Will Tiger speed up my Mac?

You'll know in about a month!

10.4 Tiger will probably fasten up your computer in a way.. But I've read about this on the net and people are saying after 10.4 the speed will not increase like it used to from 10.2 to 10.3 for example, as the code in in OS X has become better and better.

With 10.4 Tiger Apple is gonna put more pressure on the GPU (Graphic Proccessing Unit) which basicly is your Gfx card. Core Image and Core Video is basicly sing the GPU instead of the CPU because the GPU is faster for those things and that requires a fast GPU to achive those performance. Apple has put out a list where you can read about which gfx card that has support for it.

The thing that is really gonna fasten your computer I belive is Spotlight to find your files, I think people is gonna use Spotlight more then the finder when they have 10.4 Tiger installed.

Is it still gonna have OS9 in it so I can run my quark 4.11?

PIMPTRIX wrote:

Is it still gonna have OS9 in it so I can run my quark 4.11?

You mean classic mode?

I haven't heard them talking about getting rid of it..

BUT! I think they will get rid of it in the future..

It'll probably be an installable option in the next release ...won't be on my machine if I can axe it!

Why don't people running Quark get OS X versions?

I have everything running on OSX... photoshop, illust...... my only software still on classic is QXP4.11 The company I work for is too big and in too many countries, so for them to upgrade everyone to QXP 6.x takes years. If I get Tiger, they said I might be able to get the QXP 6.5 upgrade but will want to keep 4.11 as well.

Not much I can do. I haven't had much bad luck running it in classic under OSX.

And how exactly do you measure the fasteness of your computer in general? I don't think it's possible to notice performance boost of 20%. You applicaiton opens 1/5 of a second faster? Photoshop filter applies in 4 seconds instead of 5? Can you really notice it? At the same time I do not think apple ever claimed bost at 100 or more percent. In fact, I can not even remember apple telling any numbers.

I think all these talks about "faster" OS are nothing more but seles tricks. Unless of course some drastical changes such as Core in upcoming Tiger. But still Core will only be able to help if application is built for it. I don't think Core will affect how fast MS Office works.

Whaat boosts perforamce is better hardware. I would notice that my present G5 works faster than previous G4 even the OS version was the same.

About optimizing the code. Well, as mich as I know about programming, it is very much the OS core which defines how fast it is. Once it's written, not much can be done to optimize it and not ruining at the same time. And it is a hell of a work to rewrite the core once a year. I doubt apple would want to do it. But it's just an opinion though.

Tigerstorm wrote:

Why don't people running Quark get OS X versions?

Because, as per usual for Quark, version 6 is buggy and the 6.5 upgrade did little to fix that. Version 4.x is still the most stable version.

Also, when people upgraded to OSX, they wanted to rid themselves of Classic – mostly because IT departments figured that if they were going to spend the time & money upgrading the OS, they might as well do it all so they don't have to support 2 operating systems at once. And the end users wanted an all OSX experience to take advantage of all the great new features. For this reason (along with the cost involved in upgrading Quark), many companies switched to Adobe InDesign.

So here we are 3 years later and people are still stuck using QX 4 in Classic, or running InDesign in natively in X. Many use both. And still more are switching to InDesign for new jobs, but see no need to spend boatloads of money to upgrade QX 4 to version 6 just for the few old files they still work on.

It's quite easy for a freelance artist to upgrade software every year, especially when you are an experienced user and know the system well. It's an entirely different story when you have to spend the money to upgrade dozens or even hundreds of copies company wide – as well as train inexperienced users on new features, all while troubleshooting the bugs.

As someone who has used Quark 6 occassionally, I can say with all honesty that QX 6 runs at the same speed and sometimes slower than Quark 4 or 5 in Classic mode. Factor that with the fact that QX 6 offers little in the way of new features, it introduces new bugs on the print end that weren't there in version 4 and you're not left with very many good reasons to upgrade.

From what I hear Tiger should speed up computers with G5 processors quite a bit. The G5 suports 64 bit processing, and Tiger will finally be a "true" 64 bit operating system. This means that it should make better use of the G5 architecture. When the G4's came out they weren't much faster than the G3's until the Ultivec engine came into play.

