OS X is sluggish. Period.
 

I know I'm gonna get flamed, but this is my opinion about OS X.

I want to love OS X, I truly do. I remember buying an extra hard drive way back to house my copy of OS X beta. I would go find and read everything I could find online and imagine the future while looking at early screen shots of Rhapsody, you name it, I would find it and preach that future to Mac friends. I want to love OS X, I truly do.
Then I tried working in it. Hmm, now that’s another story.
As far as useful tools and setting things up, OS X is awesome, and I can see how great it will be in time. Note; Will be.
But I would expect that if Apple has a new OS coming out that it should truly be greater than it’s legacy. In terms of speed and performance, OS X is not there, yet.
All those small details that, imho, make an OS what it is, need to be focused on. Simple things like windows remembering their position and view setting, or having a Global setting for them. Having an option to turn of those damn blinking menus. Selecting a file name to rename it shouldn’t take as long as it can in OS X. I’m sorry but I’m pretty efficient with my keyboard and mouse and it still isn’t as easy as 9. It really isn’t. No matter what I do in X, as much as I like it. It ALWAYS feels like it’s a millisecond behind me. Those milliseconds add up over the course of a day and results in a feeling of the OS being sluggish. Now I’ve paid a lot of money for my Dual 1Ghz with 1.25Gb of Ram with the GeForce 4. You would think that the OS X would fly. Why doesn’t it? Good old, aging, dying, OS 9 keeps up with me no matter what. It feels tight and fast. I think that Apple, before adding any new bog down features to OS X, should focus on speed, speed and more speed. That is what computers are all about. When you upgrade, when you get that new video card or more Ram, it’s to gain more speed. Apple should work towards that goal. There’s plenty of features already.
OS X has come along way. Down the road I can see how great it will be, but Apple has to start down that road sooner or later.

Please spare your comments of “you don’t have it set up right” and like that. I know OS X very well and am only mentioning what I feel could be improved on.

Well, sounds like a good reason for you to keep running 9 for a while longer.

I presume it's OK with you if other people don't share those problems, though? And believe that computers may be about other things, too.

Absolutely, if you like X then great! I have many Mac friends, my Father too come to think of it, who work in and love OS X. Don’t get me wrong, I like it a lot too, I just feel it’s not there yet when it comes to speed and productivity. Only my opinion.

I don't honestly think there will be a real major speed bump until the G4 and its bus speed bottlenecks are dealt with, one way or another.

We all hope later this year. Meanwhile keep using 9 and learning X, so when the time is right for you the learning curve won't be so steep.

But you see, that's the thing. I'm past learning OS X now. I've had it installed since the beta. I'm very confortable in it and because of this I can feel what it lacks in terms of performance vs. OS 9. And on a Dual 1Ghz, I just wish it could be more responsive than it is.

Craig - could you elaborate on this a little? Im one who has a brand new g4 imac 17inch (800Mhz) and I know this guy is talking about. I love X, and think it is the best OS I have used - its got it all. but he is right in terms of that little niggling slugish feeling. Anyway, that aside, what is this bottleneck you speak of, and if it is a hardware issue then we are all truly screwed unless we upgrade when apple see fit to fix the problem. or is it a software issue? i hope so.

No, it's a fundamental design limitation of the PPC 74xx processor family. That's why one see's lower frontside bus speeds, less impact from the DDR RAM than there should be and no more than dual CPU systems.

On the PowerPC Roadmap of a few years ago it was indicated that those chips should have been replaced by now. But the problems of Motorola's semiconductor division cut into that schedule.

Now the hope is both IBM and Motorola will deliver next-generation chips later in 2003, including the IBM PPC 970 that supports 900 mHz FSB speeds. Goodbye bottleneck.

goodbye bottleneck - but highly annoying for those of us who buy the current generation of 'pentium beaters'. I have to say that the apple spin hasnt washed with me - for exactly this reason. how can they claim to have the fastest machines around when the FSB is lagging far behind yer avarage pc. I love apple products to death, but I wish they wouldnt try and pretend that everything about their boxes is superior when i can bulid a technically higher spec'd machine for half the price if i want a pc - which i might re-iterate - I DONT!

On the other hand, it's not always the hare which wins the race. Raw speed obviously is critical for some tasks, but for many, many of them averaging time spent over a period of days or weeks to actually accomplish significant tasks, I don't think the current OS X systems look that bad.

