Er, do you mean do they have to *appear*? As in, do we have auto-hide on? Nope, not in my case.
What I mean by size: the icons used by the Finder and Dock generally come in a number of sizes, 128x128, 64x64, etc. If you have the Dock accidentally sized to say, 63x63, then it would have to load the 128x128 off the disk to scale past the very first increase in size. If it were at 65x65, however, it would already be scaling down the 128x128, and wouldn't have to access the disk. (If it were at 33x33, it could use the scaling time to 63x63 to load the 128x128 version, no discernable lag.)
Anyways, at home, my main monitor is set to 1600x1200 and my Dock occupies about the center 1/3. I don't like an extreme zoom effect, so the max size is 10-15% larger than the rest of the Dock. I can't remember if its is set to one of the pre-scaled sizes or not.
Yesterday, I was working late into the night and I kept trying to see if my Dock would lag. I could not get it to do it. I was running Excel, Werd, Safari, and Preview with one AFP connection active.
Right now, I also have my 12" PB here (867/640MB). Its Dock is not lagging, but I'll pay closer attention to it today. This machine might be more representative of the Mini since they share similar HDs. BTW, my PB's Dock is set to a preset res.
Also... I asked my wife as I hadnt before whether she noticed the dock lags and she said "Yes and its annoying" And she is the one with bad eye sight...so I don't know how you guys cant see it.
I don't notice any kind of lag on my Powerbook 667. How long is the delay between when you put your mouse over the Dock and when it finally magnifies? It's virtually instantaneous for me. It's just as responsive if I drag the mouse up and down the length of the Dock too. Of course, my Dock is relatively small -- I don't keep more than 15 icons on it -- so maybe that has some effect.
Also, do you think you could quit saying you don't know how other people can't see it. We can't see it because it doesn't happen to us. I don't mean to be rude, but it's really obnoxious to say things like, "But for you people that say you dont notice it...well your just not as picky or something." Especially when the people in this forum are among the pickiest computer users I've ever encountered (and I mean that in a good way )
No the dock is not on auto hide. The size theory could be true, I could play with that a little.
What I mean by appear and how long it takes, it actually appears to full size or magnified probubly as fast as it normally would but there is no zoom effect. It just kinda pops up into magnified.
I wish there was a way I could record it...anyone know of anything??
Sorry for saying "But for you people that say you dont notice it...well your just not as picky or something." Its just frustrating, I dont know how my two macs that are very different speeds could both have this problem (again iMac doesn't have it as much but is consistent when on Automatic in processor setting) and no one else notices it.
Again if there was a way I could record my screen I am 100 percent sure I could reproduce it have have it show up.
Also something else I have noticed, it only seems to happen when you havnt accessed the dock for a while. If I put my mouse over it after not touching the computer for like 5 minutes then it does it but if I then do it like a minute later it doesn't.
Mmmm ... I think I see why no one has been able to help you so far. I'll give it a shot, maybe someone else can explain it better...
You say it doesn't zoom, it just goes straight to magnification. I was under the impression that this is what always happens ... or that's what happens on my computer ... I mouse over the dock and the icons go staight to magnification ... it's pretty smooth and I don't see a "lag" when I mouse them over. I'm not quite sure what you mean when you talk about zoom in the dock.
Also, you say when leave it alone for 5 minutes then come over and mouse the dock, it has the lag, but if you wait a short amount of time, you have no lag. This is not surprising. Computers are like old cars and pretty girls ... they take a little warming up to get them to their full potential. If you leave your computer alone for a long time, everything's cold. Processor, graphics card, etc. and it takes a few second for everything to speed up. On the oyther hand, if you just stopped doing something, everything has already been sped up and the computer is waiting for you to act.
I think you'll find this is the case with not only the dock, but other things as well. Leave your computer alone for 30 minutes then come back and open up an App .. you'll find that your folders probably aren't quite as snappy opening and your apps take a split second longer to bounce in the dock.
Maybe that clears it up ... I'm still without my Mac right now so I can't do much more research for you right now. Hope that starts to clarify things...