I've stopped looking for speed boosts from the OS itself – it's so minor that it's not really noticeable anymore. Panther is wickid fast on a G5. The only thing holding it back from being faster is the software applications that aren't coded to take advantage of all the G5 can do.

Quite frankly, I'm more interested in the new features of Tiger that aren't there right now, rather than improvements to features that are there. This does not include, of course, new versions of Mail, etc...

Speeding up my mac would be nice, what would be even nicer is if ical would automatically change dates without opening the damn app!

second that...

this really shouldnt be a problem!!!

another thing that would be nice, is a little mail-icon in the menubar to show if you have new mail!

my dock hides automaticly, and i get a lot of mail each day, and I hate the mail sound... so a icon would be great! (i know there are little apps available, but havent found one that works perfectly and doesnt kill my cpu yet!)

larusson wrote:

second that...

this really shouldnt be a problem!!!

another thing that would be nice, is a little mail-icon in the menubar to show if you have new mail!

my dock hides automaticly, and i get a lot of mail each day, and I hate the mail sound... so a icon would be great! (i know there are little apps available, but havent found one that works perfectly and doesnt kill my cpu yet!)

I think you should look for some kind of mini-app that would do it for you. I think I've seen one. Also Apple can not and even shell not think of all who hide their dock an hate mail sound. As you may noticed, Apple follows a general usability profile which pretty much limited. I bet there is a reason.

Quote:

another thing that would be nice, is a little mail-icon in the menubar to show if you have new mail!

that would be nice. In addition there should be the option of having a little preview window with sender, subject and first line or two of copy in the email like how ms enterage and the pc's outlook does, hopefully a widget will allow us to do such a thing because i prefer mail to enterague. OR HOWEVER YOU SPELL IT!

i think they do rewrite, hack the core every year or so since 10.0. i'm sure it's going to stop at some point, but at the moment OS X core IS getting faster. most apparent was 10.0 -> 10.1 and 10.1 -> 10.2. i do think that this time they have hacked the core quite a bit once again to take care of 64 bit and Core image, but as you guys said it will only start taking effect, once the applications are rewritten using these new possibilites.

cdisantis wrote:

Quote:

another thing that would be nice, is a little mail-icon in the menubar to show if you have new mail!

that would be nice. In addition there should be the option of having a little preview window with sender, subject and first line or two of copy in the email like how ms enterage and the pc's outlook does, hopefully a widget will allow us to do such a thing because i prefer mail to enterague. OR HOWEVER YOU SPELL IT!

This will be possible by writing your own widget or someone else would write it for you.

Also, take a look at Panic's Stattoo - it does some of what you've asked.

I believe konfubulator had one too. But I shouldn't have to pay for such a thing. I'm cheap. The widgets in tiger should be pretty sweet I can't wait to see what people come up with. Do you think people will develop widgets for adobe and other design programs? Possiblities are endless

cdisantis wrote:

Quote:

another thing that would be nice, is a little mail-icon in the menubar to show if you have new mail!

that would be nice. In addition there should be the option of having a little preview window with sender, subject and first line or two of copy in the email like how ms enterage and the pc's outlook does, hopefully a widget will allow us to do such a thing because i prefer mail to enterague. OR HOWEVER YOU SPELL IT!

Try this:

http://www.bronsonbeta.com/mailappetizer/

The problem with Mail Appetizer (and any other "Mail Announcement" type app) is that you have to have Mail actually open & running for it to work. To me, this kind of defeats the purpose of not having to open mail. I realize that it shows you on screen what the mail is without having to switch to Mail, but you still have to have it running.

What I want is a Mail compatible application that tells me when I have new mail WITHOUT having to have Mail open. Right now, you can use Gcount or several other GMail checkers that do this, but that's because they are web mail based, not POP based.

Jim wrote:

What I want is a Mail compatible application that tells me when I have new mail WITHOUT having to have Mail open. Right now, you can use Gcount or several other GMail checkers that do this, but that's because they are web mail based, not POP based.

In fact, the Stattoo has an option of checking your mail without having Mail app running or even having it installed on your comp. It can do both to be precise.

Basically, you want Mail to have a menubar icon, much like iChat has. That's simple and makes sense to me. I wouldn't mind that.

