From: Simon Wistow Date: 16:40 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: mac schmack This will be another unfocused hate. More like a seething cloud of hate rather than a rock hard fireball. I had a long weekend in which I shouted a fair bit at my laptop. This is the result. The general recipient of this hate is my Mac. I'm goign to steer clear of the hardware in general but they're so intertwined, the hardware and the OS and all the software, that some bitterness may leak over. Now most hates that I've seen are about Mac OS X. And if there was a sister list, hates-hardware, then I imagine that there would be plenty of anti-iBook hates. Actually, know I don't. The number of people I know who've had horrific problems with their iBooks yet remain staunchly Apple apologist, is incredible. My Vaio didn't have this many problems and I treated that like shit. But I hate my Vaio too. But this is not hates-hardware. I digress. So, where were we? Oh yes. My Mac. I aquired it when a company I was working for went bust. It's an old G3 powerbook. A Lombard I think. It's fairly slow. It has problems running QT movies and won't run MacOS X. Still, I quite liked it. It has all the right ports and stuff. It looks nice. But it runs MacOS 9. Now, the interface to MacOS 9 is nice and I have to admit that I do like that fact that, in general, stuff just works. But I loathe the fact that it's not pre-emptively multitasking. And has no memory protection. I know that Apple did have a project to try and fix this (Copland?), and eventually went with the beast known as Mac OS X, but still. My fucking ST had pre-emptive multitasking back in 1990 or so. I've heard people say that they don't notice. Those people are either lying, stupid or kidding themselves. Networking seems to be particularly braindead. True the point and drool interface works aslong as it's working but when it doesn't fixing things seems to be a pray and reboot situation. And what's with not having a button to refresh or apply the current settings. It means that if I want to update my DHCP or experient with settings then I have to go into network setting, select another network interface, hit ok (which closes the dialogue) then go into the network setting again and turn it back to the interface that I want. Gah. And if I close the lid then it drops all my network connections. Instantaneously. Grrr. And takes a fricking age to wake up again when I open it again. If I then fire up Internet Explorer and try and go to a page then ineveitably my machine locks up. Hard. Dead. If I wait a bit before I do anything, or fire up another app (such as MacSSH) before I fire up IE then it seems to work. But if I forget then there's nothing I can do but reboot. Because there's no 'kill process'. Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh. And how do I reboot? Ctrl-Alt-Delete? Nah. Hit the pwoer button. Umm, no. Apple+power button. Sometimes. But generally I just have to pop the battery and pull out the power cord. Nice. Of course half the time the Mac then does the blinking question mark thing until I leave it for half an hour and try again. KILL! KILL! KILL! So I finally reboot. And I'm using IE and most stuff looks ok in it and network lookups aren't *too* slow as long as I'm not trying to do anything else at the same time of course. And suddenly I get a "Cannot load Flash plugin. Error 2 of 5. Out of Memory". On every page. Until I quit IE and load the whole thing again. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE! So finally I manage to download say, a QT trailer. And I try and run it. And it runs like a pig. So I download the smaller, postage stamp sized one and drag that onto Quicktime. Which obediently does nothing. I try again. Nada. Zip. I have to open up the file browser and navigate to it. *Sigh*
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 17:22 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack > I aquired it when a company I was working for went bust. It's an old G3 > powerbook. A Lombard I think. It's fairly slow. It has problems running > QT movies and won't run MacOS X. Even with XPostFacto? XPostFacto is one of those programs that so much doesn't suck that I'm embarassed to mention it here. I've run Mac OS X on a 7600 with a 604e/180 using XPostFacto, so surely your G3 can handle it. People keep telling me how classic Mac OS didn't suck all that bad. I don't understand what they're smoking. Now the fastest thing I've played with OS 9 on is a G3/700, but after all that's only something like six or eight times as fast as my own laptop which has no problems with FreeBSD, Windows 2000, and BeOS... so unless there's something in the G4 that magically extracts all the suck I have to conclude they're on something pretty heavy. Apple seems to love installing suck at the OS level. I've got a NeXTstation Mono next to the 7200/120 I'm currently running classic Mac OS on, and despite having a 6x faster CPU and 3.5 times as much RAM (and that 60% faster) NeXTstep kicks OS 9's butt. [insert flame about Quartz and the effect it has on OS X performance here, you've seen it before... OS X is so much faster than OS 9 everywhere else that it's a damn shame they didn't have a Quartz Lite for their existing users: they'd probably have a double-digit market-share by now if they had] > I know that Apple did have a project to try and fix this (Copland?), and > eventually went with the beast known as Mac OS X, but still. My fucking > ST had pre-emptive multitasking back in 1990 or so. Under what, Linux? Some multifinder-style hack? My fucking ST didn't have preemptive multitasking, that's why I dumped it and got my fucking Amiga, which had preemptive multitasking in 1986. Real native supported preemptive multitasking. Not a hack. I'm sure you can install Linux on your Lombard. You can probably install BeOS and run OS 8.1 under Sheepshaver. I did that on my 604e/180. Or run Mac OS X under Linux on your Lombard using XPostFacto. There's not going to be any end to the Classic Mac OS Suck until you do.
From: Chris Nandor Date: 17:31 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack At 11:22 -0500 2003.09.08, Peter da Silva wrote: >People keep telling me how classic Mac OS didn't suck all that bad. I don't >understand what they're smoking. Now the fastest thing I've played with OS >9 on is a G3/700, but after all that's only something like six or eight times >as fast as my own laptop which has no problems with FreeBSD, Windows 2000, >and BeOS... so unless there's something in the G4 that magically extracts >all the suck I have to conclude they're on something pretty heavy. The UI in Mac OS is significantly faster than Mac OS X. No, really. It is. And things like compiling software etc. is as fast or faster in Mac OS (as long as you don't have other things doing things, and not including "cheats" like predictive compiling in XCode ...). >[insert flame about Quartz and the effect it has on OS X performance here, > you've seen it before... OS X is so much faster than OS 9 everywhere > else No, it's not. It is faster in some areas, such as loading apps that can take advantage of prebinding. It may be faster at IO, one some machines. On others, maybe not. And as noted, Mac OS beats Mac OS X in the UI. In most places, they have the same speed. Often people think Mac OS is slow because of bad extension crap, or because many apps/extensions are running simultaneously and competing for processor time, but while that IS a poor reflection on the OS, certainly, it is not the same thing as saying the OS is slow.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 19:17 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack > >People keep telling me how classic Mac OS didn't suck all that bad. I don't > >understand what they're smoking. Now the fastest thing I've played with OS > >9 on is a G3/700, but after all that's only something like six or eight times > >as fast as my own laptop which has no problems with FreeBSD, Windows 2000, > >and BeOS... so unless there's something in the G4 that magically extracts > >all the suck I have to conclude they're on something pretty heavy. > The UI in Mac OS is significantly faster than Mac OS X. Quickdraw is faster than Quartz, yes. That's the ONLY way in which Mac OS 9 is faster than Mac OS X, when you're comparing the same operations. The multitasking is more efficient with lower overhead. The memory management is better, with lower overhead and better cache access. The only places OS 9 is faster than OS X are when rendering the display is the bottleneck (which is an overwhelming amount of the time, which is why OS 9 is usable on machines that can't run OS X), or when you're running different applications altogether. > And things like compiling software etc. is as fast or faster in Mac OS > (as long as you don't have other things doing things, and not including > "cheats" like predictive compiling in XCode ...). What you're saying here is that Code Warrior is faster than GCC. Well, yes, I'd believe that. What's that got to do with the OS? > No, it's not. It is faster in some areas, such as loading apps that can > take advantage of prebinding. Prebinding is a shuck. There's something *wrong* with Apple's shared library design if you have to pre-build the symbol cache. > It may be faster at IO, one some machines. Unless there's a driver problem on OS X, OS X can not help but beat OS 9 on IO because it never has to defer IO in favor of computation, *and* the impact of non-polled I/O on computation is negligable. > On others, maybe not. And as noted, Mac OS beats Mac OS X in the UI. In > most places, they have the same speed. The only place they have the same speed is when running a single application that is computation-bound, with negligable GUI or OS interaction. Like, oh, benchmarks. And that's because the OS is not involved. Otherwise, Mac OS has an overwhelmingly faster GUI, albeit with badly unpredictable behaviour, and Mac OS X has the edge everywhere else. > Often people think Mac OS is slow > because of bad extension crap, or because many apps/extensions are running > simultaneously and competing for processor time, but while that IS a poor > reflection on the OS, certainly, it is not the same thing as saying the OS > is slow. But, Chris, the only time the OS is even relevant is when an application is interacting with people, devices, or other applications. looking at applications that aren't limited by the OS tells you nothing about how fast the OS is. When the OS *does* have to do its job, managing I/O and interactions between applications and utilities, it falls on its face in every area but one: rendering the user interface.
