Mac OS X Slow for Web Browsing? 728
Atryn writes "Wired News has reportedly confirmed user performance complaints in their own tests. From the article: 'That was a conscious decision Apple made,' Mac MSIE project manager Jimmy Grewal said. 'They optimized for user experience rather than raw performance.'" My hunch is that you can take care of many Mac OS X performance issues by logging in as user ">console" ...
A simple solution (Score:2, Insightful)
The trouble is that the OS has to be backwards compatible all the way back to the early days of Multifinder et al. If you're compiling directly for OS X, you don't need to worry about the cruft.
Stability over Speed (Score:5, Insightful)
MSIE (Score:4, Insightful)
MSIE for mac (Score:2, Insightful)
cheers,
jl
---
In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
Mac OS X IE is not the same as in Windoze (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's something interesting though:
IE in Mac OS X follows the standards a lot better than IE in Windows.
When we constructed our new company webpage we had to customize it for both IE/windows and IE/Mac.
Ciryon
Re:No problem here. (Score:3, Insightful)
When's the last time you downloaded a new one? Mozilla for OS X has had an "Aqua" style appearance for like three or four months now.
Sheesh, people, quit judging Mozilla based on stuff before 0.9.5. There may have been a few regressions here and there, but there has been a lot of progress since the start of the year.
Slashdot is the most painful of all... (Score:3, Insightful)
On my Win2K machine at work, a /. article with 200 replies render within seconds. On my G4/400 at home, the same page could take 30 seconds or more to render. What's worse, I get the "spinning CD cursor of doom" while it renders, so I can't even click on Stop or Back.
Speed is relative (Score:4, Insightful)
Been discussed in Apple's forums (Score:3, Insightful)
The mac zealots (not unlike linux zealots) get all defensive about such issues, as you can see.
Why Does Web Browsing STILL S*ck On the Mac? [apple.com]
S
Re:My favourite line... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why exactly does it run slow??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Similarly, applying filters in Photoshop doesn't use 2D graphics accelleration at all -- it's all raw FP or integer (or AltiVec) depending on the filter.
The Photoshop speed difference is almost certainly the result of OS X not allowing apps to completely monopolize the CPU -- IOW, it doesn't demonstrated any OS X inefficiency whatsoever, it's just the cost of modern multitasking.
The reason why (Score:3, Insightful)
You're better off using Mozilla, especially the rapidly developing Mach-O version which has an multithreaded Unix backend and is very fast.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Mac OS 1.1 (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course it's a little slow. It's new code. That's why they can make it faster with each revision. It's probably going to continue getting faster and faster as the coders get more comfortable with the code base.
So yeah, it's slow. Is anyone really surprised?
Comparisons Don't Wash Yet (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a simple way to say that Mac OS X is really a "1.0" product, folks. NOTHING like this OS has been put together to do the things it does. Other posters indicated that many of us would trade speed for stability, and I fall in that camp, too.
The original Mac OS became quite refined and swift from the OS level after many years of development. Windows 95 wasn't all that optimized at its introduction but its successors do well in this area. Yet Microsoft sacrifices stability AND security for speed.
Mac OS X is pleasing to the eye, but graphic pros know a slug when they see it. Still, time will fix it. Now that Apple has solved most of the serious feature deficits and bugs (or at least knows of them), they can concentrate on optimization--big time.
How much performance and happiness did you get out of Windows 1.0? Linux 1.0? Cut the new kid some slack. It's doing good for a 1 year old.
Oh...OmniWeb rocks for general viewing. Loading 200+ posts from Slashdot is much faster than IE, which has to load ALL the posts before you can view them. Cocoa also adds antialiasing to text that makes web browsing great.
In comparison to web browsing in Windows and Mac OS 9, things a little slower in OS 10.1. But then, IE won't kill my OS when it crashes, and my OS X system has never suffered an OS X kernel panic for over a year. I'll take that over the speed thing any day, for now.
Re:Stability over Speed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Won't be default forever (probably) (Score:3, Insightful)
I would take $5 x 100,000 month (im just guessing) compared to $20 x 1,000 a month.
See, the cool thing is, omniweb is free, it just reminds you everyone once in a while that it would be nice if you paid the people who make it. I bought mine with an education discount.
