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10 Things Apple Did To Make Mac OS X Faster
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat Mar 25, 2006 09:14 AM
from the road-to-betterment dept.
from the road-to-betterment dept.
bariswheel writes "This kernelthread article seeks to investigate further to the inner core of OS X and the improvements therein. The subtopics are the following: BootCache, Kernel Extensions Cache, Hot File Clustering, Working Set Detection, On-the-fly Defragmentation, Prebinding, Helping Developers Create Code Faster, Helping Developers Create Faster Code, Journaling in HFS Plus, and Instant-on."
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10 Things Apple Did To Make Mac OS X Faster
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I love OS X (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.soonersports.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday March 13 2003, @03:39PM)
Damn ADC interface.. what am i to do with this big ass cinema display?!?!!?
Re:I love OS X (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I love OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://esler.is-a-geek.net/ | Last Journal: Monday February 09 2004, @10:13AM)
Re:I love OS X (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.ultimatemk.com/)
Re:I love OS X (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://lunarworks.ca/)
It came off my machine after a month, and I went back to Win98 SE.
Yes, it WAS that bad.
Re:I love OS X (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://central.miniinfo.net:8081/~drakino | Last Journal: Friday December 27 2002, @12:34AM)
Yep, comes in handy when the OS can't handle a day or two of uptime. Windows 2000 was so much more stable, and didn't take all that long to boot. Longer then ME, yes, but I bet you wasted more time watching the boot screen then 2000 users did.
"2. disk scan ran inside windows and was a million times faster"
Except that ME wasn't smart enough to multitask when scanning a disk. So that frequent bootup disk scan you saw was always interrupted several times when it tried to start, and if some bootup process accessed the disk say every minute or two, it would never finish. I think the majority of ME users just cancelled that any time it popped up. Of course those of us who skipped ME and went from 98 to 2000 started enjoying journaled filesystems and had no need for the disk scan to run inside windows.
"3. native
Zip support that is horribly implemented. Lets walk you through a multipart wizard to extract this file, or present it as an explorer window that lets you run things directly out of, but causes most programs to freak out when you try this. I still don't use the built in Zip support on XP even though it has been slightly improved. Running things inside a Zip directly is as bad as compressing the hard drive for more space.
ME sucked. It was simply a quick release from Microsoft for the consumer market to get something new out, since all the "consumer friendly" features didn't make it into NT 5, err, I mean Windows 2000. For MS to go completly backwards and ship another archaic 16/32 bit mess of DOS based code after Windows 2000 was just silly. I feel pitty on anyone who actually paid for a copy of ME.
Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.pobox.com/~meta/ | Last Journal: Sunday February 29 2004, @09:19AM)
Kernel 2.4 to 2.6 was a pretty big jump in speed. I just upgraded to the latest KDE and a bunch of other updates, and got another performance jump. Once they shake the bugs out of the Radeon drivers for X.org, I'll get accelerated X, and another big speed boost.
In fact, of the major OSs, it's pretty much only Windows that keeps getting slower.
Re:Linux (Score:5, Informative)
(http://mclaincausey.com/)
OTOH the inter-version speed boosts in OS X have been due to more subtle tweakage, except perhaps for speed boosts related to launchd, and have been more incremental in nature than the anomalous 2.4-2.6 improvement.
I guess my point is that the 2.4-2.6 improvement is more of a leap than it is a trend, where OS X's improvements have been less revolutionary and more evolutionary. I hope Linux continues to improve in performance, but it's very possibly going to suffer from bloat down the road that could offset some performance improvements. It's unrealistic to expect the performance improvements to continue along the lines of 2.4-2.6, in any case. OS X is still lagging in performance, so it's even more imperative that it continue its trend. Hopefully the researchers at Apple will soon find a revolutionary improvement on the order of the 2.6 scheduler to catch up a bit.
Re:I love OS X (Score:5, Informative)
(http://vftp.net/ | Last Journal: Saturday December 09 2006, @09:52PM)
As you may or may not be aware, the ADC connection provides a DVI signal, USB port, AND power. The display has no power pack, and gets its juice from the computer. If you have only a DVI port, you will require a rather large adapter. It's not so much an adapter as it is a "power injector" that injects power into the cable whilst converting it from DVI+USB to ADC. This takes the form of what looks like a very large white power brick from a powerbook.
