resize feature in the very first Mac as well as the expanding square to show you that a finder window, file or application was being launched (remember that? - now finder windows open fast enough and we have the bouncing dock icon for applications) and many more really slick usability features.
Why did they do this? Because in 1984 they knew their system did not respond fast enough for the human brain so they added those neat tricks to fool their customers brains and it worked! Now it is 2002 and they seem to have forgotten those early lessons. Many people have worried that Apple has abandoned their pioneering work in usability in favor of slick design, and although I don't really agree with that 100%, I think this window resizing issue is a strong case for that argument and a step backward for Apple usability. That is kind of sad since they wrote the book to start with. Apple should know better and maybe they laid off the people who do know better, marketing or design shot them down, the poor developers said they had enough work to do and/or Jobs had one of his classic temper tantrums when someone argued the case.
Brother pigdog! Your habit is not a bad one. It is in your biology my man! Your brain (and everyone elses) is hard coded to expect a reaction within a certain time and if that doesn't happen, it irritates and/or confuses the heck out of us. After all, when our ancestors threw a rock at a gazelle, swung a stick at an invading ape, or were pounced on by a saber tooth tiger... there was no delay - everything happened instantly. That's the way our world works and our computers should too.
So when you go click on the corner of a window to resize it and it takes a little while to respond (I think this is more irritating than the actual clunky resize part of this - though the two are connected - biologically and technologically) your reaction of irritation is proof that you are the pinnacle of human evolution!
(eg. your great grandfather x 100,000 was able to evade the saber tooth tiger and/or kill the gazelle for din din).Usability expert Jakob Nielsen states important limits of a systems response time:
http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html
Now Apple knows all of this and a heck of a lot more - that is why they put the outline resize feature in the very first Mac as well as the expanding square to show you that a finder window, file or application was being launched (remember that? - now finder windows open fast enough and we have the bouncing dock icon for applications) and many more really slick usability features.
Why did they do this? Because in 1984 they knew their system did not respond fast enough for the human brain so they added those neat tricks to fool their customers brains and it worked! Now it is 2002 and they seem to have forgotten those early lessons. Many people have worried that Apple has abandoned their pioneering work in usability in favor of slick design, and although I don't really agree with that 100%, I think this window resizing issue is a strong case for that argument and a step backward for Apple usability. That is kind of sad since they wrote the book to start with. Apple should know better and maybe they laid off the people who do know better, marketing or design shot them down, the poor developers said they had enough work to do and/or Jobs had one of his classic temper tantrums when someone argued the case.
karavite
Registered
Gibbs, you are so right again (pat pat
). It would be absolutely perfect. How's this for really going nuts and off topic - My wife is an art teacher and knows a lot about textiles. Apparently various rug makers around the world who made really intricate and beautiful rugs would purposely include a little flaw (a bad stitch or something) so as not to offend the Gods with perfection. Maybe window resizing is what Apple had to do so as not to offend the OS Gods?Obviously I am really losing my grip here...
Since I seem to be going insane - how about one more OT subject: Speaking of art, do you remember Jobs talking about how the original design of the Mac OS was influenced from studying beautiful old hand made books - typography, layout...? A few years ago my wife and I lived near Detroit and we went to the Detroit Instititute of Arts. They had an exhibit of all these ancient (1200 - 1400s or so) hand made bibles and other books. I remember looking at a few and I swear to God (no pun intended), they instantly reminded me of the OS and application screens of the early black and white Macs (before I saw Jobs on TV making this point)! Now tell me when the hell (again, no pun intended) is that kind of thing going to happen with a Windows user?
My shot at making a point out of all this? Apple must never forget its roots and with 90% of OS X they haven't.
Karavite, you sound *almost* as eccentric as I do in real life. But I consider that a good thing.
Anyhow. If we dont stop whining about these little points, who will be left to annoy the "nothing is wrong" purists?
Seriously though, I honestly hold more hope for a rogue programmer to release a hack for the "transparent resizing" than for apple to reprogram quartz.
I think there are about possible 4 scenarios with regards to quartz and apple's stance on it-
a) they know they overshot the capabilities of the hardware they sell, however the problem in the code is extremely complex and will require ages to fix
b) they know they overshot, and are just hoping that issues like this will force more of their users to go out and buy more hardware
c) all the people at apple run g5's with GF4's and are oblivious to the issue
or...
d) all of the above
Anyhow. If we dont stop whining about these little points, who will be left to annoy the "nothing is wrong" purists?
Seriously though, I honestly hold more hope for a rogue programmer to release a hack for the "transparent resizing" than for apple to reprogram quartz.