It's got nothing to do with it being 'cold'. (In fact, electronics work better the colder they are - less resistance in the conductors.)
It's the virtual memory system. When you don't use an app for a while, any app, (and the Dock is its own app), it gets swapped out to disk. The next time you access that app, it has to pull it in from disk, and there's a tiny lag. Normally, not an issue, but when you expect an *immediate* response, it has to catch up, and you see a slight 'stutter'.
This is normal, and just the way the system works. Considering that I frequently have 3-5GB of virtual memory going at any given time, on a 512MB machine, it doesn't surprise me.
On your iMac, you said you had it on 'automatic'? Did you mean the CPU speed in the Energy Saver panel? You may want to put that to 'highest' just for the CPU, and see if it still happens. Also, if your disk is spun down, *it* has to rev up to speed before sending any data in, so you'll also get a stutter.
When you let the computer sit, it will swap out your active apps to pull in maintenance tasks, and the next time you activate it, it will usually have to do the same swapping in from disk.
I do have the processor on highest, I just wanted to note that when I put it on automatic then it does it.
I understand about virtual memory and the like, and figured it had something to do with that, but it also must be processor related. That is what brings me back to my original question as to whether or not that would be improved in Tiger.
As to what I meant by Zoom and the instant magify... When I say instant magnify I mean that when you put your mouse over the dock it goes right to large icons, where as I said before if you then leave the dock and bring you mouse back the dock icons will zoom to a magnify. Its not just small icon and then big icon, you can see a graphical zoom.
Thats what I consider lag, when it jumps to a full size, thats lag in my opinion because it is not doing the full animation of the magnify. I played with the size of the dock and didn't really find an improvement, again its hard to test on my iMac as it doesn't do it very often but the mini I couldn't make any improvements.
I do have the processor on highest, I just wanted to note that when I put it on automatic then it does it.
I understand about virtual memory and the like, and figured it had something to do with that, but it also must be processor related. That is what brings me back to my original question as to whether or not that would be improved in Tiger.
Well, 'automatic' does a few things, one of which is to switch the CPU to a low-power mode, and another is to park the drive after a few moments. Both or either can cause a slight stutter while the system flips back over to full up and running. It's not really the processor, so much as how you're telling the OS to control the processor. As you noticed, when you don't have it on automatic, it doesn't do it.
Quote:
As to what I meant by Zoom and the instant magify... When I say instant magnify I mean that when you put your mouse over the dock it goes right to large icons, where as I said before if you then leave the dock and bring you mouse back the dock icons will zoom to a magnify. Its not just small icon and then big icon, you can see a graphical zoom.
Thats what I consider lag, when it jumps to a full size, thats lag in my opinion because it is not doing the full animation of the magnify.
The jump is because it's trying to *eliminate* lag, by making sure that the icon is at full size at the same time, regardless of whether it has time to do the smooth animation or not. It plays catch-up to try and make it quicker for you, but I can see your point.
Quote:
I played with the size of the dock and didn't really find an improvement, again its hard to test on my iMac as it doesn't do it very often but the mini I couldn't make any improvements.
Well, see if the mini has the Energy Saver setting at 'highest', or something else. Also, if you're running memory intensive apps, you may simply be bumping up against the VM, which there really isn't anything you can do about, other than add more RAM. (Although what you have should be plenty for everyday use, and then some. I have an equivalent amount in my research machine.)
"The jump is because it's trying to *eliminate* lag, by making sure that the icon is at full size at the same time, regardless of whether it has time to do the smooth animation or not. It plays catch-up to try and make it quicker for you, but I can see your point."
Thats a great point because I did mention earlier that I didnt think it took longer to really load up the icons or zoom, that infact it seemed to take the same amount of time which results in a jump.
I did not know about the automatic setting on the imac also adjusting the harddrive as that would deffinetly make it more likely to have this issue. And on Highest it does not do it really much at all.
Unfortunatly on the mac mini there is no processor spped setting. So I guess its just the way it is. Again maybe tiger will somehow improve this. It is funny how some macs just arent seeing it... It puzzles me... but whatever, I didn't expect this topic to be so lengthy lol.