They are unfortunately rather expensive. ($150?) You can get them from Apple, or from Dr Bott.
The other answer is of course to find a graphics artist or developer that does not already have a second display, and sell it to them. Odds are very hight that if you bring the display over and let them "test drive" it for even five minutes they'll buy it immediately.
Re:I love OS X (Score:5, Informative)
Dupe several years later? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://rg03.wordpress.com/)
Obvious Dupe (Score:5, Insightful)
Pointless Effects (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't need high resoution icons, drop shadows, dragging window effects, minimize effects...etc. In windows land, you can turn most of these eyecandy effects off and performance is greatly improved. You'd think that Apple would have considered this when releasing a computer with 256mb of ram on the base model (G4 mac mini). I love the computer, but it is SLOW.
Re:Pointless Effects (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's not in Apple's interest to let you turn off too much of the eye-candy. They want Mac OS to have its distinct look, and they are are in the business of trying to sell you newer hardware.
Re:Pointless Effects (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pointless Effects (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.clemsontalk.com/vb/member.php?u=954 | Last Journal: Thursday September 15 2005, @06:20PM)
Hopefully, Microsoft's Aero will prove this point.
Re:Pointless Effects (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://screaming.org/)
Re:Pointless Effects (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://screaming.org/)
I'm not a SO guru, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
Panther to Tiger? (Score:5, Interesting)
I still think that Panther was running a bit faster tahn Tiger, maybe it is the widgets..........
silly widgets!
This was all done on a PowerBook G4(TiBook).
Re:Panther to Tiger? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Panther to Tiger? (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Wednesday October 19 2005, @10:05AM)
Both machines are still great for general desktop work and light development. I bumped the iBook to Tiger (OSX) to get Tiger (Java), and I havent really bothered to upgrade the tower because I havent had the time and its not a pressing concern for me. But given the results on the iBook, I dont expect a performance hit when I do upgrade.
Re:Panther to Tiger? (Score:4, Informative)
I still think that Panther was running a bit faster tahn Tiger, maybe it is the widgets..........
silly widgets!
No, it's spotlight. My iBook would thrash like crazy until I disabled spotlight. Of course now I can't search at all.
Apple should've made spotlight optional.
Re:Panther to Tiger? (Score:5, Informative)
Ten things they should fix (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.macnificent.be/)
rest of my reply (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Tuesday April 20 2004, @05:02PM)
I'm not sure I agree with all or even most of his points of contention.
In issue 1 for example he complains that each open/save dialouge starts out the exact same way and then goes on to complain further in the article that the OS isn't always consistant. It's consistant for each dialouge to remain the same size by default until the user specifies a change. Furthermore since the size of the dialouge can be set per application, that size would need to be specified by the application making having a universal override obnoxious.
In his 2nd point he's descirbes a senario which is at best extremely uncommon and then describes a process which is obnoxious and complicated when it's easier for most people to either have an automator script to open specific things they want or even better for his senario and automator script which asks where he is and then opens the appropriate applications. A simple applescript for the applications one doesn't need all the time with a prompt at the begining to ask whether to launch the remaining apps and then placing that script in the login items folder seems more useful and less annoying than check boxes to enable and disable each item that you must do before loging out the previous time.
point 3 he's correct on
point 4 he's correct on the disapearing sidebar but on the issue of double clicking the boarder, it's a rather difficult task to accomplish accidently so I am sure anyone doing it would notice the dimple before and after.
point 5 he's moving away from his consistancy argument again. With the column view you set the size of the columns and the number of columns, and if you chose to physicaly change the display you can. What he's suggesting is a display system which dynamicaly changes size to fit the content of the display which while it could be benneficial to some people seems overly complicated and a major violation of the consistancy guideline. It's concieveable to see a situation there where all of a sudden you would go from having 4 collumns displayed to having 2 or 1 because you have one file in the display such as "com.apple.Components2.LocalCache.QuickTimeCompon
point 6 he's correct on
point 7 he's got a point but at the same time, with the addition of the PDF abilities and the fact that faxing IS handled with PDFs it does make sense to put it under the PDF button. In the end I don't find it much more of an abstraction than his recomendation to make it an availible printer.
point 8 I can see a method to the madness in that if the next set of startup items require the server, it's important for you to know that the server is not availible BEFORE those apps launch and fail. There may be a better way, but I don't agree that it's a failing.
in point 9 the views update for the column view I think is a good thing. While it's not 100% consistant, in this case it would be irritating for a directory I'm working with to rename and then immediately move out of my working view until I indicate being done with the directory either by being idle or moving to a new object.