I think there are about possible 4 scenarios with regards to quartz and apple's stance on it-
a) they know they overshot the capabilities of the hardware they sell, however the problem in the code is extremely complex and will require ages to fix
b) they know they overshot, and are just hoping that issues like this will force more of their users to go out and buy more hardware
c) all the people at apple run g5's with GF4's and are oblivious to the issue
or...
d) all of the above
Jason
Eyebrow Moderator
i dont want to sound like a troll, im a computer user in general, meaning i love both macs and pcs, so i have basically unbiased opinion between the two, so dont hate me for this
anyways i have this g4, this great graphics machine... 800mhz, 32mb video, 896mb ram, 100gb hd combined, running osx 10.2, and i have a 700mhz athlon, 64mb video (used to be 32), 512mb ram, 10gb storage...
osx is supposed to be this next generation be all end all os, windows xp supposedly sucks...
IMO windows xp has more user friendly and computer friendly options (like say turning on and off visual effects, included in the os), it resizes and drags windows and all that like a dream... (even when i had my crappy rage in it) osx seems to not doing those simple things
and then people talk about windows stealing mac os things all the time, but i can go on pretty long about how many things mac os has borrowed from windows... face facts they steal from each other, right now winxp is a faster os, its a tad dumbed down for the avg user, but is very customizable without having to go into unix, and thats another thing, apple constantly talks about how easy to use the mac os is... which it is... for beginners... but any advanced stuff, is all unix coding, im sorry but that is not easier to use for the avg folk...
all in all i think windows xp is a better professional os, and osx is a better general commercial type os... obviously its prettier, but its not nearly as fast and IMO is lacking some options...
so go ahead and flame away at the idiot guy who loves both mac and pc and admits his slower pc's os is faster
anyways i have this g4, this great graphics machine... 800mhz, 32mb video, 896mb ram, 100gb hd combined, running osx 10.2, and i have a 700mhz athlon, 64mb video (used to be 32), 512mb ram, 10gb storage...
osx is supposed to be this next generation be all end all os, windows xp supposedly sucks...
IMO windows xp has more user friendly and computer friendly options (like say turning on and off visual effects, included in the os), it resizes and drags windows and all that like a dream... (even when i had my crappy rage in it) osx seems to not doing those simple things
and then people talk about windows stealing mac os things all the time, but i can go on pretty long about how many things mac os has borrowed from windows... face facts they steal from each other, right now winxp is a faster os, its a tad dumbed down for the avg user, but is very customizable without having to go into unix, and thats another thing, apple constantly talks about how easy to use the mac os is... which it is... for beginners... but any advanced stuff, is all unix coding, im sorry but that is not easier to use for the avg folk...
all in all i think windows xp is a better professional os, and osx is a better general commercial type os... obviously its prettier, but its not nearly as fast and IMO is lacking some options...
so go ahead and flame away at the idiot guy who loves both mac and pc and admits his slower pc's os is faster
whitesaint
cocoa love
The problem is not Quartz Extreme or Live Window resizing....The problem is that Apple decided on redrawing the entire window when a window is being resized. If they took the Microsoft Windows approach - to draw what needs to be drawn - Window resizing will be about 20 times faster. Apple just needs to draw parts of the window that needs it instead of redrawing the window over and over...
karavite
Registered
BuddhaBobb, why you are such a... nah, I'm kidding, but I think this is really interesting how different people have different opinions. I have 2 PC's for work and although I think XP is an improvement over 2000, it just doesn't do much for me - it is like an old girlfriend who got a hair do - no spark for me. And I respectfully disagree with modifications to OS X requiring me to know Unix. Though I am learning Unix and have X on X running on my machine, all the OS X enhancements I have done have been with the OS and/or a ton of free or cheap really cool third party apps (for example, FruitMenu, TinkerTool, TransparentDock, ShowDesktop...). I have used 3rd party apps like this from System 7 on and I always thought that was one of the great things about Apple - let these little guys come up with cool stuff. Speaking of which:
I also respectfully disagree with the who stole more issue - while Apple may be learning it is okay to steal back now and again, they are taking little things while MS has ripped off entire concepts and not just from Apple. Also, MS's stealing has been criminal (if we had a judge or government with the balls to stand up to them) - never forget Netscape and IE! The Start Menu is an Apple Menu rip off. Though my favorite and most absurd MS rip off is the Recycling Bin - give me a break. Somewhat related, now that MS has been stopped a little bit, people like Dell and other PC mfgs are selling more of their systems with Corel's Office app (and other non-MS things) and not MS. Suddenly, you can buy Office XP for much cheaper! If they had been free of the MS threat years ago, just think how many cool new and cheap apps there would be today?
Interesting! Let me get this straight - when I grab the lower right corner of a window and start to move it OS X says "Let's redraw the whole darn thing every time his mouse moves so many pixels" while XP, 2000... say "Lets see where that mouse has moved and only redraw what is defined by where the corner has moved. Is this why Windows 2000 is a little sluggish with browser windows that have to be rescaled for width in a resize?
