http://lowendmac.com/intel/05/1110.html

Mac OS X 'to Fly' on Intel
Gene Steinberg says:

Well, if you can believe what some are saying, and it makes perfect sense, Mac OS X is really better optimized for Intel, and that getting it to run in a satisfactory fashion on the PowerPC required a lot of work under-the-hood. That's why, for example, Mac OS 10.0 was so sluggish"

Gene, i have news for you. You're in for a cold hard reality check. Looks like there'll be no excuses left then, let alone such bullshit.

How pathetic the userbase has become.

Typical revisionist history. Brace yourselves for it. In my opinion, the problem with the userbase is twofold: they are too trusting/gullible... and they WANT to believe.

If you look at everything done to Mac OS X in the past four years, it's all about trying to hide the serious performance flaws in the OS, instead of address them. It's going to be the same post-intel. They'll showcase one or two snappy special effects to "prove" that "OS X flies on Intel," maybe add a couple more layers of useless interface... and then sit back and continue to do squat for pros (and therefore squat for average users).

The people who see the real state of the Mac, are the people who work with it all day every day. Casual users are blind to it, because again, they WANT to believe so badly. Throwing in behind Apple is more important than seeing the truth. My attitude has always been, if you REALLY want to help Apple, stop crap settling. Stop apologizing for them, and start realizing that they are not doing you a favor by letting you be Mac Faithful. You are doing THEM a favor by giving them your loyalty, and they have a DUTY to serve you well. You should balk if they try to foist crap on you.

I think Apple needs to deserve our loyalty better. Right now, my loyalty is based on the years of productive use I experienced under the legacy. I wouldn't be here right now if it weren't for Apple serving me well since 1984. But since OS X, I am a dissatisfied customer. I think the user experience, and general quality of the OS has fallen way off. I don't think that the new OS has conquered its major failings, i.e. being too slow, too buggy, too easy to break, abysmal app performance, performance degrading with use or load.

Do a little, and it's adequate. Do a lot and it's not. That's not acceptable. It forces people to underuse their computers in order to be able to say Apple is great. Where Apple should be giving unlimited potential to every flavor of personal computer use, they are restricting it now. At least when they were a pro-niche platform, that created a kind of defacto unlimited potential for newbies and casual users, while also being adequate for power users.

By designing to the lowest common denominator, they shut out pros, and crappify the user experience altogether.

quote:

Originally posted by klapauzius:
http://lowendmac.com/intel/05/1110.html

Mac OS X 'to Fly' on Intel
Gene Steinberg says:

Well, if you can believe what some are saying, and it makes perfect sense, Mac OS X is really better optimized for Intel, and that getting it to run in a satisfactory fashion on the PowerPC required a lot of work under-the-hood. That's why, for example, Mac OS 10.0 was so sluggish"

Gene, i have news for you. You're in for a cold hard reality check. Looks like there'll be no excuses left then, let alone such bullshit.

How pathetic the userbase has become.

Aaaand, one year later, time for a cold hard reality check: OS X actually FLIES on Intel.

Yo.

Thalo, I don't understand this rehashing of how fast OS X does or does not run. From the beginning we've always admitted that increases in microprocessor speed would speed up OS X in the future. So, OS X runs faster on faster computers, yeah so what? Don't all operating systems? That doesn't change its design and underlying design philosophy. My view is OS X took what was once the Macintosh in the wrong direction. Running a bit faster on a faster computer isn't much of an accomplishment. Anyway, it's still OS X, isn't it?

Hey, HH! How are you doing, buddy?

I have Expose going, which I actually like (in theory) to work through the desktop clutter in conjunction with the dock which is both hidden and magnified (I like how my smallish, slightly magnified icons meet up halfway with the pointer as I go from icon to icon; seems to make navigating a little quicker).

The only problem now is that as I mouse around, I feel like I'm at a video arcade. Do I shoot at the dock icons that pop up or at the various open windows, activated by Expose? Did I lose the game when I accidentally sent the pointer to the top left corner to show only the desktop (Expose again). Where are the ducks?

Hey back at ya, Robby. It's good to hear from you.

I think you nailed it when you said that OS X "still seems like I'm skidding on ice. I don't trust that it's doing what I ask of it, my eyes constantly glued to the road to make sure that I'm on course."

That's a pretty good description of the OS X user experience. It's so much different than what users experienced when they first fired up the original Macintosh. I suppose the difference is the original Macintosh was designed to put users in control. OS X is designed to put Apple in control.

