Gently now: Why are some iApps so slow?

kilometer31 · January 24, 2003 9:42AM

Don't want to start a flame war under my backside. So let me state up front, I'm a hardcore Mac lover. I love all the apps Apple is putting out and I sincerely wish for a 970 chip in everyone's Mac.

That said, seems like I hear one recurring thing about many of Apple's new apps: "Slow" iPhoto, iCal and (with some conflicting reports) Keynote. Haven't used Keynote and with all its whiz-bang effects, I could see it being a tad slow (though that's goes against the grain of what a presentation app ought to be).

But iPhoto and iCal are both well documented as snails. I guess my question is: Why? Apple controls the OS so they should be in the best position to make an app fly on OS X. And neither a photo organizer or a calendar strike me as apps that should be inherently slow. (In fact, I can't think of many other good calendars or organizers that have that problem.)

Question is: Why? I honestly can't figure it out. Is Apple concentrating so much on features and eye-candy (which I love) that the optimization is being ignored, or just being made to wait for later updates?

Yes, I know these are 1.0 releases. It may be that Apple's strategic priority is to get these Apps out fast. That may be the simple answer I guess.

And I have every confidence that these apps will mature in both speed and features. I'm just curioius why they would be so slow out of the gate.

Thoughts?

buonrotto · January 24, 2003 10:08AM

I can't explain why either iPhoto or iCal are slow very well. I can't imagine what iCal could be doing. iPhoto does try to do things on the fly, and does seem to handle images in a more, uh, thorough but consequently slow way. Simple example is with the iPhoto "light box" that keeps tabs on all images all the time, allowing for live updating of image previews, those nifty zoom effects, etc. Many of the edit commands try to work on the fly, but large images will obviously cause delays in processing. Same goes for book layout I guess. Anyway, I can understand this sort of problem when handling images. Other apps use databases and indices to strike a balance between accuracy and with performance. iPhoto seems to place accuracy/thoroughness at a premium and sacrifices performance in the process.

iPhoto is sort of like OS X version 10.0, it does it the "right" way, but it takes a hit for not "cheating." iPhoto 2 supposedly improves performance, though some anecdotal reports say it's not improved my much.

The old NeXT philosphy of writing software was a three-step process:

1. get it working,

2. get it working right, then

3. get it working fast

I think people should start to expect first versions of Apple apps to be slow given this and of course past experience. One of the things NeXT people were reportedly surprised at was how Apple software (like the OS) was essentialy "hacked" or cheated from the start. It made it that much harder to improve the software in subsequent versions. The software group seems to write its code in a very orthodox if inefficient manner to start. But that's my educated guess, not a fact.

[ 01-24-2003: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]

torifile · January 24, 2003 11:04AM

I don't know why they're slow, but iCal 1.0.2 is significantly faster than 1.0. It's like night and day. And not all iApps are slow: iTunes? Plenty fast. Safari? Screams. Addressbook? No problems. Mail? middling. The only one that seems to be problematic is iPhoto and that one's got a whole lot to do. I've never used iMovie or iDVD so I can't comment. But it's not THAT bad.

hobbes · January 24, 2003 11:25AM

Apple's software development is incredibly impressive. But I think it would do well for their -- and OS X's -- reputation to not release apps until at least some work in step 3 (as theorized, anyway) has been started.

Safari is a great example; it makes the Mac feel fast and responsive, and gets press that says so.

iCal 1.0, on other hand, only added to the "Mac OS X is slow" mythos. I wish iCal 1.0.2 had been the initial release.

Ah well. No doubt software release dates are influenced by other considerations, e.g. having something spiffy to announce at MWxx.

ghost_user_name · January 24, 2003 12:01PM

Or perhaps its a good idea to have as much of the features in the app before the heavy optimation begins?

So:

Release 1: A basic but well written app that has no optimation.

Wait for the feedback of wanted features, write code for that and THEN optimise.

serrano · January 24, 2003 12:54PM

Who knows what they're doing at Cupertino. On my iBook 700...

iCal is fine.

iPhoto is slow.

iChat is buggy.

Seems to me like they're all over the 'NeXT Philosophy'.

aquatic · January 24, 2003 3:13PM

I see no difference, iCal window resizing in 1.02 on my iBook 500, and other slowness, still it make it laughable and unuseable. It's a CALENDAR. What is it DOING?