Gibbs - I also hope someone comes up with a hack if Apple doesn't address this. I did write to the TinkerTool guys about this - who knows? Still, since Office X and other apps use an outline on their windows, it seems they could do the same with IE, Mail... I will stand with you for this entire crusade! Never give up!
Decado
Kallikanzaroi
Ok! lets vote for a little checkbox in the general.prefpane!
I'm not bothered with it in mail and itunes and such (its pretty fluid on my computer), but internet explorer and iphoto kills me. Maybe every program should have their own checkbox (at least apples own programs), but with one big over-ride option in the general.prefpane.
Have not been active in the browser war... is there any browser that are better out there (without looking at the manufactorer ). I mean, faster, but still have the auto-save-so-you-can-start-again-from-where-you-were-in-your-big-25mb-download-when-your-modem-decided-to-dive. i like that!
I'm not bothered with it in mail and itunes and such (its pretty fluid on my computer), but internet explorer and iphoto kills me. Maybe every program should have their own checkbox (at least apples own programs), but with one big over-ride option in the general.prefpane.
Have not been active in the browser war... is there any browser that are better out there (without looking at the manufactorer
). I mean, faster, but still have the auto-save-so-you-can-start-again-from-where-you-were-in-your-big-25mb-download-when-your-modem-decided-to-dive. i like that!great topic!
I think my biggest complaint is with Apple is the "forced" visuals. There is no way in heck I'm going back to os9.... I love os x's crash-free operation, it's amazing I got anything done before it's release.
What I really truly hate is exactly what BuddhaBob is hinting at (I think!) -- the fact that there are no ways to turn these things off system wide. Overall, X runs darn fast on my aging powerbook. It chokes on things like window resizing. Seems it'd only be logical to have a performance pref pane. I too have experienced this in xp, first thing I did was turn off all the visual "fisher-price" goofyness. Voila.
some things that should be in the performance preference pane:
turn off font smoothing. I just hate it. Whoever decided it was easier to read was on lsd. Period.
turn off live resizing. In fact, X is so smart, it should know I'm on a 300mhz g3 and act accordingly.
I just installed jaguar, it rocks! My number one favorite feature is the new cmd-f find thing. FINALLY!!! I remember in os 8 when I could hit cmd-f, start typing and hit return and not even see the first window, but see my search results starting to appear. Since the introduction of sherlock, this was simply not possible.
Apple - I love the look and feel, but unfortunately my pb doesn't. All I want is a way to turn off the things that slow it down!
Karavite - don't despair on your uninformed sub-$200 purchase. Until reading this thread, I've been scouring e-bay, applestore, compusa, etc looking to find a shiny g4 powerbook for an affordable (sub-$3000) price. I almost bought one with the hopes that qe would finally solve the resizing issues. Now I'm not so sure, and the sub-$2000 ibooks are starting to look mighty fine! Thank you!
please excuse my pre-coffee, just got up (again) ramblings if it doesn't make much sense!
J5
I think my biggest complaint is with Apple is the "forced" visuals. There is no way in heck I'm going back to os9.... I love os x's crash-free operation, it's amazing I got anything done before it's release.
What I really truly hate is exactly what BuddhaBob is hinting at (I think!) -- the fact that there are no ways to turn these things off system wide. Overall, X runs darn fast on my aging powerbook. It chokes on things like window resizing. Seems it'd only be logical to have a performance pref pane. I too have experienced this in xp, first thing I did was turn off all the visual "fisher-price" goofyness. Voila.
some things that should be in the performance preference pane:
turn off font smoothing. I just hate it. Whoever decided it was easier to read was on lsd. Period.
turn off live resizing. In fact, X is so smart, it should know I'm on a 300mhz g3 and act accordingly.
I just installed jaguar, it rocks! My number one favorite feature is the new cmd-f find thing. FINALLY!!! I remember in os 8 when I could hit cmd-f, start typing and hit return and not even see the first window, but see my search results starting to appear. Since the introduction of sherlock, this was simply not possible.
Apple - I love the look and feel, but unfortunately my pb doesn't. All I want is a way to turn off the things that slow it down!
Karavite - don't despair on your uninformed sub-$200 purchase. Until reading this thread, I've been scouring e-bay, applestore, compusa, etc looking to find a shiny g4 powerbook for an affordable (sub-$3000) price. I almost bought one with the hopes that qe would finally solve the resizing issues. Now I'm not so sure, and the sub-$2000 ibooks are starting to look mighty fine! Thank you!
please excuse my pre-coffee, just got up (again) ramblings if it doesn't make much sense!