From: Chris Nandor Date: 19:39 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack Put both responses in one email to save people from having to delete two useless posts ... At 13:17 -0500 2003.09.08, Peter da Silva wrote: >That's the ONLY way in which Mac OS 9 is faster than Mac OS X, when you're >comparing the same operations. No, it isn't. Sending Apple events is faster in Mac OS, for example (on my machines, Mac OS 9.2.x and Mac OS X 10.2.x, anyway). >> No, it's not. It is faster in some areas, such as loading apps that can >> take advantage of prebinding. > >Prebinding is a shuck. There's something *wrong* with Apple's shared library >design if you have to pre-build the symbol cache. That's beside the point, and is a whole separate rant. :) >> It may be faster at IO, one some machines. > >Unless there's a driver problem on OS X, OS X can not help but beat OS 9 >on IO because it never has to defer IO in favor of computation, *and* the >impact of non-polled I/O on computation is negligable. Again, you are missing the point. I am talking about raw speed apart from problems with multitasking. I said this already, quite clearly. Most users only use a single app at once, and that single app is usually doing only one thing at a time. In such cases, the apps won't have significant multitasking issues. It is that speed that I am talking about, as previously stated. Indeed, Mac OS is often FASTER in this sort of use, because the frontmost app is allowed to monopolize ALL the CPU. It's what cooperative multitasking was designed for. If you want to go off on a religious multitasking war, though, I am not interested. :) The one glaring exception to what I'm talking about is networking. Yes, networking on Mac OS X is tons faster. Happy? :p >Like, oh, >benchmarks. And that's because the OS is not involved. Right, the OS is not involved. Right. Uh-huh. Sorry, I thought you actually had a serious point here. You see, when I grant that apps can be slowed down because of cooperative vs. preemptive multitasking and then go on to say how Mac OS, apart from such things as these, is not slower, and you go on to assert it is slower specifically because of those excluded reasons, I get confused. >But, Chris, the only time the OS is even relevant is when an application >is interacting with people, devices, or other applications. looking at >applications that aren't limited by the OS tells you nothing about how >fast the OS is. When the OS *does* have to do its job, managing I/O and >interactions between applications and utilities, it falls on its face in >every area but one: rendering the user interface. That would be a nice way to sum up, if that were the only thing the OS did. When I call a sleep() function, for example, it is the OS that is providing that, both in the API and in what the API does when it is called. So we can be clear and end this uselessness: it's this level that I am talking about, program intereacting with OS to perform operations, which is not slower, and is sometimes faster, on Mac OS. Those operations are slowed significantly when the OS needs to cooperate with other processes, and this effect can be significantly minimized through careful and knowledgable management of the running processes (for example, not running MSIE). At 12:59 -0500 2003.09.08, Peter da Silva wrote: >> It's not that you don't notice the multitasking, it's that it is *not >> important* for most users. > >It doesn't matter if multitasking is important to them or not, the lack of >any operating system *at all* below the level of the GUI causes all kinds >of effects that they can't help but notice. Well, of course, there IS multitasking, cooperative intead of preemptive. But there is also an OS below the GUI. Not sure exactly why you say there isn't. Shorthand for saying you need the GUI to do most things? >I'll be sitting there working >on something, and the whole computer comes to a complete halt because some >component I neither know nor care about, something that's not even visible >on the screen, something that shouldn't even be in any critical path, decides >it doesn't want to cooperate. When I point this out I get "that's OK, it >came back after a couple of seconds, it's not like it crashed". Yes, which is why people like me, who knew their systems very well, kept such components out of the System Folder. Again, yes, this is a problem with the OS, but it didn't significantly harm the average user. >OS X doesn't act like that. Yes, sometimes some program will put up a moded >grab and I'll get a few seconds of lollypop in that app. VERY rarely, if I >have a few dozen applications running and a backup going on I *often* see significant system slowdown because of one misbehaving process on Mac OS X. >> When you are browsing the web or reading email, it simply didn't matter. > >Like hell it didn't. The only reason it didn't was because someone spent a >grand or two on their Mac and they'd lose face if they admitted even to >themselves that under the covers the emperor had no clothes. No, it is because to me it *actually didn't happen* because I know how to keep the machine running well. If you can call me a liar, I can call you ignorant, right? :) >And there's a lot of failures that people put down to memory protection that >are obviously, when I watch them happen, scheduling problems. That's nice for you and those people. >> For single-user machines -- and I was a power user on Mac OS, doing many >> things at once -- cooperative multitasking simply wasn't a problem for most >> users, including me. > >Sure it was. You just got used to it. You really look stupid by telling me what I experienced. Really, you do. Just a helpful hint. Now, I guess I should clarify and say it wasn't an "active" problem, or somesuch. Of course it was a problem, but it was a problem that I worked around. I didn't merely learn to live with it, I tuned my system to decrease, and mostly negate, its negative effects. >> >And takes a fricking age to wake up again when I open it again. > >> That's more of a function of your hardware, in my experience (I've had just >> about every laptop Apple's made since the Wall Street, and the newer >> hardware + software [including a Lombard/500 with Mac OS 9.2.x]) that woke >> up quite speedily. > >Look, I'm running FreeBSD on a 166 MHz laptop and I have it set to hibernate >to disk, not just go to standby, because it takes it less than 20 seconds >to restore when I bring it up again. It can take another half a minute to >reinitialise the wireless card if I have it in, but that happens in the >background... I don't see it, I do get a brief GUI freeze if it needs to >reinitialise the hardware, but that's about all. I am not saying the machine is slow. That was not the statement. I am saying it did not wake from sleep quickly. It's not about CPU speed. And note that while even some speedy G3s woke slowly from sleep in Mac OS 8, the speed was cut significantly for certain hardware combinations with Mac OS 9. My PowerBook G4 wakes from sleep faster in Mac OS than Mac OS X sometimes, and usually about the same speed (although devices can slow it down significantly).