I know, HH... fast crap is still crap.

Throwing processor at this beast is all they could do. They painted themselves into a corner with the PPC, and needed to raise the glass ceiling. That's why Apple had to switch gears again. Destabilize the platform again, keep up the impressive cursory glance, and continue to foist this bloated BS on the user base.

Brother Snobby mentioned his daughter loves OS X. Mama thalo is the same way. She can't understand all my grunts and moans and eye rolling whenever I use the interface.

If you do the things Apple tries to corral you into doing... in other words if you keep to the chimp profile, if you're a "fit" with Apple marketeer's idea of a digikid casual user, you'll be fine.

The problem, as I've said over and over and over again is this: if you're a consumer, OS X is for you. If you're a PRODUCER, it falls way short. The Mac interface is now a product in and of itself. Not a MEANS to actually USE software. In fact, all OS X does is make software look bad. It makes everyone who develops for it look like an idiot. And everything that goes wrong, gets blamed on them. When stuff quits, OS X is all about covering its ass... "Unexpected Quit", oh please. You can almost see Steve Jobs throwing his hands in the air and making excuses: "it's not OUR fault! Lookit, the kernel is still alive!" And that's supposed to convince us that the OS is perfect and it's just the software that RUNS on it that's defective. Not.

The truth is, it's the operating system. Always has been. The longer you work with it (and I mean really work, not twiddle)... the more you realize how egregiously flaky OS X still is. How much nursemaiding it still needs.

Did I tell you guys about my totally irritating Mail problem? Mama thalo has nothing like it. She can search all her emails, and it finds everything. You can't trip it up. Spotlight works in her copy. Why? Uh, because she has two mailboxes, and maybe 150 saved messages. I have dozens of mailboxes, several accounts, and YEARS of saved emails. Give OS X more to do, and it shows its true colors. Inadequate for pro use.

Mama thalo doesn't have the font problems I do. Again, because she has a few default fonts loaded. I have Sets upon Sets, have to use Suitcase Fusion, and at any given time have twenty times the fonts loaded that she does.

I'm connected to four or more other Macs in a gigabit office network. Stuff is going to and fro, there's Version Cue crap, I'm running Bridge, Big design apps. Mama thalo? Email, a browser, and she plays a DVD from time to time. iTunes.

Casual users live in a very different world. And so far, Apple has been very friendly to THAT world, and not to me.

When they throw hardware power at the OS problems, it seems like they make very tiny advances in the pro market... as if they're STILL concentrating solely on the casual use market. The Mac Pro, loaded with Ram, with dual core intel, yadda yadda, I'm guessing is just a better casual use machine than before. The proof of the pudding is in how the OS runs applications and manages our files and workflows.

The name aside, I don't see much "Pro" going on. Not when it comes to really efficiently working.

I can work, I do get stuff done. But so much time is wasted on bullshit. And is wasted on waiting for that beachball to stop. If I got a new Mac tomorrow, I think I'd maybe get a reduction of beachballing, but I don't think stuff would run any better or more reliably. I betcha I'd still get app crashes and lose work, and have to deal with inane and insane workflow stoppages from the crappily designed interface. I bet I'm still going to trip up the OS.

Because my Finder is going to be choked with more stuff to deal with. My spotlight searches have to go through bigger mountains of archived files... and the apps that are running on my machine are bigger and more complicated than minesweeper and iTunes.

It's time for Apple to put up or shut up. If they're going to make a "Mac Pro", it should have a pro-capable operating system. One that makes it easier to do work.

I still can't use the font I want to in the Finder. I still can't sort column-view columns by DATE... I still get misdraws and beachballs when trying to file manage my large/full directories.

Hey, it's better and faster than it was with my G4, but the bottom line is that the OS is built for time-wasting, not productivity. That's what I still want to see change.

The legacy did both. Its genius was that it COULD. OS X is definitely better at simple slacker-shit than it is at helping me get work done.

You know, i don't really care about processor architectures so much, apart from the fact that PPC is just the better architecture compared to x86. If Alpha processors or MIPS were still around, that would be a nice alternative, but so what.

But what's going on with the Intel switch now is just plain ridiculous. Photoshop running half as fast on the fastest super-duper multi-core Mac Pro compared to a 3-year-old G5 machine, Rosetta not being able to even calculate or round numbers correctly, and Apple's getting away with it.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35412

Software companies had to pull their products or tell people to downgrade back to 10.4.7, which has rounding/calculating errors of its own in rosetta, and Apple's getting away with it.