The size information I would assume is an updating routine thats scheduled rather than called.
in point 10 if he cant see a situation where a user might unknowingly or mistakenly change their file extention then he needs to think harder. The checkbox would be nice though but it's also nitpicking at this point. It's a potentialy destructive action, and a user should be reminded to think before they do it. Being able to permanently dismiss such reminders is what gives viruses and other malicious programs a better chance of succeeding.
G3 (Score:1)
Ironic? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm somewhat concerned that an optimisation geek did not order his data set.
Whats up with the ABI change? (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://w1xer.de/ | Last Journal: Saturday September 09 2006, @05:55AM)
Has this been changed? Are all the registers of the PPC being used properly now? Is the PC register actually being used as a program counter, rather than one of the generic 32-bit registers?
On-the-fly Defragmentation (Score:4, Interesting)
The HFS plus approach seems like a good idea, but I'm wondering if there is a performance cost, both in CPU cycles and drive wear and tear. It also looks to me like the system could be defragging files that are already contiguous, but I may be wrong. Given that modern journaling filesystems (supposedly) are not likely to become fragmented in the first place, is this feature worth it?
I've always loved this about Apple.... (Score:2)
journalling... (Score:2)
What is a defragmentation? ;-) (Score:1)
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/7707549@N05/ | Last Journal: Monday July 23, @09:52AM)
one big thing they may have missed.... (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday June 05 2006, @05:03PM)
I know gcc itself improved a very great deal over the same time period, and I have always assumed that the speed gains were (largely? mostly?) due to that, rather than wondrous new algorithms on Apple's part.
Linux and KDE sped up a lot too, over the same timeframe.
Apple and GCC (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, on the Intel side, Apple is going with the Intel compiler, probably because it's faster than GCC Intel. No OSS. But maybe Apple doesn't need to contribute to that because Intel will keep doing good work.
Undocumented Number 11 (Score:2, Informative)
Get it
Use it
Good
( P.S. Caps Lock would have been autopilot for COOL, but the lameness filter caught me
"Dave: Is Dead == Everybody" (Score:3, Funny)
Helping Developers Create Faster Code
I can think of a few other useful permutations:
Helping Create Code Developers Faster
Helping Create Faster Code Developers
Helping Code Create Developers Faster
Helping Code Create Faster Developers
Helping Faster Developers Create Code
Helping Faster Code Developers Create
Helping Faster Code Create Developers
Developers Helping Code Create Faster
Developers Helping Create Faster Code
Developers Helping Code Create Faster
Developers Helping Faster Code Create
Developers Create Helping Code Faster
Developers Create Faster Helping Code
Create Helping Code Developers Faster
Create Developers Helping Faster Code
Create Code Helping Developers Faster
Create Code Helping Faster Developers
Create Code Faster, Helping Developers
Create Faster, Helping Developers Code
Create Faster Developers, Helping Code
Create Faster Code, Helping Developers
Code Helping Developers Create Faster
Code Helping Create Developers Faster
Code Helping Create Faster Developers
Code Helping Faster Developers Create
Code Developers Helping Create Faster
Code Developers Create Faster Helping
Code-Faster Developers Helping Create
Faster-Helping Developers Create Code
Faster-Helping Code Create Developers
Faster Developers Helping Create Code
Faster Developers Helping Code Create
Faster Developers Create Helping Code
Faster Code Helping Developers Create
Faster Code Helping Create Developers
Faster Code Developers Helping Create
Choose a research topic! Lucrative grants to be won! (Topics involving procreation by/of developers expected to go quickly.)