J5
karavite
Registered
Write apple! - http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/
Man, I can't imagine you *after* your morning coffee!:
Seriously, there are plenty of new and old G3s and G4s out there that are plenty fast enough for most computer tasks. A silly and useless thing like fancy window resizing should not detract from all the other things that can be done.
btoneill
keeper of the cheese
Buddha: hey! unix is easy. A whole lot easier then NT/2000/XP is. It just requires that the person using the computer knows how to read The entire setup and layout of unix is very simple, very easy to troubleshoot, and very easy to figure out how the OS really works and what it really does. The problem is, people love to be spoonfed, and MS does a great job at spoonfeeding, so good, I hear they are buying Gerber next... In the unix world, to change a setting, you edit a text file, sometimes you'll have to restart the application that uses the setting, depends on the app. How much easier do you want then editing a text file? Reading the man page tells you all you need to know on what to edit, and where to edit it (assuming they wrote a good man page, but even a bad man page is better then windows excuse for a help application). Basically, unix is easy. unix is user friendly. unix is your friend. Ofcourse, it doesn't spoon feed, it forces people to do something they normally don't do in todays society, and that is "think". Thats a good thing, and more people need to learn how to do it so they can stop being tools.
Ofcourse, this is just me ranting, so don't take anything personally, unless you really want to, then you care, but I don't
Now, if MS comes out with a pretty new DOS, maybe I'll buy that
Brian
The entire setup and layout of unix is very simple, very easy to troubleshoot, and very easy to figure out how the OS really works and what it really does. The problem is, people love to be spoonfed, and MS does a great job at spoonfeeding, so good, I hear they are buying Gerber next... In the unix world, to change a setting, you edit a text file, sometimes you'll have to restart the application that uses the setting, depends on the app. How much easier do you want then editing a text file? Reading the man page tells you all you need to know on what to edit, and where to edit it (assuming they wrote a good man page, but even a bad man page is better then windows excuse for a help application). Basically, unix is easy. unix is user friendly. unix is your friend. Ofcourse, it doesn't spoon feed, it forces people to do something they normally don't do in todays society, and that is "think". Thats a good thing, and more people need to learn how to do it so they can stop being tools. Ofcourse, this is just me ranting, so don't take anything personally, unless you really want to, then you care, but I don't
Now, if MS comes out with a pretty new DOS, maybe I'll buy that
Brian
karavite
Registered
Sorry to disturb this thread from its final resting place, but I just thought you might like to know I just got a G4 DP 1 GHz with a Radeon 9000 Pro and 768 MB of DDR RAM and WINDOW RESIZING IS STILL A LITTLE JERKY in Mail, iPhoto and IE. I tried out a DP 1.25 and it was there too.
Of course it is better than my G4 450 with a Radeon 8500, but not by as much as I expected (of course the new machine does many other things way way faster). The initial delay (when you grab the corner of a window) is much much less, but it just "doesn't flow" when resizing - iPhoto is the worst of course.
Again, I'm not trying to be picky (well, maybe I am), but until we all can buy Quad 4 Ghz G5s for $1500, I think OS X and/or many apps should use the window outline box during resizing - or at least have the option in preferences.
P.S. I didn't buy the new machine for faster window resizing!!!
Of course it is better than my G4 450 with a Radeon 8500, but not by as much as I expected (of course the new machine does many other things way way faster). The initial delay (when you grab the corner of a window) is much much less, but it just "doesn't flow" when resizing - iPhoto is the worst of course.
Again, I'm not trying to be picky (well, maybe I am), but until we all can buy Quad 4 Ghz G5s for $1500, I think OS X and/or many apps should use the window outline box during resizing - or at least have the option in preferences.
P.S. I didn't buy the new machine for faster window resizing!!!
Hey -
Haha. I agree fully! I just bought a 667 tibook, 32meg video, etc. It only has the 256megs of ram right now (got a gig on it's way!), but I agree that window resizing in ie is still a bit slow. Compared to the pb in my now out-dated sig however, it screams!
One encouraging outlook:
I'm guessing the software will continue to get faster. So as we continue to use these new machines and the sw is slowly improved, these machines may actually feel faster than they do now in a year or so. Not that it'll matter compared to the current hardware at that time of course, but it'll be nice for us folks buying new machines every 4-5 years.
J5
Haha. I agree fully! I just bought a 667 tibook, 32meg video, etc. It only has the 256megs of ram right now (got a gig on it's way!), but I agree that window resizing in ie is still a bit slow. Compared to the pb in my now out-dated sig however, it screams!
One encouraging outlook:
I'm guessing the software will continue to get faster. So as we continue to use these new machines and the sw is slowly improved, these machines may actually feel faster than they do now in a year or so. Not that it'll matter compared to the current hardware at that time of course, but it'll be nice for us folks buying new machines every 4-5 years.
J5