Optimizing Jaguar???

[adamjay]

to make a long story short, thanks to Native Instrument's (Software Co.)'s totally crappy "new and improved" Panther driver, i have had to bring my 12" 867mhz G4 Powerbook back down to OS 10.2.8 (my job depends on it)

outside of the Xbench score of this machine dropping 15% (mostly in the GUI department), i have noticed how very slow Jaguar 'feels' compared to Panther. Is there any way to optimize the 'snappiness' more?

Since i use my laptop for live audio, even in panther i did many optimization techniques such as turning off all dock animation (even hiding), solid color desktop background, keeping the menubar to its minimal'est, no additional startup items, turning off all languages besides English in every program that will allow it, even found a way to turn off finder when working in certain software.

Short of the Finder hack (cant get it to work in Jaguar), i've done all these things in Jaguar. Is there anything else (and please dont say upgrade to Panther) that i can do to optimize the snappiness of Jaguar?

I realize my computer isn't exactly 'running' slower than with Panther - and that it just feels slow. I'm sure i'll get used to it soon enough, but right now it feels like Jaguar's paws are stuck in the mud.

 

[briankonar]

upgrade to panther

seriously it looks like you've done basically all their is, repairing disk permissions helps alot (assuming you don't repair often). i believe their is a hack to add a Quit option to Finder which should help you remove some overhead (if your really that desperate). However it sounds like your really just noticing the improvements in Panther's coding rather than Jaguar being bad.

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

so panther is actually noticeably faster than jaguar, like with just simple stuff like menus and windows opening and so forth?
should i upgrade now or wait till 10.4, whenever that'll be.
i'm on a 500mHz imac with 576mb ram. I'm hoping the next OS won't be out of my computers range.

 

[briankonar]

so panther is actually noticeably faster than jaguar, like with just simple stuff like menus and windows opening and so forth?
should i upgrade now or wait till 10.4, whenever that'll be.
i'm on a 500mHz imac with 576mb ram. I'm hoping the next OS won't be out of my computers range.

i was EXTREMELY doubtful of the benefit of upgrading from Jaguar to Panther, but I am really glad that I did (I too was planning on waiting for 10.4). The differences are very subtle, the most obvious being Expose, Fast User, and the new Finder. I must say the performance is much better in 10.3.3 than 10.2.8. I use 10.2.8 at school (cheap bastards!) at it's pretty irritating to have to go back, that's how much I love 10.3. However, it's kind of cutting it close to the release of 10.4 (8 months at most?) to be worth $129 now, than $129 at 10.4 (damn you apple!).

 

[adamjay]

so panther is actually noticeably faster than jaguar, like with just simple stuff like menus and windows opening and so forth?
should i upgrade now or wait till 10.4, whenever that'll be.
i'm on a 500mHz imac with 576mb ram. I'm hoping the next OS won't be out of my computers range.

yea, its ALOT faster but its all in the GUI.
the heap of the 10 points my Jaguar OS lost in Xbench to Panther OS was in the GUI section (about 1 or 2 points were lost in 'threading'), according to my Xbench scores Panther scored twice the GUI overall than Jaguar did (120 to 60), thus it "feels faster"

as for your iMac, you'd certainly notice a difference, but bare in mind (with regard to older iMacs and smaller HD's)... i think Panther takes more diskspace. I've finished re-installing all of my applications and documents in Jaguar and it seems i have about 3.5 GB's more HD space than i did with Panther. someone correct me if i'm wrong, does panther use a considerably larger amount of hard disk space?

 

[adamjay]

.:.puts foot in mouth::

nevermind, just found the 2GB's of .wav audio files i hadnt moved over yet, doh!

but i did inspect the system and library folders of my Panther carbon copy vs. my Jaguar disk... and it does seem that the Panther drive is about 1GB larger. this could be from updating from Jaguar to Panther (instead of a clean install), as i dont remember wether or not i updated or did a clean install.

can anyone verify? i think that disk space is a huge consideration for folks wanting to upgrade to Panther with older macs and smaller hard drives.

