My main gripe with .Mac is the sluggishness of the .Mac servers when performing routine syncs. Click on the .Mac preference pane, then on each of the tabs and watch while you wait for .Mac to respond with the status for each of those tabs. Add/remove some stuff to/from your iDisk and notice how long it takes to resync. This sluggishness isn't always the case, but it's often enough that I pause to reconsider before forcing a manual sync when using my laptop (since I'm not sure if I want to wait for it to finish before closing its case and moving on to something else).
The way OS X handles memory is quite different than the way OS 9 handles memory. Free memory under OS X is not really the same as in OS 9. As always more is better but I run tiger on an 800mhz G4 with 768mb of RAM and have no problems or stalls despite having large numbers of programs open. I can burn several CD's or DVD's at one time with two copies of toast open, be printing labels with discus, designing other labels in Photoshop CS2 and have mail and safari open with no slow downs or stalls. This would have killed OS 9 on the same machine.
I have noticable stalls due to RAM swap-outs (or rather the swap-ins) at least once per hour, with 1 GB of RAM. And with a slow (5400 RPM) notebook drive you really feel it.
The thing is that with a couple of big active apps (i.e., with documents open) like VirtualPC (200 MB), Matlab (300 MB), Powerpoint (200 MB), iPhoto (200 MB), half a dozen medium sized ones (with no documents open in them) like Illustrator (75 MB), Photoshop (80 MB), browser (80 MB), Acrobat (45 MB) and the OS and the small stuff asking for another 300 MB, one can easily need 1.5 GB and more just in case Matlab needs another 300 MB for something.
If one does not have the RAM for this, no big deal, the not active apps will reduce their demands and swap out the non-essential stuff. But ones you switch back to these app all the palettes and open documents will have to be read back from disc, and reading let's say 100 MB from a notebook hard drive can take several seconds, which can be annoying if you switch between a lot of apps.
It's hard to believe you haven't experienced the AFS permission issues - POSIX permissions are badly broken for 10.4 server and clients (even if the server is still 10.3). AFS automounted home directories are randomly flakey too. As I posted, check the Apple support discussions Mac OS X Server AFS boards for more details.
Cheers,
-Nathan
To keep up to date on Mac/Windows interfacing problems go to this site. I've found this to be the best source of information on that topic.
The other thing I've found is that people who claim to be having no problems with Windows networks in setting up their Macs - esp with 10.4, are not actually involved in doing it. They may be connecting to the Win public folder, but that's about it. Anything more sophisticated than that that has been causing headaches.
As rspress said, memory management is vastly different under OS X than OS9 or even XP. For instance, I have 512MB in my PowerBook, and I frequently have 4-5 *GB* of memory being used, with no slowdowns. The only time I have a problem is when one thread tries to grab more than about 450MB and 100% of the CPU. (That was my research tool until I redid it and cut the memory use by 80%.)
Unix-based systems like OS X work under the assumption that unused RAM is wasted RAM, and they try to keep it full whenever possible, so data and application code is ready to go when you want it. You have to ditch the old assumptions about RAM use. Basically, you're going to want physical RAM a bit bigger than your estimated largest single thread memory use. For some people who work with extremely large high-resolution graphics, or video, this may indeed be several GB, but that's going to be exceedingly rare.
Of course, apps such as Photoshop that have their own internal memory management schemes can cause problems, or exhibit far from optimal performance.
O.k., I think I see now where the misunderstanding is, some people are 'only' annoyed when simple Finder operations take upward of 20 seconds because Matlab just grabbed 700 MB of their 1 GB of RAM plus all free processor cycles.
If that is the case then you are naturally right.
I am already annoyed when switching to Illustrator takes about as long (I talk about roughly 15 seconds) as opening the programm plus opening the document because almost all of its memory footprint has been swapped out.
I am annoyed because there is an easy technical solution to the problem, called: More RAM.
O.k., I think I see now where the misunderstanding is, some people are 'only' annoyed when simple Finder operations take upward of 20 seconds because Matlab just grabbed 700 MB of their 1 GB of RAM plus all free processor cycles.
If that is the case then you are naturally right.
I am already annoyed when switching to Illustrator takes about as long (I talk about roughly 15 seconds) as opening the programm plus opening the document because almost all of its memory footprint has been swapped out.
I am annoyed because there is an easy technical solution to the problem, called: More RAM.
Actually OS X does a very good job of handling virtual memory. There are other problems that cause some of the slowdowns.
Windows people claim that it needs less memory and does a better job, but that's not so. Unix has always been HD intensive, It was tape intensive before that.
But with Windows, the more apps you use the slower the machine gets. At some point it just stops. OS X doesn't have that problem. It's because they handle memory and processor cycles differently. One hand gives, and the other takes away.
Normally, as long as you have 512-1GB RAM, and enough swap space on your drive, things are fine. The problem is when you THINK you have enough space on your drive, but don't, that things get wicky.