Joshua wrote:

Basically, you want Mail to have a menubar icon, much like iChat has. That's simple and makes sense to me. I wouldn't mind that.

If you think that menu bar has an acceptable size to place a special "mail" icon on it, then no one stops you from minimizing your dock to the size of the menu bar.

People, this is all about your personal preferences. Apple can not satisfy each and every of you. They must follow a general user profile. At the same time this allows feeding hundreds small companies develpoing thousands small applications to satisfy your needs. But as long there are no more that a 1000 of you (with one specific feature request), don't expect apple make you happy on this one.

I've tried Statoo... it works OK, but I hate the app itself. You can't customize the shape, size or placement of the "widgets" and it's only viewable from the desktop, so you have to hide all your open windows to see what the mail is.

Nahhh, I would rather have a menu bar item that is viewable no matter what app I'm in or how many windows are open.

I agree that one can not expect apple to follow the whim of every one.. of course not. but as some have mentioned here, a icon in the menubar is not an idea that is that far out. many other apple apps have it, like iChat.

but even if apple doesnt include this, i won't lose sleep over it. it would simply be nifty! :)

Jim wrote:

I've tried Statoo... it works OK, but I hate the app itself. You can't customize the shape, size or placement of the "widgets" and it's only viewable from the desktop, so you have to hide all your open windows to see what the mail is.

Nahhh, I would rather have a menu bar item that is viewable no matter what app I'm in or how many windows are open.

Sorry, but you are wrong.

First of all, it is not impossible to change it's placement. You can align icons to the left, right or middle. Also, when you go in a mode "add/edit widgets", you can see a little scratch on the widget background below icons. What you can't do is place them vertically or change their size, but I am not sure since I don't need these features.

Second, it would be completely useless application if you had to clean up the screen every time you wanted to look at it. For this there is a short cut which makes application pop up on top of all others for a bit. You can define the short cut yourself.

Mail icon on the menu bar would be a great solution as long as it is only mail you want to know the status of. And I think this does not require advanced programming, so apple should consider doing it.

larusson wrote:

I agree that one can not expect apple to follow the whim of every one.. of course not. but as some have mentioned here, a icon in the menubar is not an idea that is that far out. many other apple apps have it, like iChat.

but even if apple doesnt include this, i won't lose sleep over it. it would simply be nifty! :)

maybe i'm completely misunderstanding this, but doesn't Mail.app already displaying the number of unread messages in the dock in a little red star? or do you mean to display this without actually launching the app? that would need a small app to be running in the background like the iCal scheduler.

Many people (not me :-)) have their dock hidden to save work sapce. They also hate sound that mail app makes when a message arrives (altough it is customizable and it is even possible to record your own voice scremming "you've got mail"). But they still want to be able to monitor their mail. So they want a little mail icon in the menu bar.

My point that dock can be minimized to the size of the menu bar was totally ignored :-)

Georg wrote:

Jim wrote:

I've tried Statoo... it works OK, but I hate the app itself. You can't customize the shape, size or placement of the "widgets" and it's only viewable from the desktop, so you have to hide all your open windows to see what the mail is.

Nahhh, I would rather have a menu bar item that is viewable no matter what app I'm in or how many windows are open.

Sorry, but you are wrong.

I'm not sure how I'm wrong. You cannot move the windgets/icons around independently, you can size them independently, they are all exactly the same size no matter what size you choose to make them. They're all stuck inside the Stattoo dock-like containter. Moving them from the top of the screen to the bottom hardly constitutes customizing. I want the weather in one top corner, the hard drive space in another top corner, the iTunes widget in the middle and the rest across the bottom – at least with Konfabulator you can customize where and how big the widgets are (because you can edit the GUI of the widget very easily)

Quote:

For this there is a short cut which makes application pop up on top of all others for a bit. You can define the short cut yourself.

I did not know it had a Konspose-like feature, but to be honest, that's still not as easy as having a menu bar item that is always there without having to click or type anything.

Stattoo and Konfabulator, much as I would like to love both the apps, are nothing more than eye candy that never truly delivers on the promise of usefullness - which is why both of them are 3rd tier apps on most everyone's list of apps they can't live without.