Rant: Quit yer whinin' (QE)

dlookus

dlookus

Disgruntled user
I've had just about enough of all of the whining about Quartz Extreme and how it doesn't support every one's setup.

I've been burned much worse in the past. My PowerMac 7100 had NuBus slots. The very next rev had PCI. Not too many companies made NuBus cards after that. My Beige G3 was purchased a few months before the B&W G3 came out sporting USB and Firewire.

This stuff goes with the territory. You have to understand that. Quartz Extreme is really a bonus for those of us who can handle it. I really don't think people are being abandoned here. No one promised you Quartz Extreme when you bought your computer.

Also keep in mind that when you buy an iMac or a portable, you are buying something that is essentially not expandable. It is in certain respects, but it doesn't have the expandability that a tower has. You need to consider this when purchasing a computer. It's the reason I bought the machine I have and not a Cube.

I have a nearly 2 year old computer and OSX is fine on it. It isn't as snappy as it is on a new machine, but I really can't complain too much about it. I am looking forward to seeing Quartz Extreme in action, but it won't change my life.
 
You get a big thumbs up from the kid with a G3. :p Get a life or get a new computer guys. Reverse compatability stifles progress.
 
Sure, I feel a little sad that my iBook may not see the phenominal gui progression that others may see with Jaguar (pronounced jagwire as apple is an American company, though I think jag-you-uhr sounds cooler, and that's how I pronounce the sublime driving machines of the same name) but I WHOLEHEARTEDLY sustain apple's innovation in this advancement in it's operating system.

If you have a 500mhz ibook, you might feel that OS X is a bit slow. If you want to boost your performance consider a hardware mod. (superb mod page). Your warantee is probably almost over anyway, so why not give it a shot. If you're that stressed about it, get an apple loan and like everyone else has said, quitcherwhynen!
 
Personally, I really resent the kind of attitude people are showing on this thread right now. You act like it's easy to get new hardware, or a loan. For a lot of us, it isn't. I know several people right now that would like nothing more than to get an iBook or a new iMac and toss their PCs, but they're held back by finances and/or concerns about what's happened to me and many others.

I bought an iBook 500 in November. I knew it was limited, I knew OSX wouldn't run swiftly, and I knew that Apple was working on it. Unfortunately, I didn't know that they were starting to show signs of what's been a major hassle in the PC industry for over a decade: Planned Obsolecence.

Sure, Apple's been lagging in the performance area for quite some time. And that, coupled with the introduction of an entirely new OS make it hard on a company to maintain some momentum. Unfortunately, what I feel like is that Apple orphaned my machine before it was six months old. From what I knew of Apple before this, it wasn't the case that they'd drop optimal support for a whole range of recent hardware like this. Now, having two PC machines (one home built, another a Sony VAIO desktop) I know full well what it's like to have shifting technological foundations. I know that yesterday's video card won't run tomorrow's games. Unfortunately, in the case of OSX, the operating system itself seems to bog down incredibly poorly on hardware faster than my last dedicated Linux machine was on.

Aqua is a mess, resource wise. It's not just 'non-optimized', it is a total wreck. It looks good, it runs well on a fast machine, but on last year's hardware it's just sluggish as heck. Even Windows claims to be 'faster' with every iteration save the server line. I can understand that Apple wants to use the new features of the Radeon and nVidia cards. I would too. But I'd like to at least feel like they're making an effort to keep people who spent good money on machines within the past year feel like we're still appreciated. I'm not asking for Quartz Extreme, I'm just asking for optimized Aqua for my video card. With the number of iBooks out there, they should make more of an effort to increase the battery life and responsiveness of the OS.

I wish Apple was more forthcoming about developments planned for 10.2. That way I'd know whether or not my investment in an Apple machine was appreciated by the company. And it'd let me know if I should start looking at eBay to see how much I can sell this thing for before the prices completely fall out of the market. If my first venture into a non-Wintel environment is going to be on hardware practically obsolete within a year, it'll be my last.