Add up all of the virtual memory the system is asking for, add to that the requirements of the OS for other temp requirements that are not listed there at any given moment, such as that for windows etc., and then add the drive space needed for the OS's continous de-fragging of all files smaller than 20MB, plus a number of other functions that I'm not going to mention here now, and you might find that the 15GB of HD space you think you have free isn't enough.
You would be surprised to know that the slowdowns are more due to that lack of drive space that you THINK you have, than to anything else.
It's hard to believe you haven't experienced the AFS permission issues - POSIX permissions are badly broken for 10.4 server and clients (even if the server is still 10.3). AFS automounted home directories are randomly flakey too. As I posted, check the Apple support discussions Mac OS X Server AFS boards for more details.
Cheers,
-Nathan
Have you thought about giving up on the Andrews File System, and trying Apple File Protocol instead? It may help.
/pet peeve
Could you give a reproducible example of badly broken permissions?
I have noticable stalls due to RAM swap-outs (or rather the swap-ins) at least once per hour, with 1 GB of RAM. And with a slow (5400 RPM) notebook drive you really feel it.
The thing is that with a couple of big active apps (i.e., with documents open) like VirtualPC (200 MB), Matlab (300 MB), Powerpoint (200 MB), iPhoto (200 MB), half a dozen medium sized ones (with no documents open in them) like Illustrator (75 MB), Photoshop (80 MB), browser (80 MB), Acrobat (45 MB) and the OS and the small stuff asking for another 300 MB, one can easily need 1.5 GB and more just in case Matlab needs another 300 MB for something.
If one does not have the RAM for this, no big deal, the not active apps will reduce their demands and swap out the non-essential stuff. But ones you switch back to these app all the palettes and open documents will have to be read back from disc, and reading let's say 100 MB from a notebook hard drive can take several seconds, which can be annoying if you switch between a lot of apps.
I can see where a 5400 RPM drive might slow things a bit but these people talking about switching to illustrator and it taking 15 seconds to come up I just don't find that when I am using it. I have the default 60 gig 7200 RPM drive that came with my 800Mhz G4 and a 120gig firewire drive. My big heavy hitter apps are on the 60 gig drive and I just don't see those stalls.
The only real stall I have is accessing fonts. Including Apples fonts I have between 900 and 1000 fonts installed and managed by suitcase. All are always active. I may get a 5 second delay the first time a font menu builds but that is the price I pay for a goo gob of fonts. Most of the time the delay is far less than 5 seconds. The app the takes the most time to come up is suitcase itself. It takes about 20-30 seconds after the computer is rebooted to check all the fonts and do it business before I have real control of the computer. Again this is a self imposed delay because I like a ton of fonts. Still it is handled much better under OS X than OS 9 ever did.
Someone gave me a 7200 with a nice Applevision 17 display and I put OS 9 on it to play around. My god, with over 100megs of RAM that thing is the slowest machine I have ever seen. It takes years for the finder to come up. It was so slow I have not used it since.
Is this why Safari and Mail takes about 30secs to open on 10.3.9? It doesn't matter the speed of the machine. It's really annoying. I hope they can fix this with an updated Safari release.
Have you tried deleting ~/Library/Safari/Icons (the favion cache)? If not, get ready to be impressed how much faster Safari startup can be (but no promises).
On my eMac, for example, it dropped from 10-12 Dock bounces to 3-4. It was more dramatic on my iBook G3 but I don't remember how much.
I've got four Powermacs at home. I just upgraded two Digital Audio's with Powerlogix's dual 1.8GHz 7447a's.
Before, with a 733MHz cpu, one machine would open Safari in 9 seconds. Now it takes less than three. Mail would take about 6 seconds. It now takes about 2-3. The other with dual 533's, would open Safari in about 6 seconds and Mail in about 5.
Both times were about 25% longer in 10.3.9. Both machines have 1.5GB's RAM and 120GB main 7200 drives, with 9800 boards.
Actually OS X does a very good job of handling virtual memory. There are other problems that cause some of the slowdowns.
Windows people claim that it needs less memory and does a better job, but that's not so. Unix has always been HD intensive, It was tape intensive before that.
But with Windows, the more apps you use the slower the machine gets. At some point it just stops. OS X doesn't have that problem. It's because they handle memory and processor cycles differently. One hand gives, and the other takes away.
Normally, as long as you have 512-1GB RAM, and enough swap space on your drive, things are fine. The problem is when you THINK you have enough space on your drive, but don't, that things get wicky.
Add up all of the virtual memory the system is asking for, add to that the requirements of the OS for other temp requirements that are not listed there at any given moment, such as that for windows etc., and then add the drive space needed for the OS's continous de-fragging of all files smaller than 20MB, plus a number of other functions that I'm not going to mention here now, and you might find that the 15GB of HD space you think you have free isn't enough.