From: Nicholas Clark Date: 21:26 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 11:39:00AM -0700, Chris Nandor wrote: > At 13:17 -0500 2003.09.08, Peter da Silva wrote: > >Prebinding is a shuck. There's something *wrong* with Apple's shared library > >design if you have to pre-build the symbol cache. > > That's beside the point, and is a whole separate rant. :) Can we have that one soon? I'd love to know why Apple managed to take an OS with a functional dynamic linking system (FreeBSD) and break it horribly for OS X, when it would seem that not fucking around with it at all would have kept it working sweetly. Nicholas Clark
From: Paul Mison Date: 23:49 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack On 08/09/2003 at 21:26 +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote: >>Prebinding is a shuck >I'd love to know why Apple managed to take an OS with a functional >dynamic linking system (FreeBSD) and break it horribly for OS X, >when it would seem that not fucking around with it at all would have >kept it working sweetly. One of the overarching reasons I hate Mac OS X is that the Unix side is so fucked up. This is, of course, because (as I understand it, anyway) it's actually pretty much NeXTstep (NeXTSTEP? I forget the wacky capitalisation) all the way down, with a thin veneer of FreeBSD fileutils. (Unless you're me, and you install GNU's fileutils instead, because you're the sort of idiot that likes software to do -h style numbering for you rather than comparing the lengths of numbers and trying to put the commas in 4,933,124,436 bytes in in your head.) The other overarching reason I hate Mac OS X is, naturally, that the Mac side is so fucked up.
From: Chris Nandor Date: 23:56 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack At 23:49 +0100 2003.09.08, Paul Mison wrote: >One of the overarching reasons I hate Mac OS X is that the Unix side >is so fucked up. >The other overarching reason I hate Mac OS X is, naturally, that the >Mac side is so fucked up. I like saying that the worst part about the Unix side of Mac OS X is the NeXT influence; however, the worst part about the Mac side of Mac OS X is the NeXT influence.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 00:09 on 09 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack > One of the overarching reasons I hate Mac OS X is that the Unix side > is so fucked up. You're spoiled. You haven't lived until you've had to binary-patch a SCO kernel five minutes before an important demo for the CEO because you can't get a Xenix-386 and a System V driver to live happily together and let you run both TCP/IP and OSI networking stacks in the same address space. Compared to some of the systems I've used, Mac OS X is practically perfect in every way.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 21:29 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack > >That's the ONLY way in which Mac OS 9 is faster than Mac OS X, when you're > >comparing the same operations. > No, it isn't. Sending Apple events is faster in Mac OS, for example (on my > machines, Mac OS 9.2.x and Mac OS X 10.2.x, anyway). I did not know that, but I can see how that could be the case. That's going to be a result of memory protection. Could you comment on where this might be a bottleneck? > >> It may be faster at IO, one some machines. > >Unless there's a driver problem on OS X, OS X can not help but beat OS 9 > >on IO because it never has to defer IO in favor of computation, *and* the > >impact of non-polled I/O on computation is negligable. > Again, you are missing the point. I am talking about raw speed apart from > problems with multitasking. I said this already, quite clearly. Once you eliminate what you're dismissing as "problems with multitasking" there's very little left for which the OS can have an effect on. In particular, in Mac OS X or any other preemptive multitasking system, if there is only one active application it will monopolize all the CPU. In practice, it will lose a fraction of a percent to things like the scheduler but that will be no more than a fraction of a percent on any machine for which OS X is even vaguely practical. And cooperative applications, as we will see, have their own overhead to deal with... overhead that can be even more significant. I've been doing realtime control systems for over 20 years. I've measured the OS overhead on machines all the way back to the PDP-11... if you can show a situation where a cooperative system is more than a percent or so faster than a preemptive system for a single active application then I can show you an application that needs to be fixed. > The one glaring exception to what I'm talking about is networking. Yes, > networking on Mac OS X is tons faster. Happy? :p Networking is one of those things that involves heavy multitasking, so no wonder. Virtual memory on Mac OS X is tons faster. A lot of GUI operations are tons faster on Mac OS X, too. Even within an app, and ignoring things like downloading because they involve the evil networking, a lot of stuff is faster on Mac OS X because it can meaningfully happen in the background. > Right, the OS is not involved. Right. Uh-huh. Sorry, I thought you > actually had a serious point here. You see, when I grant that apps can be > slowed down because of cooperative vs. preemptive multitasking and then go > on to say how Mac OS, apart from such things as these, is not slower, and > you go on to assert it is slower specifically because of those excluded > reasons, I get confused. Obviously. What you're saying is "Mac OS isn't slower than Mac OS X when you're not actually using the OS". Well, yeh, I'll grant that point. And I'd like a bit more info on where Apple Events are going to be a bottleneck. I have an idea I'm not going to like the answer. > That would be a nice way to sum up, if that were the only thing the OS did. > When I call a sleep() function, for example, it is the OS that is providing > that, both in the API and in what the API does when it is called. If I understand rightly what call you're talking about here, Mac OS X is faster because a preemptive application doesn't have to call it at all. The need for an application in Mac OS to periodically poll the OS for events that other applications may (but usually don't) need to react to is actually going to make a compute bound application marginally faster on Mac OS X. Thanks for reminding me. This example does bring the confusion into focus. You're not talking about the relative cost of cooperative versus preemptive multitasking at all! The extra cost to a system call in Mac OS X has nothing to do with multitasking or the scheduler, it's purely a matter of memory protection overhead. On the Amiga, for example, which had a real-time preemptive multitasking OS... the "system call" (message passing) overhead was significantly lower than it was even in the original Mac OS. The context switch overhead was as low as in the Mac, it was shared among multiple messages, and it only happened when there was actual work to do that required a context switch... if the call could be completed in the current context it was just a subroutine call, otherwise it took 4 instructions to put the message on a queue. The scheduler (sleep) was only involved in two cases: (1) the application needed to wait on an external event; or (2) an interrupt occurred. The bottom line is that there is no detectable overhead that can be attributed to preemptive multitasking by itself. The cost you're seeing is all due to memory protection. > Well, of course, there IS multitasking, cooperative intead of preemptive. > But there is also an OS below the GUI. Not sure exactly why you say there > isn't. Shorthand for saying you need the GUI to do most things? The Macintosh scheduling and event handling is based on the requirements and capabilities of the GUI. Interprogram communication, scheduling, context switches, all happens through APIs derived from the GUI... it's not like OS X, AmigaOS, NT, or other modern operating systems where there's a formal underlying OS that provides services that the GUI, along with other subsystems, uses. > Yes, which is why people like me, who knew their systems very well, kept > such components out of the System Folder. That is an accomodation to the problem. The average user comes to his own accomodation with that problem, just as I have come to an accomodation with my vision and my knees. To say that this doesn't "significantly harm