Apple's made some good strides at converting Windows and Unix users. I just hope they don't blow it now.
 
nope, you've certainly got me wrong there, tellarhk ... i'm not acting like it's easy to get up-to-date hardware, i can't afford to myself.
what i am saying is that os x runs perfectly well on my setup (g4/466/768mb ram), not sluggish in any way whatsoever, and therefore i don't really care whether quartz extreme will work for me or not, which it won't. if it did, cool, as it doesn't, so what? maybe quartz extreme makes os x even faster, but it's already pretty fast for me as it is...
i'm just fed up with people whining about window resizing and stuff ... if finder windows resized any faster, they'd be resizing before i even decided to resize them ... what's the point? :D
 
If my first venture into a non-Wintel environment is going to be on hardware practically obsolete within a year, it'll be my last.
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I have a clamshell iBook which runs OSX fine. I do not perceive upgrading for several years. I have owned the computer for several years. That means that I will get at least 5 years use out of it as my primary workstation. It will then be put to good use a server of some sort. Why will your iBook be obsolete? When Jaguar comes out you will get a performance boost, which is the opposite of obsolescence. Does it matter that you don't get the full boost that other people get - as long as it does the job.

What about this scenario? Apple throttle back the accelaration in QE so that all current cards get the same opimisation, whether they have 8MB VRAM or 32 MB VRAM. All the guys with higher spec hardware would be complaining then, and rightly so. Apple have said that they will provide accelaration for certain types of cards, and it will fully utilise those cards up to 32MB. Above 32MB the cards will not be fully utilised and the user will see the maximum available accelation. However users like us with lesser cards should be happy - our hardware is being used to its fullest - great value for money in my opinion.

R.
 
Originally posted by roger

Why will your iBook be obsolete? When Jaguar comes out you will get a performance boost, which is the opposite of obsolescence. Does it matter that you don't get the full boost that other people get - as long as it does the job.

What about this scenario? Apple throttle back the accelaration in QE so that all current cards get the same opimisation, whether they have 8MB VRAM or 32 MB VRAM. All the guys with higher spec hardware would be complaining then, and rightly so. Apple have said that they will provide accelaration for certain types of cards, and it will fully utilise those cards up to 32MB. Above 32MB the cards will not be fully utilised and the user will see the maximum available accelation. However users like us with lesser cards should be happy - our hardware is being used to its fullest - great value for money in my opinion.

R.
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See, that's the problem. With so little known about what QE and other Jaguar enhancements, other than rumor, I don't feel confident that there will be a performance enhancement for my iBook. I'm not in any way suggesting Apple throttle anything back, and thought I was pretty clear on that point. All I'm wishing was that Apple would release enough information so that I knew the performance I get would be addressed in at least some fashion.

You say it's fast enough for you, I say I'm surprised. I've had times when I was doing nothing except typing in a document, with no applications other than Word and IE running, with 192M of RAM, and I'll get 2-3 seconds of lagtime before each keystroke renders on screen. To some people the instant response will be "Get more RAM."

I could do those two tasks on Windows, Linux, and any other OS I've tried with 64M of RAM and not worry about monster slowdowns. There've been times when applications other than Word would bog down like that as well. If that problem would go away, Jaguar would be worth a few bucks for me. If it doesn't, it still may be. But I'll be able to wait a while before I get it.

And on a tangent, I don't see why Apple charges for OS updates. They're making money on the hardware and with X they're just trying to play catchup with the OS9 feature set. I'd hope they showed a little altruism toward the user base and took OS upgrades out of the income bracket. A policy of doing that would go a long way toward making Apple look more benevolent. It's too easy now to wonder if they're worse than MS for controlling the hardware as well. This is the time when they'll likely have the best chance to grab mraket share.
 
You say it's fast enough for you, I say I'm surprised. I've had times when I was doing nothing except typing in a document, with no applications other than Word and IE running, with 192M of RAM, and I'll get 2-3 seconds of lagtime before each keystroke renders on screen.
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There must be something wrong with your machine. I have never experienced this with mine, even in VPC. 2-3 seconds is a very, very long time for a lag. You say that you can do these tasks on Windows with only 64MB RAM - I really would not recommend using win2k or XP with 64MB RAM - very unpleasant. Linux I can believe. My machine is not the quickest, but I have never out-typed it. It takes a while to render Movies, but I am OK with that. I can touch-type as well, just to take that out of the equation.