You would be surprised to know that the slowdowns are more due to that lack of drive space that you THINK you have, than to anything else.
I do have 27 GB of free space (on a 100 GB drive).
I can see where a 5400 RPM drive might slow things a bit but these people talking about switching to illustrator and it taking 15 seconds to come up I just don't find that when I am using it.
Ok, I am talking about really drowing out Illustrator from the physical RAM first.
Starting Illustrator with a lot of free RAM available its will get about 75 MB of RAM on my system (Real Memory according to Activity Monitor). Using a sufficient number of RAM-hungry apps, I can get down that number to 10 MB. When I now switch back to Illustrator it takes about 7 to 8 seconds for all the palettes to come back, as I can see them coming back one by one. This is with no document opened in Illustrator yet.
I am absolutely sure this behaviour can be reproduced on other systems. The speed will vary a lot depending on hard drive speed, processor and RAM speed will probably influence this as well. To really get that slow behaviour it absolutely necessary to push Illustrator out of Real Memory as much as possible and to do this under conditions where the swapping in of Illustrator requires the swapping out of something else.
I am not blaiming Apple for this, if you want to have 20+ apps open at the same time, most of them having open quite large documents, and that is what I want to do, you need probably around 2 GB of RAM, possibly even more, and the fastest hard drive available, full stop.
Ok, I am talking about really drowing out Illustrator from the physical RAM first.
Starting Illustrator with a lot of free RAM available its will get about 75 MB of RAM on my system (Real Memory according to Activity Monitor). Using a sufficient number of RAM-hungry apps, I can get down that number to 10 MB. When I now switch back to Illustrator it takes about 7 to 8 seconds for all the palettes to come back, as I can see them coming back one by one. This is with no document opened in Illustrator yet.
I am absolutely sure this behaviour can be reproduced on other systems. The speed will vary a lot depending on hard drive speed, processor and RAM speed will probably influence this as well. To really get that slow behaviour it absolutely necessary to push Illustrator out of Real Memory as much as possible and to do this under conditions where the swapping in of Illustrator requires the swapping out of something else.
I am not blaiming Apple for this, if you want to have 20+ apps open at the same time, most of them having open quite large documents, and that is what I want to do, you need probably around 2 GB of RAM, possibly even more, and the fastest hard drive available, full stop.
I can't speak for everyone else but when using Illustrator CS2 with Photoshop CS2, Indesign CS2, Silverfast SEPlus, ACDSee Canvas X, Mail and Safari open on my little machine switching to any app including illustrator and it will appear with palettes in less than a second.
As I said the only time I experienced slow downs and stalls like yours was when I had Nortons Anti Virus installed.
Ok, I am talking about really drowing out Illustrator from the physical RAM first.
Starting Illustrator with a lot of free RAM available its will get about 75 MB of RAM on my system (Real Memory according to Activity Monitor). Using a sufficient number of RAM-hungry apps, I can get down that number to 10 MB. When I now switch back to Illustrator it takes about 7 to 8 seconds for all the palettes to come back, as I can see them coming back one by one. This is with no document opened in Illustrator yet.
I am absolutely sure this behaviour can be reproduced on other systems. The speed will vary a lot depending on hard drive speed, processor and RAM speed will probably influence this as well. To really get that slow behaviour it absolutely necessary to push Illustrator out of Real Memory as much as possible and to do this under conditions where the swapping in of Illustrator requires the swapping out of something else.
I am not blaiming Apple for this, if you want to have 20+ apps open at the same time, most of them having open quite large documents, and that is what I want to do, you need probably around 2 GB of RAM, possibly even more, and the fastest hard drive available, full stop.
I'd like to duplicate your problem if possible. I don't know if it is though. We all have different set-ups. Most likely I have all of the software that you do, unless it's some small out of the way programs such as pref panes etc.
What are you having open, and what size files are there?
I'd like to duplicate your problem if possible. I don't know if it is though. We all have different set-ups. Most likely I have all of the software that you do, unless it's some small out of the way programs such as pref panes etc.
What are you having open, and what size files are there?
State after login: 220 MB free RAM, wired and active RAM = 450 MB
(only TextEdit, DropDrawers, Activity Monitor, YouControlEngine, WinSwitchHelper, Sophos UI Server running, with little CPU action)
Starting Illustrator: ~ 15 seconds, when done taking up 76 MB of real memory, then hide it.
Starting up (and hiding then): Mail, Camino, Word, Excel, Acrobat, InDesign, Photoshop, Endnote, SubEthaEdit, TexShop, iTunes, xCode, System Preferences, Adressbook, Terminal, VirtualPC (w/ W2k), Igor Pro, iCal, X11 & Matlab, Powerpoint.
