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Mac OS X v10.0 Review - page 3 of 4

Performance Overview
I’ll also be very honest about OS X’s performance. In "finder-related" tasks, I’m disappointed with its speed on my G4/350. When you look at the benchmarks, you’ll see what I’m talking about. OS X just takes longer to open things, to modify things, to change the look of things. I’m hoping that optimizations will occur between now and July, for it truly does feel like a slug in the finder compared to OS 9.

The good news is that, outside of "finder-like" activities, OS X seems to be a very fast operating system. The benchmarks indicate that computationally, the system is crunching data quite quickly. Most pleasing is the performance of the Classic environment. Because of the stripped-down nature of the OS 9.1 system, many things actually run faster in Classic than they did in 9.1 native!

True multi-tasking also helps bring a perceived increase in speed to many tasks. For example, in OS 9, if you started a huge file copy between two hard drives, you could (theoretically) return to work in another app while the copy job was handled. However, the reality is that the mouse would skip and jump as the app and the Finder fought each other for processing time. In OS X, that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing a QuickTime movie while copying a bunch of files and surfing the web. The system makes sure that all the tasks are given enough horsepower to get their jobs done, and everything feels smooth. Background copy jobs take hardly any more time than a foreground copy job. Movies play smoothly while you roll across the animated dock.

If you’ve ever printed a 50+ page presentation from PowerPoint, you know the aggravation of ‘modal’ dialog boxes. These are the boxes that don’t allow you to click on anything else until they’ve cleared the screen. In PowerPoint, I’ve often waited 20 minutes for a long presentation to print, staring at a box that says "Now printing page 13 of 75…" In OS X, modal dialogs are a thing of the past. Any model dialog box in Classic can be clicked into the background – the only constraint is that other Classic apps may not become active until the modal dialog has been cleared. But all of the OS X apps will work just fine. This also helps you work more efficiently than you could in OS 9, as you can go on to other projects while the long print job spools. Shareware authors won’t like this one bit, as modal dialogs are part of their (well-deserved) efforts to insure we pay for what we use!

The importance of a stable core that brings protected memory and true multi-tasking to the Mac cannot be overstated. The ability to leave everything open all day represents true productivity gains that are hard to measure but very tangible. As OS X matures between now and July, the number one area for improved performance (in my opinion) lies in the "finder-like" behaviors of the OS. If Apple can make it as responsive as the OS 9 finder, while keeping the power and beauty of the new interface, they will have a true winner on their hands.

Benchmarks and Methodology
To measure the differences between OS 9.1, the Public Beta, and the release version of OS X, I came up with a set of performance measures which I then ran in all environments and attempted to excute in the same manner each time. In most cases, I ran each test three times, and averaged the results. The exception to this is the application launching test, where I was interested in the speed of the first launch - subsequent launches in OS X can take less than half the time required for the initial launch. So I ran all application launch tests immediately after startup, and only ran them twice.

Some disclaimers before you read my results. All events were hand-timed, and the testing environment was not identical (in terms of installed software, background processes, etc.) between OS 9.1 and OS X - please read the Configuration Box in the results for all the details. Overall, I think the results show where OS X does well against OS 9, and where it does poorly, even though these benchmarks have a weak (if that!) basis in true testing and analysis methods. Take a look and see what I ran...

The Benchmark Results

NEXT - Interpretation of Results

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