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

.:.puts foot in mouth::

nevermind, just found the 2GB's of .wav audio files i hadnt moved over yet, doh!

but i did inspect the system and library folders of my Panther carbon copy vs. my Jaguar disk... and it does seem that the Panther drive is about 1GB larger. this could be from updating from Jaguar to Panther (instead of a clean install), as i dont remember wether or not i updated or did a clean install.

can anyone verify? i think that disk space is a huge consideration for folks wanting to upgrade to Panther with older macs and smaller hard drives.

gui speed is pretty much the main thing thats bothered me since i moved up from os9. Disk space shouldn't be a problem, got a 40gig drive put in when the 20gig died because i never defragged it, but i guess that was under os9. defragging doesn't matter apparently in osX?
i've got norton (i know everyone says it sucks, but that's just what the stupid mac resaler told us to get) and it tells me the directories are too large for this version of Speed Disk. It shows me an image of the disk, and it looks pretty fragmented, but i've got half the 40gig free so i'm hopping it wont be a problem. one thing i've done is copied my entire 8gig itunes library to a new single location on the drive. all that did though was make itunes run quite a bit faster, while leaving hundreds of small empty spots in the drive where the old, individually stored song files were.
Its pretty frustrating seeing the free space on my drive composed largely of small splotches of free space.

 

[huckleup]

so panther is actually noticeably faster than jaguar, like with just simple stuff like menus and windows opening and so forth?
should i upgrade now or wait till 10.4, whenever that'll be.
i'm on a 500mHz imac with 576mb ram. I'm hoping the next OS won't be out of my computers range.

Though 576M of RAM sounds like a lot, it may help if you add more, maybe up to 1G or more if possible. Especially in the kinds of apps you are using, they tend to be RAM pigs (lots of temp copies of audio snippets, buffering, waveform overviews, lots of effects and synth engines and such.). If you don't have enough RAM you will get excessive Virtual Memory disk thrashing which is a big speed hit.

There are tools to see if you are getting into VM thrashing. Usually you can hear it when you switch applications and such. You can also look in /var/vm and see how many swap files you have. If there are more than two or three, then you are hitting the VM hard. RAM is your friend.

 

[MisterMe]

gui speed is pretty much the main thing thats bothered me since i moved up from os9. Disk space shouldn't be a problem, got a 40gig drive put in when the 20gig died because i never defragged it, but i guess that was under os9. defragging doesn't matter apparently in osX?
i've got norton (i know everyone says it sucks, but that's just what the stupid mac resaler told us to get) and it tells me the directories are too large for this version of Speed Disk. It shows me an image of the disk, and it looks pretty fragmented, but i've got half the 40gig free so i'm hopping it wont be a problem. one thing i've done is copied my entire 8gig itunes library to a new single location on the drive. all that did though was make itunes run quite a bit faster, while leaving hundreds of small empty spots in the drive where the old, individually stored song files were.
Its pretty frustrating seeing the free space on my drive composed largely of small splotches of free space.

Please. jeefy.dee-lux, disk fragmentation is a software issue, not a hardware issue. Your disk cannot be fragmented, files on the disk are fragmented. Fragmented files cannot cause the disk to fail. Now get this, every disk operating system writes files to the media in physically discontinuous clusters. This technique is substantially more efficient than writing files in continuous strips. Problems arise when the OS loses track of the clusters. This is a major issue with MS-DOS, but it is not a problem more sophisticated operating systems.

You need to also get this: M$ ships a defragmentation utility with Windows. Apple does not ship a degragmentation utility with MacOS X. Apple does not recommend a defragmentation utility for MacOS X. Apple does not bundle a defragmentation utility with .mac. That should give you a clue about the importance of file fragmentation on MacOS X.