I try to avoid measuring my life in microseconds whenever possible. :D

point take - but its still far nicer to work on a machine that is instantly responsive, helps you work better without a doubt. and no-one can deny that it can raise the stress levels when you have to wait for your box to sort its head out when you want to access a window from another app.

but still - im happy enough - and what's the alternative? dont even go there...!

A good point to be sure. But I'm messuring my computer and it's OS in microseconds!
:)

Ah Sully you are too slow. I am measuring in nanoseconds.

/me wants a dual PPC970@2.5GHz each with 2GB of DDR400 SDRAM, U320 SCSI, Firewire 1600 etc.

nanos or millis, who's countin' anyway?

;)

God no not SCSI. Give me serial ata or something.

(i just spent 2 days troubleshooting two raids of ultra160 drives connected to two atto scsi cards, and I'm not stranger to the strangness of scsi, either!)

I agree
 

I was going to suggest you need at least 128Mb of RAM to run OS X comfortably but I see you have 1.25Gb of RAM. (Whoah. !)

Well in that case I agree wholeheartedly. I have a G4 Dual-450 with 768Mb RAM and stock video card (ATI Rage Pro 128).

Granted, Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" has come a long way; it's markedly faster than any previous release and even Classic seems to run most programs faster than Mac OS 9 standalone does (that may not sound possible but that is how it feels).

Still, there are many times when I feel like the system responsiveness just isn't up to snuff!

Part of it may just be getting used to the way the new system multitasks. Try "Windows" (shudder) for a while and see how it feels. The way it handles multitasking is different than Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X (perhaps closer to the latter) but it feels different too, responsiveness to various interactions are different. Some people might say it feels faster (than OS 9).

For me the greatest impact on end-user-responsiveness is the sluggish Mac OS X Finder. I really hate it. There's no greater feeling you get than the experience of any routine activities in the System 6, 7, 8, or Mac OS 9 Finder. (An infrequently-used but easily recognisable example would be the relatively snappy response of opening 50+ Finder windows in Mac OS 9...)

Carsten

why i use X over 9
 

yup. X is sluggish compared to 9. but X is solid as a rock as compensation.

if i have to choose between solid & ultra-responsive (and i do have to choose on this platform at this moment...), i choose solid.

of course, i should have both.

Re: why i use X over 9
 

It seems that the newer Macs are running OS X acceptably fast; those I've played around with at CompUSA feel very snappy. As Craig noted, however, it will take a new processor and hardware archetecture to really show what this OS can do.

FWIW, in addition to the stability and multi-tasking advantages, OS X seems to be just as responsive on my Pismo (500/640/20) and iMac (500/320/20), except for certain Finder tasks. Even so, however, I'm capable of working faster in the new workflow of multiple column-view Finder windows with configured toolbars. And I just enjoy the overall experience more.

Some may not believe this, but, except for application open times and Internet browsing, my Pismo seems just as fast as XP running on a 1.7 P4 processor at work (256 RAM).

Speed really *isn't* everything. That's why I drive a Nissan truck! ;)

I agree with your comment about speed. Generally it isn't snappy as OS 9 seems. As far as productivity goes: I can deal with some sluggishness when it means I can be running over 40 (large and small) apps and utilities all day without having to restart! It's nice to be able to launch apps, check email, sync palm, burn cds, monitor webserver, *all at the same time*. Thank you OS X :)

I've never used OS9, I switched to OS X from Windows XP. The PC has sat unused for the past month. OS X feels very fast compared to XP (and the system I was running XP on was no slouch). But like someone said above, the feeling of running tons of apps all day and never rebooting (6 days of uptime as of now) is a very satisfying feeling.

The only place that it seems OS X could use improvement is in the Finder. Sometimes performing routine tasks (such as moving a file to it's parent folder) don't seem as intuitive as I feel they could be. Also, I think OS X could benefit from a window arranging technique, similar to KDE's, where your screen space is used efficiently, rather than layering window upon window over top of eachother (which is how both OS X and XP handle it, unfortunately). However, I'm never going to leave OS X. I've put aside Linux and Windows. The stability of Unix with the beauty and ease of a Mac... I'm sold.

Overall, OS X has seemed fine to me since Jaguar, with one exception,the same one other people note: the Finder is a dog.

An example annoyance: I *hate* clicking "Applications" in a Finder window, knowing I'm going to be going to the bottom of the list, and it not keeping up with my scroll wheel. Grrr. And opening new Finder windows, and on and on...

OTOH, no way I'm going back to OS 9. Other than the Finder, everything else seems about the same speed (or faster, especially AppleScripts) and of course, much more stable...