the average user" seems just the least bit jesuitical to me. > >OS X doesn't act like that. Yes, sometimes some program will put up a moded > >grab and I'll get a few seconds of lollypop in that app. VERY rarely, if I > >have a few dozen applications running and a backup going on > I *often* see significant system slowdown because of one misbehaving > process on Mac OS X. And this is similar to the way OS 9 behaves? By the time OS X has reached the point of "significant system slowdown" what are you running? If you tried to do a fraction of the same things on OS 9 what would it have done? Would you be "significantly harmed" if OS X had locked up completely many times more often? I occasionally see "significant system slowdown" in OS X myself. I've come to an accomodation with it... but in terms of accomodation this is like comparing a sore finger with multiple amputations. > >> When you are browsing the web or reading email, it simply didn't matter. > >Like hell it didn't. The only reason it didn't was because someone spent a > >grand or two on their Mac and they'd lose face if they admitted even to > >themselves that under the covers the emperor had no clothes. > No, it is because to me it *actually didn't happen* because I know how to > keep the machine running well. After you learned how to work around the problems, then I'm sure it didn't happen any longer. That doesn't mean it actually didn't happen, for people less technically oriented or less patient with their computers. Oh... let's get one thing straight. I'm not saying that the trade-off isn't worth it, or that it wasn't worth the money, I'm just pointing out that there's a lot of Mac users there who deny that this tradeoff exists, and at the same time excuse what I consider grossly unpleasant and far too frequent failures of the old OS with things like "it only froze for X seconds, at least it didn't crash". > You really look stupid by telling me what I experienced. Really, you do. > Just a helpful hint. Here's a helpful hint. If you're going to tell me my narratization of the process is so completely off base, you probably want to stick a few more paragraphs between it and something like this: > Now, I guess I should clarify and say it wasn't an "active" problem, or > somesuch. Of course it was a problem, but it was a problem that I worked > around. I didn't merely learn to live with it, I tuned my system to > decrease, and mostly negate, its negative effects. Because here you're saying, in a lot of the same words, exactly the same thing that I was saying and that you're objecting to.
From: Chris Nandor Date: 22:06 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack At 15:29 -0500 2003.09.08, Peter da Silva wrote: >> >That's the ONLY way in which Mac OS 9 is faster than Mac OS X, when you're >> >comparing the same operations. > >> No, it isn't. Sending Apple events is faster in Mac OS, for example (on my >> machines, Mac OS 9.2.x and Mac OS X 10.2.x, anyway). > >I did not know that, but I can see how that could be the case. That's going to >be a result of memory protection. > >Could you comment on where this might be a bottleneck? During the sending of Apple events, where you wait for a reply, just like any communication. You probably won't notice it except during benchmarks, and the difference now might now be as much as it was the last time I checked. I've not bothered to do any detailed analysis, because I don't care enough. >I've been doing realtime control systems for over 20 years. I've measured >the OS overhead on machines all the way back to the PDP-11... if you can >show a situation where a cooperative system is more than a percent or so >faster than a preemptive system for a single active application then I can No, I couldn't. My claim was not that Mac OS is significantly faster in any such cases. I was responding to your claim that "OS X is so much faster than OS 9 everywhere else." >> Yes, which is why people like me, who knew their systems very well, kept >> such components out of the System Folder. > >That is an accomodation to the problem. Yes, as taking a shower is an accomodation to the problem of smelling bad. I don't consider taking a shower a workaround or accommodation, personally. >my vision and my knees. To say that this doesn't "significantly harm the >average user" seems just the least bit jesuitical to me. It's an observation borne of about 16 years of using Macs and knowing thousands of Mac users. *shrug* >I occasionally see "significant system slowdown" in OS X myself. I've come >to an accomodation with it... but in terms of accomodation this is like >comparing a sore finger with multiple amputations. No. You keep talking about Mac OS as though extension conflicts and running a lot of background junk is how it was meant to be. It isn't. Not using a lot of extensions is not amputating anything, unless you happened to graft on a third arm that shouldn't have been there to begin with. Of course, Mac OS is flawed in memory protection, and of course, cooperative multitasking brings with it various problems. And yes, preemptive multitasking is superior. But for a single user computer, where it is not filled with crap, and broken programs, cooperative multitasking works just fine, including in Mac OS. >> Now, I guess I should clarify and say it wasn't an "active" problem, or >> somesuch. Of course it was a problem, but it was a problem that I worked >> around. I didn't merely learn to live with it, I tuned my system to >> decrease, and mostly negate, its negative effects. > >Because here you're saying, in a lot of the same words, exactly the same thing >that I was saying and that you're objecting to. Except not. You were describing behaviors and saying they happened to me, that I was saying it didn't in order to save face. You were wrong, and I said so. These problems *actually didn't happen to me* any more often than they happen to me on Mac OS X, because I took care of what I was running.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 23:22 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack > >Could you comment on where this might be a bottleneck? > During the sending of Apple events, where you wait for a reply, just like > any communication. OK, OK, I suppose I asked for that. I'm in a balloon. What I'm getting at is this like the graphics, or memory protection, or VM, or concurrent multitasking, where it makes a big difference... or is it a few percent and in an area where it's not going to make a difference, or where the difference is actually irrelevant because OS X uses other more efficient mechanisms that avoids the bottleneck completely? > No, I couldn't. My claim was not that Mac OS is significantly faster in > any such cases. I was responding to your claim that "OS X is so much > faster than OS 9 everywhere else." Well... In every area where I've been able to compare the two systems, either by direct experience or by comparing the way they perform equivalent tasks, there's only one area (and it's a BIG one, I'm not trying to minimize the impact) where OS 9 is even comparable, let alone better. So I'm not talking about "OS X reads 2% more bytes per second from a USB CDROM" (I have no idea whether it does or not, for that matter). I'd be talking about the overhead and performance of the whole I/O subsystem. For example, I could come up with some kind of weaselling to minimise the cost of Quartz. "Mac OS X is faster than OS 9 for rendering antialiased windows" may be true (again, I don't know), but it's not a fair comparison because you don't have the options of *not* doing that on OS X, and it's not something that has a big impact on OS 9 performance. So... in any area where the OS is in a position to make an impact, OS X design makes it faster... except for the case of rendering graphics, because OS X forces you to take on so much more. > >> Yes, which is why people like me, who knew their systems very well, kept > >> such components out of the System Folder. > >That is an accomodation to the problem. > Yes, as taking a shower is an accomodation to the problem of smelling bad. Um... If you were comparing humans to androids, so that this applied significantly more to one side than the other (or hyenas to humans, if you prefer) that might be a reasonable extension of the analogy. Of course it wouldn't support what I assume is your point nearly so well. > >my vision and my knees. To say that this doesn't "significantly harm the > >average user" seems