Does this fix OSX's bad Apache & Database (Score:2)
Hot File Clustering (Score:2)
(http://www.worldwidewingtour.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday November 17 2005, @08:57PM)
Where I've found OS X to be slow (Score:2)
Amusing comment about "sleep" (Score:2)
Yes, we're fully aware that Apple systems can shut down everything execept the components necessary to refresh the DRAM.
The author of the article, apparently, has never used a PC notebook or desktop. Practically every well-behaved system made in the past 5 years, from the $150 eMachines desktops to my generic Compal notebook, supports the ACPI S3 state, which does exactly what Apple's "sleep" mode.
What's really slick about Windows is that the system can wake from S3 suspend and hibernate itself after a certain period of time. My system is set for 6 hours, which means that I don't have to wait for the system to restore during the day, but if I leave my system overnight or longer, I don't have to worry about suspend draining my battery (approx. 20% per day). I can even have different settings if the system is plugged in.
Lack of hibernate hurts (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/)
As to why it's needed: battery life. I can hibernate my Dell, unplug it for a business trip and it's still got the same juice a day or two later when I turn it on. When I do the same with my Powerbook G4, the battery often dies while it's asleep.
I'm hoping it's one of the things they add for 10.5.
Re:Lack of hibernate hurts (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know why people try to defend Apple on this particular design decision. There's absolutely no reason why hibernation shouldn't be included in OS X.
It could be that it's because hiberation actually does exist in Mac OS X. It's just not a well known fact. OS X 10.4's "Safe Sleep" (Google cache [72.14.203.104]) saves the active memory to disk when a Mac [laptop] goes to sleep...lest the power get interrupted. If one is so inclined, they can activate it, and even choose to use it by default. I've enabled it on my Mini, and it definitely works.
However, if you're not a Mac user, you may not appreciate how good the normal "Sleep" mode is. Unlike Windows, a Mac which has been put to sleep will resume almost immediately, and be instantly usable. My iBook can stay 'asleep' in my briefcase for ages, with very little battery consumption, and as soon as I open the lid, I am good to go. This impresses me more than words can say.
Journaling? (Score:2)
(http://www.scul.org/SCUL/Pilot/Pil_Gropo.html | Last Journal: Monday May 12 2003, @07:33PM)
And then there's the fact that I just today figured out how to prevent chronic fatal drive thrashing cycles on my sidekick iMac G3 (running Tiger): format the drive HFS non-journaled.
Re:What about OSes with GNOME? (Score:3, Funny)
You don't get out much, do you? GNOME 2.14 is supposed to be extremely fast in comparison to previous releases, which were also faster than their predecessors.
Uhhh...I'm guessing if anyone's not getting out much....well, nevermind. If you can't say something nice don't say it at all.
Re:What about OSes with GNOME? (Score:1)
(http://www.geocities...atepower_gangsta.htm)
Re:What about OSes with GNOME? (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://runefox.net/)
Re:Call me weird, but... (Score:4, Informative)
(http://thisnukes4u.net/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 07, @08:45PM)
Re:Call me weird, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Um... VMS is definitely NOT "some form of *nix".
Re:Call me weird, but... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.haeleth.net/)
It was also the only mainstream OS that could not handle filenames more than 31 letters long, the only mainstream OS that didn't have protected memory, and the only mainstream OS that didn't have any form of preemptive multitasking.
The first of these is the most ironic. Back in 1999, Mac users were still ridiculing "Micros~1", while in fact it was their operating system, not Microsoft's, which could not handle adequately long filenames!
But it was the second and third, the lack of basic features essential for the stability of modern desktop applications, which led to it being such an unreliable system. No surprise that Apple were so keen to ditch the whole crufty thing in favour of the modern platform that became OS X. OS 9 was totally failing to salvage their rapidly declining reputation. OS X was their salvation.
So, yes, OS 9 screamed in comparison to OS X. But so did its unfortunate users... loudly and regularly.
Re:Call me weird, but... (Score:5, Informative)
OS 9 seemed faster because the first iteration of OS X, which people tended to run on the same hardware, was dog slow.
Re:Call me weird, but... (Score:5, Informative)
For the short of memory...