Pay for good software, because then they write more of it (with the exception of microsoft).
Re:It's as much IE as OS X (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No problem here. (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, if web browsing is the primary purpose of your computer, (and for some, this is the case) then it is the best reason to choose one over another.
For myself, web browsing speed certainly isn't the only criterion, but web browsing has definately become one of the primary purposes of my computer, so web browsing speed is an important criterion.
In fact, back in 1996/7ish when I switched from Mac to NT, web browsing speed was definately a big factor in my decision. (Even then, web browsing speed had a tangible effect on my productivity.) All other things being equal, both IE and Netscape on Mac crawled compared to IE and Netscape on NT. Combined with the real productivity boost of preemptive multitasking and true virtual memory with memory protection, I found myself much more productive on my NT system than on my beloved Mac. (The boosts more than made up for the ease-of-use penalty.)
My transition to Linux was definately hampered by the quality of Netscape on Linux compared to Netscape on Windows.
Now, my wife uses her computer for email, web browsing, and printing photos from the digital camera. That's pretty much it.
Some years ago, before printing photos was added to that list, when I made her use Linux, she found Netscape to be a real hinderance. (It was really bad at the time.)
She found Windows harder to use than Linux, but overall she was happier since her web experience was now so much better.
Now that Mac OS X is here, I'm thinking that may be a good choice for her next computer. But if she's going to find web browsing frustrating, then the idea is a non-starter.
Re:No problem here. (Score:2, Insightful)
I use OmniWeb 99% of the time and Mozilla for accessing my bank's site. I browse a lot, and it doesn't seem slow to me. Chimera is nice too, as others have noted. Yeah, they've all got flaws, and for some reason that sends people running back to IE which has the most serious flaws of them all... It's unusably slow unless you've got broadband (on not much better if you do) and it's extremely buggy. try searching through a page, click a link, go back, and search again... *maybe* it'll remember where it last found a result, maybe not. But people seem to think that having a font style ignored (and a much more readable one used instead) is a more heinous flaw than having to wait 20 times as long for a page to load.
My frustrations with IE are similar to my feelings about Starbucks. I think their coffee sucks, and there's often a much better local joint nearby. Everybody goes to Starbucks ostensibly because "at least I know the coffee will be hot" or "at least I know the muffins will be fresh," when the real reason is because they're familiar with the brand name and they're afraid to try something their not used to. FUD.
I think I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning... Need a donut...
Re:Won't be default forever (probably) (Score:3, Insightful)
They can by giving them some money, like they do with the current PowerBook software bundle (OmniWeb and some other Omni stuff is in there, licensed for you by Apple).
Sure they do. Everyone who buys Windows pays for a browser. Even in the sense that you meant it people do pay, I did for example because I really like OmniWeb a lot and had $30 (or $25?) to spare.
Then consider paying for it. Either that or realize that you just posted "I'm too bloody cheap to fix something that irritates me, but I'm upset enough about it to complain in an international publication..."
Re:No troll, but the WHOLE UI is slow (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No troll, but the WHOLE UI is slow (Score:2, Insightful)
Just out of curiosity. Were you using os X or X.1? X had about the same speed as the beta, which is to say, lousy. But X.1, even on my 300 Mhtz iBook had a noticable speed increase. IE only took 5-7 seconds to load, depending on what else I was doing. That still isn't great but it's better than before, and it will only get better
Re:A simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No troll, but the WHOLE UI is slow (Score:2, Insightful)
Because a $1400 computer should offer fast, responsive web browsing and a snappy interface. You shouldn't have to buy a $2500 machine just to have a portable with decent speed.
Besides, based on the article, that (upgrading to a TiBook) would not solve the problem anyway - apparently the problem is still there, even with an 800mhz G4!
Re:No troll, but the WHOLE UI is slow (Score:1, Insightful)
Fast forward one year later...
Nobody buys Pentium 90's becuase they are two slow. The PII is out, and NT 4.x runs just fine on it.
Apple is doing the correct thing. They made a huge jump in software, after ~8 years of that same basic OS design.
This is similar to when they switched from 68XXX chips to the PPC chips. People who bought the first gen PPC chips were disapointed becuase there were no native apps and it ran slower than a 68040 machine. Again fast forward 1 year, and it wasn't a problem any more.