Except for VirtualPC only a few small text files have been opened yet. Wired and active memory are now at 764 MB, but have been at that value already before I opened the last couple of apps. Real memory usage of Illustrator is down to 46 MB.
Opening files in Igor, Powerpoint, running a simulation in Matlab, browsing the web: real memory usage of Illustrator is now down to 9 MB, free RAM is at 14 MB, background CPU noise at 25%.
Switching to Illustrator now takes 5 seconds, its real memory usage going up to 16 MB.
Summarizing, to see this slow app switching one has to:
- take an app that has a lot UI elements (e.g. palettes) and/or a lot of open windows with graphics inside
- not use the app for while (hiding it)
- use a lot of RAM with other apps to push the UI elements of the app out of real memory
Adobe implements their own virtual memory scheme inside their apps, to keep them cross-platform (and to help with uberlarge images on systems with little RAM). Unfortunately, this makes it easier to find pathological cases. My guess is that Illustrator's internal VM is being loaded in and then fighting with OS X's VM for how things get loaded. *shrug* Just a thought.
I've certainly seen a trend in Adobe apps not being particularly quick to come back up after being swapped out. They seem worse than most.
State after login: 220 MB free RAM, wired and active RAM = 450 MB
(only TextEdit, DropDrawers, Activity Monitor, YouControlEngine, WinSwitchHelper, Sophos UI Server running, with little CPU action)
Starting Illustrator: ~ 15 seconds, when done taking up 76 MB of real memory, then hide it.
Starting up (and hiding then): Mail, Camino, Word, Excel, Acrobat, InDesign, Photoshop, Endnote, SubEthaEdit, TexShop, iTunes, xCode, System Preferences, Adressbook, Terminal, VirtualPC (w/ W2k), Igor Pro, iCal, X11 & Matlab, Powerpoint.
Except for VirtualPC only a few small text files have been opened yet. Wired and active memory are now at 764 MB, but have been at that value already before I opened the last couple of apps. Real memory usage of Illustrator is down to 46 MB.
Opening files in Igor, Powerpoint, running a simulation in Matlab, browsing the web: real memory usage of Illustrator is now down to 9 MB, free RAM is at 14 MB, background CPU noise at 25%.
Switching to Illustrator now takes 5 seconds, its real memory usage going up to 16 MB.
Summarizing, to see this slow app switching one has to:
- take an app that has a lot UI elements (e.g. palettes) and/or a lot of open windows with graphics inside
- not use the app for while (hiding it)
- use a lot of RAM with other apps to push the UI elements of the app out of real memory
Ok, I have all of that except for Igor, SubEthaEdit, and Endnote. You are saying that you have ALL of those open at the same time?
I end up with over 16GB virtual memory in use without any files open. That would be expected to increase. I don't have a Powerbook at my disposal here so the slowest machine I can compare with is a 1GHz G4 Powermac with 1.5 GB RAM and a 60 GB HD at 7200. I get context switching at about 2-3 seconds. It sounds about right. That would translate to about what you are saying on your machine.
Start-up time for Illustrator CS2 is about 8 seconds. Also about right. A 7200 HD would speed this up a bit, maybe 20% or so. You are overloaded for a Powerbook.
Adobe implements their own virtual memory scheme inside their apps, to keep them cross-platform (and to help with uberlarge images on systems with little RAM). Unfortunately, this makes it easier to find pathological cases. My guess is that Illustrator's internal VM is being loaded in and then fighting with OS X's VM for how things get loaded. *shrug* Just a thought.
I've certainly seen a trend in Adobe apps not being particularly quick to come back up after being swapped out. They seem worse than most.
Adobe's virtual memory scheme had problem's with System 8-9's VM, but not with OS X's.
One problem is Apple's implementation of threading. Tiger was supposed to fix that but not everywhere.
I've done pretty well with Tiger. I complain where it something's wrong, though. I think Dashboard is nice, but takes much too long to start up, for instance.
Ok, I have all of that except for Igor, SubEthaEdit, and Endnote. You are saying that you have ALL of those open at the same time?
I end up with over 16GB virtual memory in use without any files open. That would be expected to increase. I don't have a Powerbook at my disposal here so the slowest machine I can compare with is a 1GHz G4 Powermac with 1.5 GB RAM and a 60 GB HD at 7200. I get context switching at about 2-3 seconds. It sounds about right. That would translate to about what you are saying on your machine.
Start-up time for Illustrator CS2 is about 8 seconds. Also about right. A 7200 HD would speed this up a bit, maybe 20% or so. You are overloaded for a Powerbook.
BTW, thanks for taking an interest in my issues.
You are right, I am bit overloaded, but I usually have almost all of the apps open, except for Powerpoint, which I often don't need for several weeks, I also sometimes quit VirtualPC, Word, Illustrator because they tend eat up CPU cycles for no apparent reason.