There were a LOT of operating systems before *nix. One of the main creaters of OSses was Digital Equipment Corporation. They had an OS for each of their different computer systems (PDP-1 through PDP-20, also known as DECsystem-20). All these OSses had a different architecture, because they wer built for different purposes. However, DEC standardised the CLI on these OSses. The CLI was called DCL (Digital Command Language).
ATT (Bell Labs) were using DEC systems with when they decided to create their own OS. IIRC they used a PDP-7, and later PDP-11's running RSX-11. So, instead of everything being based on *nix, it's the other way around. All the *nixes are "inspired" by the other OSses at the time, in particular RSX-11 and DCL.
VMS (later OpenVMS) was the world's first commercial computer using a virtual memory system. That's why it's called VMS. It was meant as a successor to RSX-11, and it ran on VAX computers (Virtual Address eXtention). The chief VMS architect Dave Cutler was hired by Microsoft to help create Windows NT. Windows NT later became W2K, WXP etc.
So, also Windows is NOT based on *nix.
As far as I can tell, actually only Linux is based on *nix.
Anybody know any other OS that is based on or inspired by Unix?
Re:Call me weird, but... (Score:2)
(http://www.afp548.com/ | Last Journal: Monday October 28 2002, @11:31PM)
Mafia saying: behind every great fortune lays a small crime.
Re:What about OSes with GNOME? (Score:2, Flamebait)
(http://nutsncents.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday August 08 2003, @07:47PM)
Actually this is a general feature of most software. Just not Microsoft's software.
Most software gets _faster_ in between versions. New features may run slower, but other aspects of the software should speed up, not slow down. Optimization takes time.
People are just used to Microsoft, where (version ++1) = (hardware ++1)
Well, duh! (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday April 27 2007, @02:20PM)
Before OSX, the mac had the reputation of the machine that crashed all the time. By comparison, Windows was actually pretty reliable (this was before all the spyware/malware/crap that affects it recently, remember). Linux was best, of course...
Now you're just displaying your ignorance
newsflash:when you need to do more work because you're in a far-more-capable and complex environment, it can take more machine-instructions to perform the task. This is just griping - the world has moved on from buggy, insecure, crappy-old OS9. Move with it.
They didn't throw any babies away, they did what they needed to do (ditch the abortion that was OS9) and move onto a new platform which provided the security, flexibility, and reliability that any modern OS provides. A brave decision, under the circumstances, and one well-conceived and executed.
Simon
Re:Easiest way to make a Mac faster is go back to (Score:1)
The classic Mac OS is even worse off, because the system API was not designed for a pre-emptively multitasking environment, let alone kernel / user mode separation. Too much application level access to systems globals at fixed addresses in particular.
In any case, whatever the problem is, it cannot be blamed on on adapting to "textual" OS. Adapting an insufficiently forward looking design to the modern world is more like it.
Re:Easiest way to make a Mac faster is go back to (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.isights.org/)
As long as you're waxing rhapsodic about that OS "written from the ground up in the early 80s to be graphical", you might also remember that it was also written from the ground up to be B&W, single-threaded, single-tasking, use fixed-size memory spaces, and totally without any form of internal or user-based security.
Any of those things that were added on later were major hacks to the system. Some, like the non-preemptive MultiFinder (switcher) were ingenious hacks, but hacks nontheless. Or are you saying a modern OS should swap out hundreds of shared low-level global variables on every context switch?
Or that, since you mentioned HLOCK, why a modern OS should have a handle-based non-protected fixed-patition-sized memory system, itself probably responsible for half the memory allocation/corruption bugs and crashes in any given Mac application. Or why a program needs me to allocate more memory to it when there's a half-gig free?
Or perhaps you can explain just why the system resource and process-slicing allocation kernal of a modern OS needs to be "graphical" from the ground up? Or conversely, why graphics, networking, file management, and other subsystems should not be layered on top of a rock-solid base?
I mean, if you really take the time to actually think about it, you might find that the "good old days" are in fact nothing but a fond, hazy memory... and far removed from the truth.
Re:Easiest way to make a Mac faster is go back to (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Thursday March 22 2007, @04:52PM)
certainly not more stable, and thus more productive.
If find not rebooting 3 times a day makes me faster at everything.