The only people that seem to gripe about this are the people that purchase a machine once every 5 years or later. If you bought a mac before OSX was out and it runs great with OS9, then use OS9 for the next year or two and then go get a new computer. I realize that this is expensive, but nobody ever said owning a computer was cheap.
Lastly, I don't own a mac. I might consider one, but I don't think now is the time to purchase one. Perhaps next year when all the bugs are worked out and the performance will not be an issue at all... I do know that if I do purchase one, I won't bitch and moan 4 years later when their new OS doesn't run awesome on my machine.
Steve Michael
smichael@netcapade.net
Re:No troll, but the WHOLE UI is slow (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stability over Speed (Score:5, Insightful)
The slowdown is much more apparent on G3 systems, such as my iBook, where everything just seems to kind of crawl. I bought an iBook thinking it would have plenty of power, but I've come to find out that's not the case. For example, compiling programs takes forever (I'm a CS major, so this is a large reason I bought a laptop.) I don't fault OS X (the user experience is unmatched.. plus Apple's dev tools just rule;) I fault the machine. I'm planning on selling the iBook this summer and purchasing a PowerBook G4.
A dual 1 gHz G4 is a poor representative of average performance. The dual G4 machines are absolute behemoths, most people look at them and say "Oh, only 1 gHz CPUs, can't be that fast." They are VERY fast. By comparison, my 500 mHz G3 iBook is about 1/8 the speed of your system. My Athlon XP 1800+ is probably about 2/3 as fast as your system. It's hard to judge the speed of an operating system when you have that much raw power at your disposal.
there's a bit more to "user experience" (Score:4, Insightful)
on't really care which _computer_is faster. I want a cmmputer that makes _me_ faster, and if that is a slower computer, then that's fine by me.
New PowerMacs already bundle some Omni Software (Score:3, Insightful)
Omni would probably be tickled to death to have OmniWeb bundled. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens eventually, but there are still bugs to iron out and incompatibilities to fix.
I don't think it's unreasonable for Apple to say that they'll start bundling it if it is at least as compatible as IE.
The big problem now is that IE has name recognition among Windows users, and of course OmniWeb has none. So if they took out IE and put in OW, the average person on the street would think they were cheap and chintzy for not including the better known product.
That's why I don't think IE is going any time soon - but if OmniWeb could be added to the default install, I think that would be a Very Good Thing, since it sure does make MacOS X look fantastic.
Final point: I happily paid for OmniWeb, since I think the browser is worth the $30. It's a great product and deserves the support of its users. This is not a big company like Microsoft that can afford to work for free because it gets revenue from Windows. If you want independent companies to survive, you should support the ones whose products you appreciate.
D
My Mantra of Good Software Development (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'll tell you why they surf so slowly... (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyways, excuse me for being rude, but you're dead wrong.
It's because OS-X is a 1969-era operating system (UNIX) written to run on top of an 1984 OS (MacOS) that still has its core components running on a 68000 simulator!
The UNIX underpinnings may stem from 1969, but all but the very basic parts of the code have been rewritten many times since then, for all versions of UNIX. Secondly, it is not written to run on top of the classic OS at all. It is a stand alone OS. NO OS 9 NEEDED. The only legacy from 1984 comes from interface designs. The code is all new. Classic support is an option, not a requirement. The 6800 code was phased out a while back. I have no idea where you got thatone from. And espesialy in X, there is no 6800 code at all.
Mac zealots love to say "windows is just a dos extender that runs on a 16-bit processor" but the real truth is that Mac is much,much worse.
That argument was killed with the advent of Win2K. Welcome to the year 2002, did you have a nice sleep Mr. VanWinkle?
Another reason they surf slowly is there's only one mouse button. I use my mousewheel all the time to scroll. If I only had one button, it would take longer.
If you can't live without a scroll wheel and 17 other buttons, go buy a fucking new mouse. I own a logitech, optical USB scroll twobutton mouse. Cost me $20, works natively with OS X, no drivers nessesary.
Finally, the most important reason is that most sites were optimized for Windows
The only way to optimize for windows is to use
Do your homework before you spread your bull.
Re:Stability over Speed (Score:2, Insightful)
Apples, Oranges, and Developers (trolling rant?) (Score:2, Insightful)
Some people don't like Macs and they Bitch.
some people dont' like PCs and they Bitch.