I simply like it not having to wait for apps to start up and documents to open. That is were OS X simply rocks (if you have enough RAM). It's really a pitty that current Powerbooks only get up to 2 GB.
Comments
Originally posted by rspress
The way OS X handles memory is quite different than the way OS 9 handles memory. Free memory under OS X is not really the same as in OS 9. As always more is better but I run tiger on an 800mhz G4 with 768mb of RAM and have no problems or stalls despite having large numbers of programs open. I can burn several CD's or DVD's at one time with two copies of toast open, be printing labels with discus, designing other labels in Photoshop CS2 and have mail and safari open with no slow downs or stalls. This would have killed OS 9 on the same machine.
I have noticable stalls due to RAM swap-outs (or rather the swap-ins) at least once per hour, with 1 GB of RAM. And with a slow (5400 RPM) notebook drive you really feel it.
The thing is that with a couple of big active apps (i.e., with documents open) like VirtualPC (200 MB), Matlab (300 MB), Powerpoint (200 MB), iPhoto (200 MB), half a dozen medium sized ones (with no documents open in them) like Illustrator (75 MB), Photoshop (80 MB), browser (80 MB), Acrobat (45 MB) and the OS and the small stuff asking for another 300 MB, one can easily need 1.5 GB and more just in case Matlab needs another 300 MB for something.
If one does not have the RAM for this, no big deal, the not active apps will reduce their demands and swap out the non-essential stuff. But ones you switch back to these app all the palettes and open documents will have to be read back from disc, and reading let's say 100 MB from a notebook hard drive can take several seconds, which can be annoying if you switch between a lot of apps.
Originally posted by geekstud
It's hard to believe you haven't experienced the AFS permission issues - POSIX permissions are badly broken for 10.4 server and clients (even if the server is still 10.3). AFS automounted home directories are randomly flakey too. As I posted, check the Apple support discussions Mac OS X Server AFS boards for more details.
Cheers,
-Nathan
To keep up to date on Mac/Windows interfacing problems go to this site. I've found this to be the best source of information on that topic.
http://www.macwindows.com/
The other thing I've found is that people who claim to be having no problems with Windows networks in setting up their Macs - esp with 10.4, are not actually involved in doing it. They may be connecting to the Win public folder, but that's about it. Anything more sophisticated than that that has been causing headaches.
Originally posted by Kickaha
Then you're wasting that 25MB.
As rspress said, memory management is vastly different under OS X than OS9 or even XP. For instance, I have 512MB in my PowerBook, and I frequently have 4-5 *GB* of memory being used, with no slowdowns. The only time I have a problem is when one thread tries to grab more than about 450MB and 100% of the CPU. (That was my research tool until I redid it and cut the memory use by 80%.)
Unix-based systems like OS X work under the assumption that unused RAM is wasted RAM, and they try to keep it full whenever possible, so data and application code is ready to go when you want it. You have to ditch the old assumptions about RAM use. Basically, you're going to want physical RAM a bit bigger than your estimated largest single thread memory use. For some people who work with extremely large high-resolution graphics, or video, this may indeed be several GB, but that's going to be exceedingly rare.
Of course, apps such as Photoshop that have their own internal memory management schemes can cause problems, or exhibit far from optimal performance.
O.k., I think I see now where the misunderstanding is, some people are 'only' annoyed when simple Finder operations take upward of 20 seconds because Matlab just grabbed 700 MB of their 1 GB of RAM plus all free processor cycles.
If that is the case then you are naturally right.
I am already annoyed when switching to Illustrator takes about as long (I talk about roughly 15 seconds) as opening the programm plus opening the document because almost all of its memory footprint has been swapped out.
I am annoyed because there is an easy technical solution to the problem, called: More RAM.
Originally posted by noirdesir
O.k., I think I see now where the misunderstanding is, some people are 'only' annoyed when simple Finder operations take upward of 20 seconds because Matlab just grabbed 700 MB of their 1 GB of RAM plus all free processor cycles.
If that is the case then you are naturally right.
I am already annoyed when switching to Illustrator takes about as long (I talk about roughly 15 seconds) as opening the programm plus opening the document because almost all of its memory footprint has been swapped out.
I am annoyed because there is an easy technical solution to the problem, called: More RAM.
Actually OS X does a very good job of handling virtual memory. There are other problems that cause some of the slowdowns.
Windows people claim that it needs less memory and does a better job, but that's not so. Unix has always been HD intensive, It was tape intensive before that.
But with Windows, the more apps you use the slower the machine gets. At some point it just stops. OS X doesn't have that problem. It's because they handle memory and processor cycles differently. One hand gives, and the other takes away.
Normally, as long as you have 512-1GB RAM, and enough swap space on your drive, things are fine. The problem is when you THINK you have enough space on your drive, but don't, that things get wicky.