You notice the "lag" when you first put your mouse over the dock. By lag I mean its not consistant with the speed of the magnification after a few seconds.
If you quickly put your mouse over the dock and drag it around the speed of the zoom effect is more "laggy" then after a few seconds.
Does anybody know if the dock caches scaled images or if scaled images are generated on the fly?
If they aren't calculated on the fly, then it sounds like the scaled images cause lag initially while being generated. Then after they are loaded and cached, continuing to scrub your mouse over the dock would be lag free.
Or... perhaps they are cached, yet swapped out to virtual memory on the hard disk. There would be an initial lag while the HD seeks to the spot on the disk where the scaled icon images are stored.
One of these scenarios seems most likely. Initial lag followed by good performance is normally an indication of not having the requested data (scaled icons) in memory.
Is it possible you have another program running with a memory leak that has consumed all of the ram? You can check this by typing top in the terminal or via the Activity Monitor utility.
Thats what I consider lag, when it jumps to a full size, thats lag in my opinion because it is not doing the full animation of the magnify. I played with the size of the dock and didn't really find an improvement, again its hard to test on my iMac as it doesn't do it very often but the mini I couldn't make any improvements.
That certainly helps, because that isnt lag.
I was just playing with the dock on my B&W 350, a machine which should lag if any would. It only has 196mb, so it lives in VM land pretty hard as well.
It doesnt lag.
It does have a low frame rate.
Lag is the amount of time that something takes to respond.
For example, if you moused over the dock and it took one second before anything happened then you would have one second of lag.
I can mouse over the dock and it responds instantly ( as far as I can tell ). However, as I drag my mouse over the icons it stutters and starts. The old B&W just doesnt have the cpu power needed ( pegged at 100% ) to do the zoom smoothly.
It is an unfortunate reality of Quartz that it takes a lot of processing power to operate. If you reduce the maximumu magnification you will reduce the cpu load that the dock generates. Both the amount of memory that needs to be moved, and the number of frames that need to be played to zoom any given icon will be reduced.
Use the activity monitor to watch cpu and disk activity while you are tickling the dock. It provides some interesting insight into what your computer is doing.
Comments
I it have slightly smaller then the default size which is massive.
What I mean by size: the icons used by the Finder and Dock generally come in a number of sizes, 128x128, 64x64, etc. If you have the Dock accidentally sized to say, 63x63, then it would have to load the 128x128 off the disk to scale past the very first increase in size. If it were at 65x65, however, it would already be scaling down the 128x128, and wouldn't have to access the disk. (If it were at 33x33, it could use the scaling time to 63x63 to load the 128x128 version, no discernable lag.)
Just a wild thought.
Anyways, at home, my main monitor is set to 1600x1200 and my Dock occupies about the center 1/3. I don't like an extreme zoom effect, so the max size is 10-15% larger than the rest of the Dock. I can't remember if its is set to one of the pre-scaled sizes or not.
Yesterday, I was working late into the night and I kept trying to see if my Dock would lag. I could not get it to do it. I was running Excel, Werd, Safari, and Preview with one AFP connection active.
Right now, I also have my 12" PB here (867/640MB). Its Dock is not lagging, but I'll pay closer attention to it today. This machine might be more representative of the Mini since they share similar HDs. BTW, my PB's Dock is set to a preset res.
Originally posted by zenatek
Also... I asked my wife as I hadnt before whether she noticed the dock lags and she said "Yes and its annoying" And she is the one with bad eye sight...so I don't know how you guys cant see it.
I don't notice any kind of lag on my Powerbook 667. How long is the delay between when you put your mouse over the Dock and when it finally magnifies? It's virtually instantaneous for me. It's just as responsive if I drag the mouse up and down the length of the Dock too. Of course, my Dock is relatively small -- I don't keep more than 15 icons on it -- so maybe that has some effect.
Also, do you think you could quit saying you don't know how other people can't see it. We can't see it because it doesn't happen to us. I don't mean to be rude, but it's really obnoxious to say things like, "But for you people that say you dont notice it...well your just not as picky or something." Especially when the people in this forum are among the pickiest computer users I've ever encountered (and I mean that in a good way
What I mean by appear and how long it takes, it actually appears to full size or magnified probubly as fast as it normally would but there is no zoom effect. It just kinda pops up into magnified.