Some people don't like anything.
MacOS X is pretty nice--kinda slow in places, but pretty nice. Cut it some slack--it's new.
It's great on a new box and crappy on an old
one--welcome to the industry. Did you buy the
minimal standard stuff on the box for your video games? I think not.
Win2K/ XP are pretty nice, too. Security is its biggest problem. This is a feature to keep
MCSE's employed. Thank MS for your job security. Those patches come out by the day.
Rejoice!
The sloth problem with X is aqua and the mach. Apple will probably tweak them later,
but only for new hardware--it's marketing innovation. Buy a dual 1Ghz G4 and watch
OS X fly. Try it on your aging G3 and wait.
That's the computer biz--deal with it.
Somebody posted with a comment about how much faster his NeXT box booted over his Mac. The C-64 and TRS80 booted in just seconds--what's your point again?
The problem with today's computers is the software. The hardware is more than we really need, but software companies keep BLOATING their OSes and software.
When RAM and disk space weren't so cheap, programmers were artful and crafty.
Today's development tools, don't optimize code--they include the kitchen sink for just one little piece, ship it out the door,make the company a dollar, and fix it with the next decimal point. It's a dead-line issue.
It's quantity not quality. The stock value
goes up when the new release is on time.
Your manager gets a bonus and you keep your job--everybody's happy except the guy who has to buy a new box just to use the
new bug-ridden version.
Apple and MS are in a one-up battle for bullsh*t features that Joe Luddite User want
not for what geeks want. MS Office is a prime example. It's a piece of sh*t. but everybody
"has to have it" just like everybody else.
There's a flocking algarithm applied here.
AHHH!! I'm going insane!!!!
Somebody got tired of this and just wrote his own OS...I think his name was Linus something or other.
[rant mode=off]
Mod Parent up (Score:2, Insightful)
As for the parent post's second point, there is an excuse but it's not a good one. Apple is undergoing alot of changes, and the OS department is now switching from a legacy system it's been using for over 18 years to a completely new system with completely new problems, obstacles and gotchas, including supporting the ENTIRE legacy OS on top of all that. That's right, I'm sure 9 is still under development, and will be until it's no longer needed at all. Think about how large Apple is. I mean, they are big but they're no Microsoft, their resources are somewhat limited, and they have alot going on. Times of transition have always been hectic at the Apple camp, and this is probably the largest transition of ANY type Apple has ever made. The switch from System 6 to System 7 was relatively painless, a few bugs here and there but they got the job done. The switch from 68k to PPC was much smoother, somewhat slow but the PPC was backwards compatable with 68k code though a software emulator that ran at near native speed, that's impressive.
Now all that has changed. Everything the Mac ever was under the hood, it isnt' anymore. Sure the API is still supported through Carbon but this is only a tie-in.
Try this for me and tell me if you have no time to optimize because you're too busy making it work:
- 1. Take a Linux kernel and modify it to work on a processor it wasn't intended for.
- 2. Redesign Windows Media Player, DirectX and the standard screen drawing APIs (whatever they are) to integrate seamlessly with it.
- 3. Port the Windows GUI to it.
- 4. Add a system for including three seperate APIs (Win95/98, NT/2000, and a new MFC no one is too keen on yet).
- 5. Make sure it not only boots and runs wth reasonable speed, but can also run XP as a "side chain" process to support programs that would otherwise not function correctly under the normal OS.
I'm sure after only a year you could have 500 engeneers on it and still have trouble. I would say Apple took on a HELL of a task and it ended up working out quite nice, dispite a few kinks in performance. Imagine if Microsoft had done the same thing?<rant>
Another thing I've noticed: Users are getting less and less patient with computers. Once they see the fastest one, nothing else is good enough. There is a difference between functional and perfect, grandma doesn't need to surf that fast...
</rant>
<zealotry>
And, just for shits and giggles, the only time I've ever seen IE take more than 4 seconds to render a page on any Mac is when the page uses tables heavily (i.e. SLASHDOT, amongst others). Most pages are rather responsive, even on my lowly 250MHz 8600.
</zealotry>
Re:Post Script Acceleration (Score:2, Insightful)
That throws out your theory.