Add up all of the virtual memory the system is asking for, add to that the requirements of the OS for other temp requirements that are not listed there at any given moment, such as that for windows etc., and then add the drive space needed for the OS's continous de-fragging of all files smaller than 20MB, plus a number of other functions that I'm not going to mention here now, and you might find that the 15GB of HD space you think you have free isn't enough.
You would be surprised to know that the slowdowns are more due to that lack of drive space that you THINK you have, than to anything else.
Originally posted by geekstud
It's hard to believe you haven't experienced the AFS permission issues - POSIX permissions are badly broken for 10.4 server and clients (even if the server is still 10.3). AFS automounted home directories are randomly flakey too. As I posted, check the Apple support discussions Mac OS X Server AFS boards for more details.
Cheers,
-Nathan
Have you thought about giving up on the Andrews File System, and trying Apple File Protocol instead? It may help.
/pet peeve
Could you give a reproducible example of badly broken permissions?
Originally posted by noirdesir
I have noticable stalls due to RAM swap-outs (or rather the swap-ins) at least once per hour, with 1 GB of RAM. And with a slow (5400 RPM) notebook drive you really feel it.
The thing is that with a couple of big active apps (i.e., with documents open) like VirtualPC (200 MB), Matlab (300 MB), Powerpoint (200 MB), iPhoto (200 MB), half a dozen medium sized ones (with no documents open in them) like Illustrator (75 MB), Photoshop (80 MB), browser (80 MB), Acrobat (45 MB) and the OS and the small stuff asking for another 300 MB, one can easily need 1.5 GB and more just in case Matlab needs another 300 MB for something.
If one does not have the RAM for this, no big deal, the not active apps will reduce their demands and swap out the non-essential stuff. But ones you switch back to these app all the palettes and open documents will have to be read back from disc, and reading let's say 100 MB from a notebook hard drive can take several seconds, which can be annoying if you switch between a lot of apps.
I can see where a 5400 RPM drive might slow things a bit but these people talking about switching to illustrator and it taking 15 seconds to come up I just don't find that when I am using it. I have the default 60 gig 7200 RPM drive that came with my 800Mhz G4 and a 120gig firewire drive. My big heavy hitter apps are on the 60 gig drive and I just don't see those stalls.
The only real stall I have is accessing fonts. Including Apples fonts I have between 900 and 1000 fonts installed and managed by suitcase. All are always active. I may get a 5 second delay the first time a font menu builds but that is the price I pay for a goo gob of fonts. Most of the time the delay is far less than 5 seconds. The app the takes the most time to come up is suitcase itself. It takes about 20-30 seconds after the computer is rebooted to check all the fonts and do it business before I have real control of the computer. Again this is a self imposed delay because I like a ton of fonts. Still it is handled much better under OS X than OS 9 ever did.
Someone gave me a 7200 with a nice Applevision 17 display and I put OS 9 on it to play around. My god, with over 100megs of RAM that thing is the slowest machine I have ever seen. It takes years for the finder to come up. It was so slow I have not used it since.
Originally posted by wymer100
Is this why Safari and Mail takes about 30secs to open on 10.3.9? It doesn't matter the speed of the machine. It's really annoying. I hope they can fix this with an updated Safari release.
Have you tried deleting ~/Library/Safari/Icons (the favion cache)? If not, get ready to be impressed how much faster Safari startup can be (but no promises).
On my eMac, for example, it dropped from 10-12 Dock bounces to 3-4. It was more dramatic on my iBook G3 but I don't remember how much.
Before, with a 733MHz cpu, one machine would open Safari in 9 seconds. Now it takes less than three. Mail would take about 6 seconds. It now takes about 2-3. The other with dual 533's, would open Safari in about 6 seconds and Mail in about 5.
Both times were about 25% longer in 10.3.9. Both machines have 1.5GB's RAM and 120GB main 7200 drives, with 9800 boards.
Originally posted by melgross
Actually OS X does a very good job of handling virtual memory. There are other problems that cause some of the slowdowns.
Windows people claim that it needs less memory and does a better job, but that's not so. Unix has always been HD intensive, It was tape intensive before that.
But with Windows, the more apps you use the slower the machine gets. At some point it just stops. OS X doesn't have that problem. It's because they handle memory and processor cycles differently. One hand gives, and the other takes away.
Normally, as long as you have 512-1GB RAM, and enough swap space on your drive, things are fine. The problem is when you THINK you have enough space on your drive, but don't, that things get wicky.
Add up all of the virtual memory the system is asking for, add to that the requirements of the OS for other temp requirements that are not listed there at any given moment, such as that for windows etc., and then add the drive space needed for the OS's continous de-fragging of all files smaller than 20MB, plus a number of other functions that I'm not going to mention here now, and you might find that the 15GB of HD space you think you have free isn't enough.
You would be surprised to know that the slowdowns are more due to that lack of drive space that you THINK you have, than to anything else.