Re:Easiest way to make a Mac faster is go back to (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Call me weird, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday June 19 2002, @10:33PM)
I much preferred Mac OS back in the OS 9 days. OS 9 screamed in comparison to OS X. It had its problems, sure, but at the time it was the only mainstream OS that was not built on technology besides itself.
If you've ever developed for Mac OS 8/9, you'd realize just how serious those problems were. I wrote part of a printer driver for OS 8/9, and it was hell. Memory allocation was an utter mess. Printer drivers *should* just run in userland, and be unable to muck with the kernel, but that's not how things worked. The driver had full access to both the system memory space and the memory space of whatever application called it. It was preferable to allocate from the application's memory space, but we didn't have that freedom. Because of the stupid user-controlled memory allocation system, we had to worry about how much free memory any application might have been given by the user, and make sure we didn't use more than that. We were trying to modernize the UI and make it more flexible, so we used Metrowerks PowerPlant (an application framework). The problem was this increased our memory requirements to the point where we couldn't fit in the 100kB or so of free memory SimpleText would have by default. To work around this, we would allocate from the system heap. This came with its own problems--if you accidentally wrote to a null pointer, you overwrote the debug traps, and crashed hard. It made for wonderful time in debugging, and forced me to very quickly learn to be careful with pointers and memory allocation (this was my first programming internship, BTW).
Then there was all the cruft left over from the Mac OS's Pascal roots... Pascal strings, pascal calling conventions. And the memory management--Handles!--ugh!
OS 8/9 was a pain in the ass to develop for, whereas OS X is much easier. That's why we're seeing so much great new OS X freeware and shareware.
Re:Easiest way to make a Mac faster is go back to (Score:1)
What OS 9 managed successfully (most of the time) was the appearance of speed, as the gui was relatively light weight and the frontmost process got most of the CPU. Try running the webstar webserver on OS 9, and a couple of network shared folders, and then see how fast OS 9 is - my OS X box can handle the same load and still be a usable machine - something that was not possible on OS 9.
Re:20 Things Apple Still Needs To Do (Score:1, Informative)
* SMB can't network share anything but user directory (what about mounted disk images, CD's, single folders?)
I believe you can change this with NetInfo Manager
GUI: Red "close" button has inconsistent behavior: hide (Mail)/close (Safari)/quit app (iPhoto)
The way this is supposed to work is that the Window (Cocoa Document Object) is closed, but the application stays open. Safari and Mail behave properly for me; I agree iPhoto's behavior is annoying.
If "Show Item Info" is selected for the Desktop view, the volume icons only update their free space at restart (or when Finder crashes).
This (as well as the bit about the size of all documents in a directory) has to do with the way faux-unix filesystem behavior is done in OS X; the total size of the contents of a directory cannot be determined except by traversing the directory tree and adding them up, which can take quite a bit of time. Also, getting info from multiple items works as desired for me since at least 10.2, but I know that an earlier version would open several Get Info windows.
Inconsistent installation of applications. Some are dragged to the apps folder, others have an installer. Many things added with an installer have no uninstaller anywhere, so you're stuck with them (how do I cleanly get rid of X11? and XCode? Without using the command prompt?). Also, when removing an application it is difficult to remove its traces (in the Library folder and others).
For the most part, only sucky applications use installers for precisely that reason. Some things like XCode have a legitimate need to put things in various places in /usr or /Library, but if they are well behaved they're easy to get rid of. X11 lives in /usr/X11{R6} and /etc/X11{R6}, while most of the XCode stuff lives in /Developer. The command-line tools (gcc) and the system headers (/usr/include) are harder to get rid of, and you probably shouldn't anyway.
There is no easy way to categorize applications. Everything is bundled up together in the "Applications" folder. You can add subfolders manually, but that makes updating and installing new applications more complicated.
Well, there's the Dock, and there's the distinction between /Applications, ~/Applications, and /Network/Applications, but I suppose those don't really solve your problem. I can't really say I feel for you, though, since I start every Application that doesn't reside in the Dock with open(1) -a, which saves time and brainspace.