just the least bit jesuitical to me. > It's an observation borne of about 16 years of using Macs and knowing > thousands of Mac users. *shrug* I've observed the same accomodations being made by all Mac users. I'd never had to do the same before. > >I occasionally see "significant system slowdown" in OS X myself. I've come > >to an accomodation with it... but in terms of accomodation this is like > >comparing a sore finger with multiple amputations. > No. You keep talking about Mac OS as though extension conflicts and > running a lot of background junk is how it was meant to be. Why shouldn't you be able to "run a lot of background junk"? I've got dozens of little apps and applets I run all the time on other operating systems. They significantly improve the environment for me, streamlining the user interface and adapting it to the way I prefer to work, feeding me information I want to keep aware of. On Mac OS 9, I had to reduce that to a couple. I couldn't find a menu-bar or control-strip weather monitor, for example. I had to dump the drive monitor and the applications menu and use X-Launch instead. "You keep talking about the human body as though sore knees and riding the bike to work is how it was meant to be." Well, yes. I used to be able to ride to work. I even skateboarded to work when I first moved to Houston. Not being able to do that is limiting. I suppose I should just shut up about having my bike and skateboard amputated. hey're just a hird arm... leg... whatever. But I miss all that crap. > Except not. You were describing behaviors and saying they happened to me, > that I was saying it didn't in order to save face. I did no such thing. I said that the people who deny these problems exist at all must have some such motivation. You've agreed that these things happened to you and acknowledged the problems, so why are you borrowing shoes that don't fit? > These problems *actually didn't happen to me* any more often than > they happen to me on Mac OS X, because I took care of what I was running. How did you learn what you could safely run without ever running anything unsafely? Do you take such great care as to what you run on Mac OS X? I take very little care at all, even less than I do on Mac OS (and it should be clear by now that I'm dangerously cavalier and a Mac abuser) and while Mac OS X seems less stable than FreeBSD (HFS+, lord, I wish I could Just Say No) it's so far ahead of Mac OS 9 that there's no comparison. And, oh, here's something that I'm absolutely sure happened to you. It just happened to me. I was just using the Finder, and I wanted to clean up my desktop. So, I selected some files, and moved them to the trash. Then I inserted a CD, and opened a folder, moved some files around, copied a file from the CD, and ejected it. Then I emptied the trash. On Mac OS, several times the Finder stopped responding while it deleted files, copied files, detected and displayed the CD, emptied the trash, and ejected the CD. On Mac OS X most if not all of those pauses, which added about a minute and a half to the whole process, didn't happen. What's the response? It's only a minute and a half? I shouldn't have bothered emptying the trash? I should have used the CD first so I could drag it and the files into the trash in a single operation? Whatever it is, I reckon Jobs owes me that minute and a half, and all the other twenty seconds here, thirty seconds there, every pause and stumble I have to allow for when dancing with this poor fragile zombie.
From: Chris Nandor Date: 23:33 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack At 17:22 -0500 2003.09.08, Peter da Silva wrote: >What I'm getting at is this like the graphics, or memory protection, or >VM, or concurrent multitasking, where it makes a big difference... or is >it a few percent and in an area where it's not going to make a difference, >or where the difference is actually irrelevant because OS X uses other >more efficient mechanisms that avoids the bottleneck completely? No, the bottleneck is not avoided, but the percentage difference is at worst just a few, and you would need to do it thousands of times to notice, where most of the time you're just sending a handful of events. >> >I occasionally see "significant system slowdown" in OS X myself. I've come >> >to an accomodation with it... but in terms of accomodation this is like >> >comparing a sore finger with multiple amputations. > >> No. You keep talking about Mac OS as though extension conflicts and >> running a lot of background junk is how it was meant to be. > >Why shouldn't you be able to "run a lot of background junk"? Why should you have a third arm? >> Except not. You were describing behaviors and saying they happened to me, >> that I was saying it didn't in order to save face. > >I did no such thing. I said that the people who deny these problems exist >at all must have some such motivation. No, you didn't. This is what was said: >> When you are browsing the web or reading email, it simply didn't matter. > >Like hell it didn't. The only reason it didn't was because someone spent a >grand or two on their Mac and they'd lose face if they admitted even to >themselves that under the covers the emperor had no clothes. No, these "problems" *actually, simply, didn't matter*. >And, oh, here's something that I'm absolutely sure happened to you. >It just happened to me. I was just using the Finder, and I wanted >to clean up my desktop. So, I selected some files, and moved them >to the trash. Then I inserted a CD, and opened a folder, moved some >files around, copied a file from the CD, and ejected it. Then I >emptied the trash. > >On Mac OS, several times the Finder stopped responding while it >deleted files, copied files, detected and displayed the CD, emptied >the trash, and ejected the CD. On Mac OS X most if not all of those >pauses, which added about a minute and a half to the whole process, >didn't happen. My Mac OS computer experienced no such pauses running Mac OS, except for when it was broken or wasn't being maintained properly (IOW, I haven't had such problems on Mac OS in many years). *shrug*
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 00:01 on 09 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack > At 17:22 -0500 2003.09.08, Peter da Silva wrote: > >What I'm getting at is this like the graphics, or memory protection, or > >> >I occasionally see "significant system slowdown" in OS X myself. I've come > >> >to an accomodation with it... but in terms of accomodation this is like > >> >comparing a sore finger with multiple amputations. > >> No. You keep talking about Mac OS as though extension conflicts and > >> running a lot of background junk is how it was meant to be. > >Why shouldn't you be able to "run a lot of background junk"? > Why should you have a third arm? I don't have a third arm, but I had a fourth leg and a third lobe to my brain. And I miss my extra legs, and I'd really be ticked off if someone took my Visor Prism. > No, you didn't. This is what was said: Beg pardon, I guess that's your shoe after all. > No, these "problems" *actually, simply, didn't matter*. I got used to driving to work. > >On Mac OS, several times the Finder stopped responding while it > >deleted files, copied files, detected and displayed the CD, emptied > >the trash, and ejected the CD. On Mac OS X most if not all of those > >pauses, which added about a minute and a half to the whole process, > >didn't happen. > My Mac OS computer experienced no such pauses running Mac OS, except for > when it was broken or wasn't being maintained properly (IOW, I haven't had > such problems on Mac OS in many years). *shrug* I wish I had a dual-G4/1.4, or whetever it is that you've got that makes the pauses short enough that they're unnoticable. But I only have a G3/400, and if I insert a CD and then double-click on a folder, that folder doesn't open until it's got the CD icon up on the desk. Similarly, it won't empty the trash until it's finished ejecting the CD. Copying hundreds of megabytes takes time, and so on. And Finder is single threaded, apparently. It won't do any of that in the background like OS X does. So the score here? OS X takes a couple extra seconds to render the windows in True Quartz glory, but I don't have to wait for it to actually do its thing. For this operation, OS X is faster. On the other hand, installing OS X 10.1 on a 7600 took 10 hours, because it took half a minute per *menu* to render and display.