I do have 27 GB of free space (on a 100 GB drive).
Originally posted by rspress
I can see where a 5400 RPM drive might slow things a bit but these people talking about switching to illustrator and it taking 15 seconds to come up I just don't find that when I am using it.
Ok, I am talking about really drowing out Illustrator from the physical RAM first.
Starting Illustrator with a lot of free RAM available its will get about 75 MB of RAM on my system (Real Memory according to Activity Monitor). Using a sufficient number of RAM-hungry apps, I can get down that number to 10 MB. When I now switch back to Illustrator it takes about 7 to 8 seconds for all the palettes to come back, as I can see them coming back one by one. This is with no document opened in Illustrator yet.
I am absolutely sure this behaviour can be reproduced on other systems. The speed will vary a lot depending on hard drive speed, processor and RAM speed will probably influence this as well. To really get that slow behaviour it absolutely necessary to push Illustrator out of Real Memory as much as possible and to do this under conditions where the swapping in of Illustrator requires the swapping out of something else.
I am not blaiming Apple for this, if you want to have 20+ apps open at the same time, most of them having open quite large documents, and that is what I want to do, you need probably around 2 GB of RAM, possibly even more, and the fastest hard drive available, full stop.
Originally posted by noirdesir
Ok, I am talking about really drowing out Illustrator from the physical RAM first.
Starting Illustrator with a lot of free RAM available its will get about 75 MB of RAM on my system (Real Memory according to Activity Monitor). Using a sufficient number of RAM-hungry apps, I can get down that number to 10 MB. When I now switch back to Illustrator it takes about 7 to 8 seconds for all the palettes to come back, as I can see them coming back one by one. This is with no document opened in Illustrator yet.
I am absolutely sure this behaviour can be reproduced on other systems. The speed will vary a lot depending on hard drive speed, processor and RAM speed will probably influence this as well. To really get that slow behaviour it absolutely necessary to push Illustrator out of Real Memory as much as possible and to do this under conditions where the swapping in of Illustrator requires the swapping out of something else.
I am not blaiming Apple for this, if you want to have 20+ apps open at the same time, most of them having open quite large documents, and that is what I want to do, you need probably around 2 GB of RAM, possibly even more, and the fastest hard drive available, full stop.
I can't speak for everyone else but when using Illustrator CS2 with Photoshop CS2, Indesign CS2, Silverfast SEPlus, ACDSee Canvas X, Mail and Safari open on my little machine switching to any app including illustrator and it will appear with palettes in less than a second.
As I said the only time I experienced slow downs and stalls like yours was when I had Nortons Anti Virus installed.
Originally posted by noirdesir
Ok, I am talking about really drowing out Illustrator from the physical RAM first.
Starting Illustrator with a lot of free RAM available its will get about 75 MB of RAM on my system (Real Memory according to Activity Monitor). Using a sufficient number of RAM-hungry apps, I can get down that number to 10 MB. When I now switch back to Illustrator it takes about 7 to 8 seconds for all the palettes to come back, as I can see them coming back one by one. This is with no document opened in Illustrator yet.
I am absolutely sure this behaviour can be reproduced on other systems. The speed will vary a lot depending on hard drive speed, processor and RAM speed will probably influence this as well. To really get that slow behaviour it absolutely necessary to push Illustrator out of Real Memory as much as possible and to do this under conditions where the swapping in of Illustrator requires the swapping out of something else.
I am not blaiming Apple for this, if you want to have 20+ apps open at the same time, most of them having open quite large documents, and that is what I want to do, you need probably around 2 GB of RAM, possibly even more, and the fastest hard drive available, full stop.
I'd like to duplicate your problem if possible. I don't know if it is though. We all have different set-ups. Most likely I have all of the software that you do, unless it's some small out of the way programs such as pref panes etc.
What are you having open, and what size files are there?
Originally posted by melgross
I'd like to duplicate your problem if possible. I don't know if it is though. We all have different set-ups. Most likely I have all of the software that you do, unless it's some small out of the way programs such as pref panes etc.
What are you having open, and what size files are there?
Specs: 1 GHz Tibook, 1 GB RAM (133 MHz), 100 GB Fujitsu 5400 rpm, 27 GB free
State after login: 220 MB free RAM, wired and active RAM = 450 MB
(only TextEdit, DropDrawers, Activity Monitor, YouControlEngine, WinSwitchHelper, Sophos UI Server running, with little CPU action)
Starting Illustrator: ~ 15 seconds, when done taking up 76 MB of real memory, then hide it.
Starting up (and hiding then): Mail, Camino, Word, Excel, Acrobat, InDesign, Photoshop, Endnote, SubEthaEdit, TexShop, iTunes, xCode, System Preferences, Adressbook, Terminal, VirtualPC (w/ W2k), Igor Pro, iCal, X11 & Matlab, Powerpoint.