I wish there was a way I could record it...anyone know of anything??
Sorry for saying "But for you people that say you dont notice it...well your just not as picky or something." Its just frustrating, I dont know how my two macs that are very different speeds could both have this problem (again iMac doesn't have it as much but is consistent when on Automatic in processor setting) and no one else notices it.
Again if there was a way I could record my screen I am 100 percent sure I could reproduce it have have it show up.
Also something else I have noticed, it only seems to happen when you havnt accessed the dock for a while. If I put my mouse over it after not touching the computer for like 5 minutes then it does it but if I then do it like a minute later it doesn't.
You say it doesn't zoom, it just goes straight to magnification. I was under the impression that this is what always happens ... or that's what happens on my computer ... I mouse over the dock and the icons go staight to magnification ... it's pretty smooth and I don't see a "lag" when I mouse them over. I'm not quite sure what you mean when you talk about zoom in the dock.
Also, you say when leave it alone for 5 minutes then come over and mouse the dock, it has the lag, but if you wait a short amount of time, you have no lag. This is not surprising. Computers are like old cars and pretty girls ... they take a little warming up to get them to their full potential. If you leave your computer alone for a long time, everything's cold. Processor, graphics card, etc. and it takes a few second for everything to speed up. On the oyther hand, if you just stopped doing something, everything has already been sped up and the computer is waiting for you to act.
I think you'll find this is the case with not only the dock, but other things as well. Leave your computer alone for 30 minutes then come back and open up an App .. you'll find that your folders probably aren't quite as snappy opening and your apps take a split second longer to bounce in the dock.
Maybe that clears it up ... I'm still without my Mac right now so I can't do much more research for you right now. Hope that starts to clarify things...
It's got nothing to do with it being 'cold'. (In fact, electronics work better the colder they are - less resistance in the conductors.)
It's the virtual memory system. When you don't use an app for a while, any app, (and the Dock is its own app), it gets swapped out to disk. The next time you access that app, it has to pull it in from disk, and there's a tiny lag. Normally, not an issue, but when you expect an *immediate* response, it has to catch up, and you see a slight 'stutter'.
This is normal, and just the way the system works. Considering that I frequently have 3-5GB of virtual memory going at any given time, on a 512MB machine, it doesn't surprise me.
On your iMac, you said you had it on 'automatic'? Did you mean the CPU speed in the Energy Saver panel? You may want to put that to 'highest' just for the CPU, and see if it still happens. Also, if your disk is spun down, *it* has to rev up to speed before sending any data in, so you'll also get a stutter.
When you let the computer sit, it will swap out your active apps to pull in maintenance tasks, and the next time you activate it, it will usually have to do the same swapping in from disk.
I understand about virtual memory and the like, and figured it had something to do with that, but it also must be processor related. That is what brings me back to my original question as to whether or not that would be improved in Tiger.
As to what I meant by Zoom and the instant magify... When I say instant magnify I mean that when you put your mouse over the dock it goes right to large icons, where as I said before if you then leave the dock and bring you mouse back the dock icons will zoom to a magnify. Its not just small icon and then big icon, you can see a graphical zoom.
Thats what I consider lag, when it jumps to a full size, thats lag in my opinion because it is not doing the full animation of the magnify. I played with the size of the dock and didn't really find an improvement, again its hard to test on my iMac as it doesn't do it very often but the mini I couldn't make any improvements.
Originally posted by zenatek
I do have the processor on highest, I just wanted to note that when I put it on automatic then it does it.
I understand about virtual memory and the like, and figured it had something to do with that, but it also must be processor related. That is what brings me back to my original question as to whether or not that would be improved in Tiger.
Well, 'automatic' does a few things, one of which is to switch the CPU to a low-power mode, and another is to park the drive after a few moments. Both or either can cause a slight stutter while the system flips back over to full up and running. It's not really the processor, so much as how you're telling the OS to control the processor. As you noticed, when you don't have it on automatic, it doesn't do it.