Many cross-platform apps such as Firefox, Azureus, aMule have an extremely sluggish GUI, and are far slower than their Windows equivalents. MacMAME runs intensive games at slideshow pace, compared to full framerate on MAME on a Win2K machine. (The Mac has higher system specs than the Windows machines I'm comparing with.)With the exception of Firefox (which sucks on Mac, use OmniWeb or Camino if you don't like Safari) and aMule (which I've never used), these (and NeoOffice/J) are all Java apps, which can't compare with natively compiled code for performance. Well-coded java will run decently on OS X provided you have enough memory, but bloatware like NeoOffice/J are basically hopeless.
StuffIt expander will choke on RAR files containing Hebrew file names. Says "Invalid File Format".
Remember what I said above about sucky apps? Stuffit is one of the worst offenders. My advice is to not use them for anything but .sit files, since there's nothing else that can open them. I use unzip for zips, tar for tar files, and UnRaRX for rars.
Re:20 Things Apple Still Needs To Do (Score:1)
(http://varsztat.com/)
This contextual menu module for the Finder is exactly what you need. I use it all the time.
http://www.pyehouse.com/lynn/termopen.php [pyehouse.com]
Finder: Can't easily know the size of the contents of a directory (without "get info"), or the total size of more than one selected item (even "get info" doesn't help there). Windows Explorer is superior here.
In list view mode, you can see the sizes of all folders by checking the "Calculate all sizes" option in the "View Options", available in the View menu. To see the total size of multiple selected item, hold down the option key (also known as alt) and choose "Show Inspector" from the File menu, or just press option-command-I.
Marking text and then attempting to drag the selected text elsewhere - sometimes works, sometimes doesn't (the drag operation simply selects some more text).
You just need to hold down the mouse button for a brief while (equal to your double-click recognition period, IIRC).
Finder pollutes write-enabled SMB shares it accesses with garbage files like
There are many utilities available that help with this problem, for example TinkerTool.
http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html [bresink.de]
StuffIt expander will choke on RAR files containing Hebrew file names. Says "Invalid File Format".
Have you tried using the free command-line utilities available from RAR Lab?
http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm [rarlab.com]
Re:Easiest way to make a Mac faster is go back to (Score:2)
It's like saying saying I was "written" when I was born, I wonder how many of my cells are still around since 1958?
Re:Call me weird, but... (Score:2)
(http://netapps.com.au/)
The NT kernel may have been written by one or two people who had been working on OpenVMS. This does not make it "based on VMS".
NeoOffice/J (Score:1)
I think the recent release of NeoOffice will still irritate you but maybe not as badly.
The ultimate fanboy giveaway (Score:2)
(Written on an iBook G4 w/10.3, as someone still running a Powermac 6100 with OS 8.6 in my study...but that's because I'm cheap, not because I think it was great.)
The mouse pointer (Score:4, Informative)
It's a matter of re-learning your hand-eye-mouse coordination. If the USB Overdrive behavior were the default, millions of graphic artists, and anyone who needs fine control, would cry out in anguish.
Re:Call me weird, but... (Score:2)
Re:20 Things Apple Still Needs To Do (Score:3, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Saturday November 01 2003, @01:11PM)
The
I've yet to try the mac mini on an apple only network, but interoperability with other machines such as my linux box is something I've given up on. It's quicker to send files with a USB key and all else I just work around.
I'd like an 'open command line prompt here' as well, and I dislike the inability to add things to the right-click menus.
The lack of Alt-F etc. shortcuts for accessing menus is my major gripe compared to Windows -- this is one thing I do miss.
Finally, the inability to properly uninstall applications seems to me to be a major oversight on the part of Apple. Sticking everything in
Re:20 Things Apple Still Needs To Do (Score:2)
(http://pantsinmotion.com/)
That's MPlayer's problem, not OS X's - send the dev team a bug report or check for a newer version. MPlayer should be (preferably) converting the bitrate to the OS's current settings or (at least) changing the settings back to how they were before it launched when it quits.
* My machine never crashes nor is ever powered down without a proper shutdown, and yet I have had several cases of files being corrupted, lost completely or simply set to "Zero KB", for no apparent reason. I have lost photos, audio files and others.
Never seen it here. You might want to check in Disk Utility to be sure the drive is passing its S.M.A.R.T test.