Except for VirtualPC only a few small text files have been opened yet. Wired and active memory are now at 764 MB, but have been at that value already before I opened the last couple of apps. Real memory usage of Illustrator is down to 46 MB.
Opening files in Igor, Powerpoint, running a simulation in Matlab, browsing the web: real memory usage of Illustrator is now down to 9 MB, free RAM is at 14 MB, background CPU noise at 25%.
Switching to Illustrator now takes 5 seconds, its real memory usage going up to 16 MB.
Summarizing, to see this slow app switching one has to:
- take an app that has a lot UI elements (e.g. palettes) and/or a lot of open windows with graphics inside
- not use the app for while (hiding it)
- use a lot of RAM with other apps to push the UI elements of the app out of real memory
I've certainly seen a trend in Adobe apps not being particularly quick to come back up after being swapped out. They seem worse than most.
Originally posted by noirdesir
Specs: 1 GHz Tibook, 1 GB RAM (133 MHz), 100 GB Fujitsu 5400 rpm, 27 GB free
State after login: 220 MB free RAM, wired and active RAM = 450 MB
(only TextEdit, DropDrawers, Activity Monitor, YouControlEngine, WinSwitchHelper, Sophos UI Server running, with little CPU action)
Starting Illustrator: ~ 15 seconds, when done taking up 76 MB of real memory, then hide it.
Starting up (and hiding then): Mail, Camino, Word, Excel, Acrobat, InDesign, Photoshop, Endnote, SubEthaEdit, TexShop, iTunes, xCode, System Preferences, Adressbook, Terminal, VirtualPC (w/ W2k), Igor Pro, iCal, X11 & Matlab, Powerpoint.
Except for VirtualPC only a few small text files have been opened yet. Wired and active memory are now at 764 MB, but have been at that value already before I opened the last couple of apps. Real memory usage of Illustrator is down to 46 MB.
Opening files in Igor, Powerpoint, running a simulation in Matlab, browsing the web: real memory usage of Illustrator is now down to 9 MB, free RAM is at 14 MB, background CPU noise at 25%.
Switching to Illustrator now takes 5 seconds, its real memory usage going up to 16 MB.
Summarizing, to see this slow app switching one has to:
- take an app that has a lot UI elements (e.g. palettes) and/or a lot of open windows with graphics inside
- not use the app for while (hiding it)
- use a lot of RAM with other apps to push the UI elements of the app out of real memory
Ok, I have all of that except for Igor, SubEthaEdit, and Endnote. You are saying that you have ALL of those open at the same time?
I end up with over 16GB virtual memory in use without any files open. That would be expected to increase. I don't have a Powerbook at my disposal here so the slowest machine I can compare with is a 1GHz G4 Powermac with 1.5 GB RAM and a 60 GB HD at 7200. I get context switching at about 2-3 seconds. It sounds about right. That would translate to about what you are saying on your machine.
Start-up time for Illustrator CS2 is about 8 seconds. Also about right. A 7200 HD would speed this up a bit, maybe 20% or so. You are overloaded for a Powerbook.
Originally posted by Kickaha
Adobe implements their own virtual memory scheme inside their apps, to keep them cross-platform (and to help with uberlarge images on systems with little RAM). Unfortunately, this makes it easier to find pathological cases. My guess is that Illustrator's internal VM is being loaded in and then fighting with OS X's VM for how things get loaded. *shrug* Just a thought.
I've certainly seen a trend in Adobe apps not being particularly quick to come back up after being swapped out. They seem worse than most.
Adobe's virtual memory scheme had problem's with System 8-9's VM, but not with OS X's.
One problem is Apple's implementation of threading. Tiger was supposed to fix that but not everywhere.
And I think the Finder needs some work.
Originally posted by melgross
Ok, I have all of that except for Igor, SubEthaEdit, and Endnote. You are saying that you have ALL of those open at the same time?
I end up with over 16GB virtual memory in use without any files open. That would be expected to increase. I don't have a Powerbook at my disposal here so the slowest machine I can compare with is a 1GHz G4 Powermac with 1.5 GB RAM and a 60 GB HD at 7200. I get context switching at about 2-3 seconds. It sounds about right. That would translate to about what you are saying on your machine.
Start-up time for Illustrator CS2 is about 8 seconds. Also about right. A 7200 HD would speed this up a bit, maybe 20% or so. You are overloaded for a Powerbook.
BTW, thanks for taking an interest in my issues.
You are right, I am bit overloaded, but I usually have almost all of the apps open, except for Powerpoint, which I often don't need for several weeks, I also sometimes quit VirtualPC, Word, Illustrator because they tend eat up CPU cycles for no apparent reason.
I simply like it not having to wait for apps to start up and documents to open. That is were OS X simply rocks (if you have enough RAM). It's really a pitty that current Powerbooks only get up to 2 GB.