The damn thing cannot even round numbers correctly !

It's so damn ridiculous, it's just a sad joke.

OSX doesn't fly on Intel. I get the same unresponsiveness as I did in the PPC world. There's a fundamental thing in OSX which makes it unresponsive. And while the "quality" of the unresponsiveness has improved, it's still there.

I have to agree with most of what Thalo said, OSX is nice for the consumer market but inadequate for the pro market. I still can't believe that there isn't an adequate solution for font management. Apple introduces Font Book and then leaves it in the dust. And this is what happens with most of OSX since 10.0.

Apple Computer has made the world a better place

I wanted to post the actual article (because every sentence is ThaloRage inducing), but I thought I might slip on my own vomit during cutting and pasting.

OK, within the last half hour, two more OSX oddities cropped up, things that don't normally happen but speak for the stability of this OS.

I was trying to switch between two apps in the dock and instead of taking me to the respective application window, each click would bring up the finder, highlighting the application's icon within the finder instead of taking me to the application itself.

I restarted and the problem was solved. Not long after, I was typing away in mail. I look up and my keystrokes were lagging badly. I figured I'd give it time to catch up and once it did I started typing again. Then I noticed that when I hit the space bar, the insertion point wouldn't move to the right, so I hit the space bar again. When I started typing again, I'd have an additional space.

I felt as if I was typing in Virtual PC on some ancient Mac. That feeling is not uncommon, especially in Rosetta apps like Word and Excel. Mail was the only app open so it wasn't as if I was taxing the processor. This incident is isolated and hasn't happened to me in Mail before. But, I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen again, in Mail or some other app. It's almost expected in OS X. I know these type of things must be happening to even the staunchest OS X proponents but I believe they dismiss is as insignificant and trivial. Or maybe it's become all too common to them? Love or hate MS, this just doesn't happen in XP. You just don't hit speed bumps like this.

What pisses me off is that for 2-3 solid years I NEVER encountered such issues with XP. Never. I keep bringing up Windows only to highlight the glaring flaws in OS X. If not for security reasons (one of the primary reasons I back to Mac), I'd use this iMac to boot into XP. I LOVE the hardware, speed and overall performance of the Intel Core 2 Duo, but the more I'm in Tiger the more I feel I'd rather be in XP. I'm realizing more and more that OS X is nothing more than a hack; a hack that is more bearable with the latest, greatest hardware, but nevertheless a hack.

The 180 I've done over the past week is rather sad. I'm still liking this iMac ALOT, in spite of the OS. I can only imagine the frustrations some of you professionals are going through as you work OS X harder. I'm actually surprised that some of you have kept your sanity considering that your profession relies on your Macs and OS X.

One last thought for the night. Every now and then I go to the Apple Discussion Board (and other Apple forums) to amuse myself.

The consensus with the cult is that OS X is NEVER at fault; that it is purely the user's ignorance that causes problems. "Have you repaired permissions, your moron" and "If you used the third party XYZ or ABC utility, you wouldn't have run into these problems" are the common responses by the faithful, followed by a link to a website written by some geek on how to maintain your Mac every hour on the hour, or else you lose. Do these idiots get off on these pat, yet ill-informed replies?

What's sad is when a Windows convert, who never had to face these kind of problems just to run the most basic tasks, is stumped with these OS X malfunctions, looks for help and is greeted with these asinine responses. What a rude awakening into the world of Apple. It sure isn't as simple and, ahem, "cool" as Apple's site (what an embarrassment) and PR machine leads one to believe.

NNDH,

Not apologizing for Apple for an instant, but in the interest of The Art of Troubleshooting (which transcends sectarian OS strife), be aware that FruitMenu has a bug which has caused excruciatingly slow typing for me (OmniOutliner for instance, made me want to goatse my iBook).

Unsanity has released FruitMenu 3.6.2 which addresses this problem.

Check it out, as you may have it installed from long ago, even if it is turned off, it affects typing.

Jesus Moses Muhammad Gotama, with crap like this, who needs viruses?

Hey TMiB,

I haven't installed FruitMenu on this iMac, but thanks for the heads-up.

By the way, the link to the article you posted earlier? It literally made my skin crawl. I had to read it twice to make sure that it wasn't some kind of prank. I bet if given a choice he'd choose humping his Mac over Jessica Alba.