As to what I meant by Zoom and the instant magify... When I say instant magnify I mean that when you put your mouse over the dock it goes right to large icons, where as I said before if you then leave the dock and bring you mouse back the dock icons will zoom to a magnify. Its not just small icon and then big icon, you can see a graphical zoom.
Thats what I consider lag, when it jumps to a full size, thats lag in my opinion because it is not doing the full animation of the magnify.
The jump is because it's trying to *eliminate* lag, by making sure that the icon is at full size at the same time, regardless of whether it has time to do the smooth animation or not. It plays catch-up to try and make it quicker for you, but I can see your point.
I played with the size of the dock and didn't really find an improvement, again its hard to test on my iMac as it doesn't do it very often but the mini I couldn't make any improvements.
Well, see if the mini has the Energy Saver setting at 'highest', or something else. Also, if you're running memory intensive apps, you may simply be bumping up against the VM, which there really isn't anything you can do about, other than add more RAM. (Although what you have should be plenty for everyday use, and then some. I have an equivalent amount in my research machine.)
Thats a great point because I did mention earlier that I didnt think it took longer to really load up the icons or zoom, that infact it seemed to take the same amount of time which results in a jump.
I did not know about the automatic setting on the imac also adjusting the harddrive as that would deffinetly make it more likely to have this issue. And on Highest it does not do it really much at all.
Unfortunatly on the mac mini there is no processor spped setting. So I guess its just the way it is. Again maybe tiger will somehow improve this. It is funny how some macs just arent seeing it... It puzzles me... but whatever, I didn't expect this topic to be so lengthy lol.
Originally posted by zenatek
You notice the "lag" when you first put your mouse over the dock. By lag I mean its not consistant with the speed of the magnification after a few seconds.
If you quickly put your mouse over the dock and drag it around the speed of the zoom effect is more "laggy" then after a few seconds.
Does anybody know if the dock caches scaled images or if scaled images are generated on the fly?
If they aren't calculated on the fly, then it sounds like the scaled images cause lag initially while being generated. Then after they are loaded and cached, continuing to scrub your mouse over the dock would be lag free.
Or... perhaps they are cached, yet swapped out to virtual memory on the hard disk. There would be an initial lag while the HD seeks to the spot on the disk where the scaled icon images are stored.
One of these scenarios seems most likely. Initial lag followed by good performance is normally an indication of not having the requested data (scaled icons) in memory.
Is it possible you have another program running with a memory leak that has consumed all of the ram? You can check this by typing top in the terminal or via the Activity Monitor utility.
Originally posted by PB
It is already years now from the last 14" Powerbook (Pismo). Do you mean 12"? Yes, the 12" Powerbook has a NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200.
Yes, that's what I meant.
Originally posted by zenatek
Thats what I consider lag, when it jumps to a full size, thats lag in my opinion because it is not doing the full animation of the magnify. I played with the size of the dock and didn't really find an improvement, again its hard to test on my iMac as it doesn't do it very often but the mini I couldn't make any improvements.
That certainly helps, because that isnt lag.
I was just playing with the dock on my B&W 350, a machine which should lag if any would. It only has 196mb, so it lives in VM land pretty hard as well.
It doesnt lag.
It does have a low frame rate.
Lag is the amount of time that something takes to respond.
For example, if you moused over the dock and it took one second before anything happened then you would have one second of lag.
I can mouse over the dock and it responds instantly ( as far as I can tell ). However, as I drag my mouse over the icons it stutters and starts. The old B&W just doesnt have the cpu power needed ( pegged at 100% ) to do the zoom smoothly.
It is an unfortunate reality of Quartz that it takes a lot of processing power to operate. If you reduce the maximumu magnification you will reduce the cpu load that the dock generates. Both the amount of memory that needs to be moved, and the number of frames that need to be played to zoom any given icon will be reduced.
Use the activity monitor to watch cpu and disk activity while you are tickling the dock. It provides some interesting insight into what your computer is doing.
500Mhz G4 Upgrade Card
83MHz FSB
512MB PC100Ram
Runs smooth