 

[blackfox]

.:.puts foot in mouth::

nevermind, just found the 2GB's of .wav audio files i hadnt moved over yet, doh!

but i did inspect the system and library folders of my Panther carbon copy vs. my Jaguar disk... and it does seem that the Panther drive is about 1GB larger. this could be from updating from Jaguar to Panther (instead of a clean install), as i dont remember wether or not i updated or did a clean install.

can anyone verify? i think that disk space is a huge consideration for folks wanting to upgrade to Panther with older macs and smaller hard drives.

I cannot remember the name of the app, but it deletes all the foreign-language files that you may never use...a good way to free up extra space on a small drive...anyone remember what I am talking about (I probably learned about it here, anyway...)

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

Please. jeefy.dee-lux, disk fragmentation is a software issue, not a hardware issue.

whoa, someone sounds a little cranky...
thanks for the info, though, you too huckleup.

 

[dudeami]

I'm not sure of your exact needs, when you say that you work with live audio. If you are recording and/or manipulating large audio files, then a couple of things might help. Upgradgin your RAM, as was mentioned before is never a bad things. Storing large files on a seperate drive may also help. Keeping the drive, where these large files are manipulated, defregmented may help as well.

I do not know why Apple, does not include a defragmenter, maybe they haven't found one that they trust. Or, most likely, because it is really isn't always needed by general users, they don't want the extra cost associated with bundling another vendors product with the OS. Microsoft originally did not include a defragmenting program with NT, originally they claimed that NT was a sophisticated file system, and did not always need it, much like Apple says, However, Apple does NOT say that their file structure does not get fragmented, actually they say that it will get fragmented, but that there are risks involved in defragmenting, and there are times when you will need to defragment. Especially if your drive is getting close to being full. A nearly full drive can actually end up causes damage to the file structure. Apple will not come out directly and state the issues involved with not defragmenting, they only give hints by saying you may need to defragment, but here are some quotes from this KB article from Apple as well as a link.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

"Files can become "fragmented" over time as they are changed and saved and as the volume is filled, with different parts of a single file stored in different locations on a volume. The process of collecting file fragments and putting them "back together" is known as optimization. However, if a failure occurs during optimization, such as power loss, files could become damaged and need to be restored from a backup copy."

That was the area where they say your disk WILL become fragmented, and state some of the risks of defragmenting. Make sure you have your system on a UPS when defragmenting if at all possible.

"If your disks are almost full, and you often modify or create large files, there's a chance they could be fragmented. In this case, you might benefit from defragmentation."

Here is the part where they say you may, just may, actually benefit from defragmenting your hard drive. In my opinion, in this case they are not stressing enough, that if your hard drive is near capacity that you need to defragment it. However, they would kind of be stepping on their own toes, when they say that most users don't need to defragment their hard drive and then end it with, oh by the way defragment your hard drive. So I can see why they word it this way.

Here is a link that really explains the technical details about why you would want to defragment your hard drive to avoid damaging the file structure. Read the posts by MicroMat Tech3

http://www.macfixitforums.com/php/s...70808&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=31&fpart=1

[Edit] Forgot to put the second link in. [end Edit]

 

[dudeami]

Regarding your question about the size difference between the install of Jaguar and Panther. I would say that the majority of the size difference is due to the version of iLife that comes with Panther, it is almost 1GB larger than the previous version that shipped with Jaguar, most of this is the size of iDVD.

 

[dudeami]

As far as the "snappiness" of Panther.

I don't think that you can ever expect to make the GUI in Jaguar as snappy as Panther. Panther has many user interface improvements over Jaguar. You already mentioned that GUI test being faster in Panther when testing with Xbench. What you will perceive as speed when navigating the GUI is definitely faster in Panther, the user interface test in Xbench is a great indicator, where I have seen score about 40% faster with Panther. As far a processing power, like when you are actually letting the OS and applications actually crunch on numbers, the two OS's will be very similar.