I wasn't suggesting that you thought Apple were throttling back their products. What information would you want Apple to release? The problem is that there are lots of hardware/software configurations out there and it would be impossible for Apple to release stats on all of them. Remember also that someone recently had a go at them in the courts saying that OSX was not sufficient for G3s when a press release said that it was. If I was Apple I would be slightly reticent in releasing statistics.

I totally agree that you want to know what you are getting for your money before parting with cash for an upgrade - who wouldn't. What I suggest is wait until it is installed at a local shop that sells iBooks and see what the speed is like on a model the same/similar to your own. Remember also that the speed increase is limited to specific tasks so the perceived accelaration experienced by the user will depend not only on what you do, but how you do it to a large extent.

I will be unhappy if I decide that the extra money is not worth it (because I am already happy with my OSX) but then new applications require 10.2. We are then being forced to upgrade at a cost. I would prefer the choice, or have a free upgrade.
 
TellarHK,

I'm sorry for the resentment you feel as a result of this thread, but something you pointed out should have been part of my point.

No one really knows what QE is going to do for them. We also don't know how much OSX will be optimized for those not using QE. I don't think there's any reason to believe it won't be. You have to understand that at the time of my original post, people were pretty much forming angry mobs because QE did not support their hardware. I feel there is no basis for such things. I think they need to wait until it's released to decide wether they should be upset or not.

I must admit I've seen OSX on an iBook 500 and was not blown away by it's speed. I would definitely like to see it be faster, but that's a seperate issue.

Just sit tight, and see what happens.
 
Well, I can understand how Apple might be reluctant to release too much information in light of lawsuits that they might be facing. But unfortunately, it just seems like Apple's starting to do a one-company job of the balkanization between the 'new and the old' every year that we see in the PC industry.

It's easy to hope it's only transitional, with the power ramping they're just starting to do in order to look more competitive. Unfortunately, with Apple keeping themselves so close-lipped, they're really not helping to quell any concerns.

What I'd like to hear is something pretty simple. Just something to say what kind of improvement people may possibly see on representative hardware. You say Apple has a lot of machines to keep track of, and that's true. But with the limited number of changed components in most Apple machines, they should be able to pick some of the OS X supported hardware and just use them as examples. With the iBook 500s selling as well as I recall them having done, I'd expect them to be a benchmark of sorts.

I'm hoping someone with access to one of the Jaguar betas will actually say something positive, but it's hard telling.
 
I honestly don't think people are giving OS X the credit that's due... this OS is extremely heavy when it comes to the UI... the reason is that the UI will be able to hold its own for some time to come... it's extremely scalable and extremely extensible.

I'm not certain what your problems are, but I've found the OS usable on a beige G3 with 192 mb of ram... that's amazing to me. I have plans to try it out on an older 8600 as soon as its free... I've found doing things like turning off text antialiasing can improve text rendering dramatically... especially when using OS X on a machine with little memory. Also- you might look into one of the utilities that enables screen buffer compression-- to conserve more ram... since you're using a laptop you won't be changing resolution or color depth very often (if at all).

Back to my first point... Windows 2k ran very well with only one 64MB DIMM... as long as you slimmed it down as much as you could and didn't ask too much of it. It's also doing much much less UI wizardry than OS X. Planned obscelescence isn't the term I'd use... you'll notice that so far apple has moved almost all of its products to the G4 platform... OS X has a lot of ability to take advantage of the Altivec instruction set to speed up the Quartz subsystem... your iBook can't take advantage of this.

Perhaps there is a technical problem with your system that is causing the slowdowns to be as difficult to cope with as you say it is... keystrokes are terrible things to wait for. Like I said... on lesser hardware I've had perfectly reasonable performance... I can use it to surf the web, check e-mail, and access a filemaker pro database. I do this with as few applications open as possible.

OMG... this post is getting more incoherent by the moment... i'd better hit submit...
 
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