From: David Champion Date: 00:08 on 09 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack Someone, presumably either Peter or Chris, said: > >> No. You keep talking about Mac OS as though extension conflicts and > >> running a lot of background junk is how it was meant to be. > > > >Why shouldn't you be able to "run a lot of background junk"? > > Why should you have a third arm? I *should* have a third arm, damn it. I hate the software that prevents me from having a third arm. I also hate Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X, whichever one is faster. And I hate this mailing list software, which not only defers relaying of at least two messages preceding this one which I got -- I know because I had the stomach to tolerate this thread up to a point, and now I no longer know what either of you is talking about -- but counter-purposefully permits people to persist in publicly hating one another instead of software. I also hate programs in people's signatures that print pithy quotations in ROT-13, or that decode DVDs, or implement algorithms what allows terrists ta trade nationil sekrits with their evil moustachioed cohorts in oppressed nations that the united military forces of Texas and Greater Britain can bomb the fuck out of, like Hitler did in 1939: QED, terminus est. Thank you and good night.
From: Chris Nandor Date: 00:14 on 09 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack At 18:08 -0500 2003.09.08, David Champion wrote: >I *should* have a third arm, damn it. I hate the software that prevents >me from having a third arm. Mac OS doesn't prevent it, it just makes it more difficult, and, if you aren't really sure what you were doing (and sometimes even if you did), more dangerous. If you want a machine to do multitasking with lots of little process doing lots of little things and servers doing this and that while you play Super 3D Solitaire, listening to 320 kbps MP3s in the background, then Mac OS is not for you. Back when Mac OS was designed, no one wanted to do that. Now everyone does. Now there's Mac OS X. Which also sucks. >I also hate Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X, whichever >one is faster. And I hate this mailing list software, which not only >defers relaying of at least two messages preceding this one which I got >-- I know because I had the stomach to tolerate this thread up to a >point, and now I no longer know what either of you is talking about -- >but counter-purposefully permits people to persist in publicly hating >one another instead of software. Now now, we don't hate each other. We are capable of only appearing as though we do. It's an upgrade.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 00:36 on 09 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack > Mac OS doesn't prevent it, it just makes it more difficult, and, if you > aren't really sure what you were doing (and sometimes even if you did), > more dangerous. But what if I don't *want* fire that can be fitted nasally? > If you want a machine to do multitasking with lots of little process doing > lots of little things and servers doing this and that while you play Super > 3D Solitaire, listening to 320 kbps MP3s in the background, then Mac OS is > not for you. Back when Mac OS was designed, no one wanted to do that. I did. That's why I got an Amiga that let me chat on Freelancin' Roundtable while I compiled the latest version of my videogame and let "Neko" chase my mouse and ran the last-but-one version of my game in a background screen because I liked the music Karl wrote for it. In 1986. I'd wanted to do that ever since I saw Smalltalk and Lisa and the Xerox Star Office system. In 1982. Then the Mac came out, and I was pissed that the Lisa never went full multitasking even if I couldn't afford one. In 1984. Which turned out to be 1984 anyway. And 2001 turned out to be 1941 lite. > Now everyone does. Sure. We just had to wait for Bill Gates to invent multitasking. I wish I was joking. > Now there's Mac OS X. Which also sucks. And the really shitty thing is, everything else sucks even more. > Now now, we don't hate each other. We are capable of only appearing as > though we do. It's an upgrade. It's a theme. We're a skinnable application.
From: Chris Nandor Date: 04:51 on 09 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack At 18:36 -0500 2003.09.08, Peter da Silva wrote: >> Now now, we don't hate each other. We are capable of only appearing as >> though we do. It's an upgrade. > >It's a theme. We're a skinnable application. I hates us.
From: Paul Mison
Date: 17:37 on 08 Sep 2003
Subject: Re: mac schmack
On 08/09/2003 at 11:22 -0500, Peter da Silva wrote:
>> I aquired it when a company I was working for went bust. It's an old G3
>> powerbook. A Lombard I think. It's fairly slow. It has problems running
>> QT movies and won't run MacOS X.
>
>Even with XPostFacto? XPostFacto is one of those programs that so much
>doesn't suck that I'm embarassed to mention it here.
Oh, it'd install natively. Simon's just worried about the speed.
Given how much he hates Mac OS 9 I should probably force him to try
it, though.
Of course he only has a 6G HD too. That'd probably hurt.
>> I know that Apple did have a project to try and fix this (Copland?), and
>> eventually went with the beast known as Mac OS X, but still. My fucking
>> ST had pre-emptive multitasking back in 1990 or so.
Yes. Well, if Copland hadn't been specced with a 'must run 100% of
software ever written for the Mac ever' insanity, or if Mac OS X had
been forced to have something better than the fucking awful Classic
environment hack ("hey, let's make a fucking *box* for apps to run in
rather than supporting them natively, like we did when we changed the
entire fucking architecture in 1994!") then Copland could be duking
it out with Son of BeOS and some OpenStep abortion in a much happier
OS environment. But no.
>You can probably install BeOS and run OS 8.1 under Sheepshaver. I did
>that on my 604e/180.
BeOS never supported G3s. Apple allegedly never gave them the
hardware info they needed. Odd, because most of the G3 era machines
were basically CHRP compliant.
>There's not going to be any end to the Classic Mac OS Suck until you do.
One man's suck is another man's sustenance. I'll keep Mac OSes 8.1,
8.6 and 9.1 on my 6500 until the day it dies.
Oh dear. More discussion, not enough hate, for certain bigwigs around
here anyway. I was hating Windows quite well this afternoon but I
couldn't be bothered making it an email. Ho hum.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 19:22 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack > Of course he only has a 6G HD too. That'd probably hurt. 9G here, and I've split it into 3 partitions. And I suspect his machine's faster than mine. > >You can probably install BeOS and run OS 8.1 under Sheepshaver. I did > >that on my 604e/180. > BeOS never supported G3s. Bah. I forgot, because it *does* run on a pre-G3 with a G3 upgrade. > Oh dear. More discussion, not enough hate, for certain bigwigs around > here anyway. I was hating Windows quite well this afternoon but I > couldn't be bothered making it an email. Ho hum. Windows nameserver breakage is filling me with hate right now, but I'm too close to the problem, too filled with bile, to elaborate on it just this minute.