* Network operations are unbelievably slow when talking to the other machines in the house. This is a 100Mbit wired LAN, but the speeds I'm actually getting are more like 10 Mbit/s for data flowing from the Mac to a PC and 200kbit/s in the opposite direction. Affects any kind of network operation (SMB, FTP, etc). I've tried various fixes suggested on various forums, no improvement.
I've heard of this happening to others but don't know what the cause is. I get maximum data transfer from my Macs to both Windows and Linux machines.
I agree with several of your other points and suggest you file bug reports with Apple at http://bugreport.apple.com/ [apple.com] (you'll need to register as a developer, which is free).
Re:20 Things Apple Still Needs To Do (Score:2)
(http://pornel.net/)
* You can share CD's by linking them (adding alias) somewhere in your home directory.
* There is software to fight Finder's
* You can drag'n'drop directories to Terminal
* Hold Alt when selecting "Get Info" to see info for all files together. Try PathFinder.
* Rotation works for me. Maybe it has to be software emulated for your gfx card?
* How about creating your own applications folder with aliases? If you drag it to dock, you'll get almost Windows Start Menu.
* Before dragging text in Cocoa you need to hold mouse button for 0.5 sec. This is 'configurable' via power toys/terminal.
* Stuffit sucks. Download something else.
Re:20 Things Apple Still Needs To Do (Score:2)
(http://search.ebay.c...-1?_My_eBay_Auctions | Last Journal: Sunday April 29 2007, @04:28AM)
> * SMB can't network share anything but user directory (what about mounted disk images, CD's, single folders?)
This is false. You have serveral options beyond the the sharing pane in System Preferences. If you only know how to use Microsoft Windows you can investigate software like Sharepoints, you can use OS X Server which has sharepoint management built into its amazingly great administration tools, or if you are old school Linux user you can just edit your samba.conf by hand, which seems pretty painless to me.
For "command prompt here" I just wrote a tiny Applescript and dropped it in the Finder's tray (something like "tell application "finder" set mypath to (folder of the front window as string); end tell; tell application "terminal" activate; do script "cd " & mypath in front window; end tell;"). Pardon me if I got any of that syntax wrong, I rarely write applescipts
So yeah. Short version: sharepoints or OS X Server will solve your GUI smb/ftp admin needs (easier than cli netinfo or editing confs), and you can use applescripts to customize your interface.
Here, http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx
Re:Easiest way to make a Mac faster is go back to (Score:2)
(http://www.apptree.net/)
This is highly unlikely. HLock originally only ever set a flag. It now doesn't even need to do that, since a Handle never moves under OS X, but if it did, it still would only need to set a flag. Even allowing the overhead of calling through a shim into Carbon this wouldn't amount to a huge call. There may be other APIs that do exhibit the behaviour you mention, but this was a very bad example to pick.
Microkernel VS Mach (Score:2)
(http://www.scarydevil.com/~peter/ | Last Journal: Monday September 26 2005, @06:53PM)
Microkernels aren't about putting every component into its own memory and execution context.
Microkernels are about having a consistent API for both system and user components to communicate with. Typically you have a message queue, and standardised messages that can be (but not necessarily are) marshalled across address space boundaries.
There's no reason that a processor context switch has to happen, nor even that a message actually needs to be queued and dequeued in another thread, it just has to be possible for that to happen. When you make a call-with-wait (so you're suspended until the return packet gets back), the entire operation can happen in your own execution context.
OR, the operation could involve a round-trip across a network link.
The key is that the API doesn't distinguish between these two cases, it all depends on what's registered to handle that message.
So there's no reason a microkernel OS can't be as fast as a monolithic kernel. In fact microkernels an microkernel-like designs are not exactly rare in the control systems industry, where the performance and latency requirements are much tighter than they are in a desktop OS. The most microkernel-like personal computer OS, AmigaOS, was noted for its high performance and responsiveness.
Mach, no, that was a mistake. But microkernel design isn't the reason why.
Re:Call me weird, but... (Score:2)
CP/M was inspired by DEC TOPS-10 rather than UNIX, and the first version of DOS was very heavily inspired by CP/M.