Re: mac schmack

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From: peter (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: mac schmack
Date: 23:22 on 08 Sep 2003
> >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.

There's stuff above here

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