From: Simon Wistow Date: 17:38 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 11:22:42AM -0500, Peter da Silva said: > Under what, Linux? Some multifinder-style hack? MiNT (MiNT is Not TOS) which was bought by Atair and turned into MultiTOS (and MiNT became MiNT is Now TOS) and also using Magix (later renamed MaG!X) > My fucking ST didn't have preemptive multitasking, that's why I dumped it > and got my fucking Amiga, which had preemptive multitasking in 1986. Real > native supported preemptive multitasking. Not a hack. And you got a free footwarmer :) But my point still stands. It took Apple 16 odd fricking years to get preemptive multitasking. I'll say that again. 16. Years. In sixteen years I had time to : 1) be born 2) develop motor control 3) learn to read 4) learn to write 5) learn assembler 6) write my own OS 7) give up on computers to concentrate on beers and girls > I'm sure you can install Linux on your Lombard. But I don't want Linux. Linux also sucks donkey wang. In fact all OSes suck donkey wang. See below. > You can probably install BeOS and run OS 8.1 under Sheepshaver. I did > that on my 604e/180. BeOS might be a possibility. Although that get a special free 'suck' for, well, not being around anymore in a commerical way. > Or run Mac OS X under Linux on your Lombard using XPostFacto. See my big problem is that I hate Max OS X too. But then I also think that Steve Jobs is eveil incarnate and that not only do the iMac (original and current) look damn ugly but also the Ti Powerbook and the iPod. In fact I hate the look of the iPod so much that I won't buy one despite the fact that it's clearly the best portable MP3 player available (FCVO clearly). In fact it enrages me that nobody else has managed to do a clone. I mean, FFS, it's not like Apple did anything revolutionary. I had high hopes for the Toshiba clone because a) Toshiba make the fricking iPod and the drives inside b) it didn't look like the hardware equivalent of white stilletoes c) you could pop it open and remove the drive and then pop that in your PCMCIA slot or, indeed, upgrade but no. They snatch fricking defeat from the jaws of fucking victory by crippling it with DRM and then not having drives as big as the iPod. The fuck? YOU MAKE THE DRIVES YOU MORONS. YOU MUST HAVE THEM LYING AROUND. *sigh* Simon
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 19:46 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack > But my point still stands. It took Apple 16 odd fricking years to get > preemptive multitasking. No fucking kidding. That's 15 years behind a company that made most of its money selling videogame consoles with keyboards. They considered having the Amiga keyboard optional, and actually fought putting ANY expansion port in the Amiga until Miner came up with a hack that cost less than the magic 50c per unit. Commodore and Atari, neither company was a shining star in the computer firmament. And they ended up suing each other to death, or at least mortally wounding each other in the process. Bastards. I really feel sorry for the people who worked there who couldn't be all they could be because of their management. I feel sorry for some of the people at Microsoft, too, but not too sorry 'cos they still do OK lifestyle-wise. And I'm always amazed when they manage to sneak clue past the sales line. Apple, geeze, their problem is that they manage to do so much right and then snatch suck from the jaws of victory anyway. > > I'm sure you can install Linux on your Lombard. > But I don't want Linux. Linux also sucks donkey wang. In fact all OSes > suck donkey wang. Well, yes, that's why we're here isn't it? > BeOS might be a possibility. Although that get a special free 'suck' > for, well, not being around anymore in a commerical way. You wouldn't believe it but a company in Germany is STILL trying to ressurect it. Alas, as has been noted, that's a no go. Plus, I've used BeOS. It's got its own fair share of suck. Oh, indeed it does.
From: Nicholas Clark Date: 21:34 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 11:22:42AM -0500, Peter da Silva wrote: > My fucking ST didn't have preemptive multitasking, that's why I dumped it > and got my fucking Amiga, which had preemptive multitasking in 1986. Real > native supported preemptive multitasking. Not a hack. But did it have memory protection? I never had one, but my understanding was that it did not, and so any application could take out any other (or the whole machine) But doing preemptive multitasking booting from a single floppy in 1M is a clear demonstration of how much certain other commercially successful OSes of the time sucked. Nicholas Clark
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 21:43 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack > > My fucking ST didn't have preemptive multitasking, that's why I dumped it > > and got my fucking Amiga, which had preemptive multitasking in 1986. Real > > native supported preemptive multitasking. Not a hack. > But did it have memory protection? I never had one, but my understanding > was that it did not, and so any application could take out any other > (or the whole machine) No, it did not, and any application could take out the whole machine. What is embarassing is the operating systems that DO have memory protection for which this is still true. :) > But doing preemptive multitasking booting from a single floppy in 1M The Amiga 1000 came with 256K and accepted a second 256K under a panel in the front.
From: Nicholas Clark
Date: 21:55 on 08 Sep 2003
Subject: Re: mac schmack
On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 03:43:49PM -0500, Peter da Silva wrote:
> > > My fucking ST didn't have preemptive multitasking, that's why I dumped it
> > > and got my fucking Amiga, which had preemptive multitasking in 1986. Real
> > > native supported preemptive multitasking. Not a hack.
>
> > But did it have memory protection? I never had one, but my understanding
> > was that it did not, and so any application could take out any other
> > (or the whole machine)
>
> No, it did not, and any application could take out the whole machine.
>
> What is embarassing is the operating systems that DO have memory protection
> for which this is still true. :)
I forget the string - something like
int main () {
printf ("\b\b\b\b\b\a");
return 0;
}
will BSOD even modern Windows. Although I hates Google for not letting
me search on punctuation.
> > But doing preemptive multitasking booting from a single floppy in 1M
>
> The Amiga 1000 came with 256K and accepted a second 256K under a panel in
> the front.
And how much RAM did Windows 95 think it needed to do a worse job?
Nicholas Clark
From: Nicholas Clark
Date: 21:58 on 08 Sep 2003
Subject: Re: mac schmack
On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 09:55:01PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> int main () {
> printf ("\b\b\b\b\b\a");
> return 0;
> }
> will BSOD even modern Windows. Although I hates Google for not letting
> me search on punctuation.
http://pandora.idnes.cz/part/2001/10/35324
Apparently
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
printf("CrashMe\t\t\b\b\b\b\b\b");
printf("CrashMe\t\t\b\b\b\b\b\b");
return 0;
}
I didn't think that it needed 2 lines. But I don't have Win2K to test it
on.
Nicholas Clark
From: Chris Nandor Date: 17:30 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack At 16:40 +0100 2003.09.08, Simon Wistow wrote: >Now, the interface to MacOS 9 is nice and I have to admit that I do like >that fact that, in general, stuff just works. But I loathe the fact that >it's not pre-emptively multitasking. And has no memory protection. I >know that Apple did have a project to try and fix this (Copland?), and >eventually went with the beast known as Mac OS X, but still. My fucking >ST had pre-emptive multitasking back in 1990 or so. > >I've heard people say that they don't notice. Those people are either >lying, stupid or kidding themselves. It's not that you don't notice the multitasking, it's that it is *not important* for most users. When you are browsing the web or reading email, it simply didn't matter. Sure, if you are trying to do both at the same time and your browser is loading in a plugin or something it is a problem ... but then again, that's a problem on Mac OS X too. For single-user machines -- and I was a power user on Mac OS, doing many things at once -- cooperative multitasking simply wasn't a problem for most users, including me. Memory protection, that was a problem. Everyone noticed that, because everyone had single apps take down the whole machine. But on Mac OS X it is still a problem, because all your GUI apps rely on processes that tend to crash (SystemUIServer, for example), which in turn causes them to crash. >Networking seems to be particularly braindead. True the point and drool >interface works aslong as it's working but when it doesn't fixing things >seems to be a pray and reboot situation. Maybe you're the one who is stupid. ;) It was rare I ever had a problem in Mac OS networking that I didn't know precisely how to fix. Not that I expect everyone else to know ... >And what's with not having a >button to refresh or apply the current settings. It means that if I want >to update my DHCP or experient with settings then I have to go into >network setting, select another network interface, hit ok (which closes >the dialogue) then go into the network setting again and turn it back to >the interface that I want. > >Gah. Yes, that is certainly hate-worthy, though only a mild inconvenience: when you need to make a lot of successive changes, those little things add up. >And if I close the lid then it drops all my network connections. >Instantaneously. Yeah. I was shocked that in Mac OS X, that DIDN'T happen. :D >Grrr. > >And takes a fricking age to wake up again when I open it again. That's more of a function of your hardware, in my experience (I've had just about every laptop Apple's made since the Wall Street, and the newer hardware + software [including a Lombard/500 with Mac OS 9.2.x]) that woke up quite speedily. >If I then fire up Internet Explorer and try and go to a page then >ineveitably my machine locks up. Hard. Dead. If I wait a bit before I do >anything, or fire up another app (such as MacSSH) before I fire up IE >then it seems to work. But if I forget then there's nothing I can do but >reboot. Because there's no 'kill process'. Did you try force quit? Cmd-opt-esc. >And how do I reboot? Ctrl-Alt-Delete? Nah. Hit the pwoer button. Umm, >no. Apple+power button. Sometimes. But generally I just have to pop the >battery and pull out the power cord. You can hold the power button in for a few seconds to force-reboot any modern Mac. Usually, though, ctrl-cmd-power will work instantaneously. It is very rare that the holding-in-the-power-button trick will not work. >Of course half the time the Mac then does the blinking question mark >thing until I leave it for half an hour and try again. You could always try to reset your PRAM or OpenFirmware, but we won't get into that. :)
From: Yoz Grahame Date: 18:13 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack Chris Nandor wrote: >>Of course half the time the Mac then does the blinking question mark >>thing until I leave it for half an hour and try again. > > You could always try to reset your PRAM or OpenFirmware, but we won't get > into that. :) I love the whole PRAM-zapping thing. Every time anyone told me how wonderfully intuitive the Mac is, and how you don't have to be an expert, I loved mentioning how Apple expects users to fix their desktops with arbitrary amounts of PRAM-zapping. (The same users who it didn't trust with more than one mouse button) Are PRAM problems still present in OS X? OpenFirmware problems? How about extension conflicts? Happy days. -- Yoz
From: Chris Nandor Date: 18:17 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack At 18:13 +0100 2003.09.08, Yoz Grahame wrote: >Are PRAM problems still present in OS X? OpenFirmware problems? How >about extension conflicts? Happy days. I think so, yes, and not really, but sometimes. PRAM still stores things like system clock, IIRC. OF has important things like which disk/partition to boot from, and can have a systemwide password, etc. Extension conflicts ... for the most part, nothing is installed in /System/ except for Apple stuff and drivers. So drivers are your big concern. Other stuff can still get installed in /Library/, but it is normally recommended it go in $HOME/Library/ so the system isn't bungled.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 18:59 on 08 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack > It's not that you don't notice the multitasking, it's that it is *not > important* for most users. It doesn't matter if multitasking is important to them or not, the lack of any operating system *at all* below the level of the GUI causes all kinds of effects that they can't help but notice. I'll be sitting there working on something, and the whole computer comes to a complete halt because some component I neither know nor care about, something that's not even visible on the screen, something that shouldn't even be in any critical path, decides it doesn't want to cooperate. When I point this out I get "that's OK, it came back after a couple of seconds, it's not like it crashed". No, it didn't crash. But that's JUST NOT ACCEPTABLE from (in this case) a G3/400 that's running *one* program, *no* third party extensions or patches other than the Sonnet extension. And it's not the Sonnet extension's fault, because I've had the same thing happening on an iMac G3/700 with a vanilla 9.2 install. Don't believe me? Just share files. "You may see some slowdown" it says. Hah! More like "your computer will periodically undergo "grand mal" seizures". OS X doesn't act like that. Yes, sometimes some program will put up a moded grab and I'll get a few seconds of lollypop in that app. VERY rarely, if I have a few dozen applications running and a backup going on > When you are browsing the web or reading email, it simply didn't matter. Like hell it didn't. The only reason it didn't was because someone spent a grand or two on their Mac and they'd lose face if they admitted even to themselves that under the covers the emperor had no clothes. And there's a lot of failures that people put down to memory protection that are obviously, when I watch them happen, scheduling problems. > Sure, if you are trying to do both at the same > time and your browser is loading in a plugin or something it is a problem > ... but then again, that's a problem on Mac OS X too. I'm running OS X on about as crappy a machine as you can have any pretensions of productively running it on. In a lot of ways the Bondi iMac I've got a line on will be an UPGRADE. And it's not a problem there. > For single-user machines -- and I was a power user on Mac OS, doing many > things at once -- cooperative multitasking simply wasn't a problem for most > users, including me. Sure it was. You just got used to it. I've pulled a muscle in my back, I've got a bad knee, I've got poor and worsening eyesight, and I've got adult ADHD. I've gotten used to these things. They don't get in the way of my daily activities because I've arranged my daily activities to accomodate them. That doesn't mean they're not problems! > >And takes a fricking age to wake up again when I open it again. > That's more of a function of your hardware, in my experience (I've had just > about every laptop Apple's made since the Wall Street, and the newer > hardware + software [including a Lombard/500 with Mac OS 9.2.x]) that woke > up quite speedily. Look, I'm running FreeBSD on a 166 MHz laptop and I have it set to hibernate to disk, not just go to standby, because it takes it less than 20 seconds to restore when I bring it up again. It can take another half a minute to reinitialise the wireless card if I have it in, but that happens in the background... I don't see it, I do get a brief GUI freeze if it needs to reinitialise the hardware, but that's about all. This machine is about the equivalent of a first-generation Power PC. It's not even an MMX. And it doesn't have the Power PC's short efficient pipeline. And that's not coming up from standby: it boots from power off, copies the memory image from disk, and reinitialises all the hardware from a cold start. I don't need to consciously use multitasking to benefit from it. It makes the whole system more responsive and reliable, to the point where I can point to dreadful ancient machines with a modern OS under the hood (my AT&T UNIX PC, running System V in *1.5 megabytes* on a 68010 at 12 MHz, my NeXTstation and my laptop... running BOTH immediate parents of OS X) that don't suffer from Classic Mac OS' delerium tremens. Mac OS, before Mac OS X, was so appalling that it's a testament to Microsoft's ability to trash themselves that they managed to make a more modern OS (and I'm talking about the old DOS-based Win32 here, not NT) into something even less attractive.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 04:02 on 11 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: mac schmack On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 04:40:48PM +0100, Simon Wistow wrote: > I aquired it when a company I was working for went bust. It's an old G3 > powerbook. A Lombard I think. It's fairly slow. It has problems running > QT movies and won't run MacOS X. It should. Ingy runs OS X on his Lombard. I ran OS X on my Wallstreet. Dunno if Ingy's running 10.1 or 10.2. > And how do I reboot? Ctrl-Alt-Delete? Nah. Hit the pwoer button. Umm, > no. Apple+power button. Sometimes. But generally I just have to pop the > battery and pull out the power cord. Apple-option-power is the reboot sequence. Or ctrl-option-power, I forget. If you want to clip the spinal column its, IIRC, ctrl-option-shift-power. Or maybe ctrl-option-apple-power. I forget. It should be printed on the back of the machine near the external ports. This resets the power manager. You should never have to pull the battery to shut off a Lombard. Otherwise it just sounds like you need some more RAM. Macs like RAM. A lot.
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