Also, Safari window resizing is choppy. So what, I'm on an iBook. So I went to the computer store here and it's STILL chopy on an eMac and iMac. It is still a bit choppy on a DUAL 867 DDR G4. Wow that sucks. I hope the v2.0 of all these apps are speeeeedy.

nosey · January 24, 2003 3:59PM

Do any of the programming-people know how Apple is handling the drawing of their screens for these programs?

There seems to be a difference in how feedback is given to the user while resizing. iTunes draws a line which at least shows you where the window will be resized to. It also does not actually redraw the screen until you let go of the button.

iCal, iPhoto, Safari and Addressbook all have a tendancy to not give a bit of feedback, but waits until the mouse has stopped moving for a period of time and redraws the whole screen.

Does the lack of quick feedback for the new size mean that it seems these slower to resize? Would everyone prefer the slight feedback iTunes offers, with the screen not being redrawn until the button is released?

I think iTunes, being the mature application here, is what the third part of the 'Next' startegy achieves... They will all behave this way eventually.

chris cuilla · January 24, 2003 4:36PM

[quote]Originally posted by BuonRotto:

The old NeXT philosphy of writing software was a three-step process:

1. get it working,

2. get it working right, then

3. get it working fast

<hr></blockquote>

Speaking as a software developer...this is how software should be developed. The simple fact is that you cannot know what to optimize until the application is built (and in use).

Often the (early) guesses about what should be optimized are simply wrong.

Software developers (myself included) are notoriously bad guessers (especially about user's needs). I've tried to stop myself (but old habits die hard).

In any case, I think that Apple's approach is solid. Some people (derogatorily) refer to Apple's 1.0 releases a "disguised" public betas. This is probably true. But probably no more so than for any other company. As long as they are responsive and efficient about updating, I'm cool with it. NOTE: Some notable software companies (not mentioning names here

) are better know for their 1.0 products being "public alphas". <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> )

[ 01-24-2003: Message edited by: Chris Cuilla ]

mr. macintosh · January 24, 2003 7:59PM

iTunes = Fast 9/10

iMovie = Fast 8/10

iDVD = Decent 7/10

iPhoto = Slow 4/10

My arbitrary ratings.

amorph · January 24, 2003 8:10PM

[quote]Originally posted by nosey:

Do any of the programming-people know how Apple is handling the drawing of their screens for these programs?

There seems to be a difference in how feedback is given to the user while resizing. iTunes draws a line which at least shows you where the window will be resized to. It also does not actually redraw the screen until you let go of the button.<hr></blockquote>

Odd. My version of iTunes (3.0.1, running on OS X 10.2.3) resizes the same way iCal does.

I think Apple will continue to refine live resizing, since they've gone so far as to show it off at expos.

However, it's up to the application to reflow and (as iTunes and Address Book) rearrange its contents as the view size changes, and that's certainly the sort of thing that can be tweaked and optimized over time.

I'm also altogether in favor of the "make it work, then make it fast" school of programming. I'd rather have 1.0 software be thoughtfully designed and a bit sluggish, and to have the application developer concentrate on smashing bugs first.

(For those about to point Safari out as a counterexample, the project lead for Safari has already said that they've only done minimal optimization to the KHTML engine. Safari should get even faster - after they get its standards compliance up to snuff and the glitches eliminated.)

nosey · January 24, 2003 10:55PM

[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:



Odd. My version of iTunes (3.0.1, running on OS X 10.2.3) resizes the same way iCal does.<hr></blockquote>

I did up a small movie, just so you can see... Maybe my machine is a mutant.

Or maybe the iApps guage the speed of your machine and only use the lines if it is slow (like mine... 300Mhz... sigh...)

Anyways it resizes itunes, safari and ical. I like the 'instant' feedback from iTunes... Even if the drawing is slow, at least you know where it is going to be.

<a href="http://members.shaw.ca/nosemonger/iapps.mov"; target="_blank">http://members.shaw.ca/nosemonger/iapps.mov</a>;

[ 01-24-2003: Message edited by: nosey because apparently I can't spell]

[ 01-25-2003: Message edited by: nosey ]

amorph · January 24, 2003 11:19PM

[quote]Originally posted by nosey:



I did up a small movie, just so you can see... Maybe my machine is a mutant.

Or maybe the iApps guage the speed of your machine and only use the lines if it is slow (like mine... 300Mhz... sigh...)<hr></blockquote>

That's possible. Mine (450MHz G4; RADEON) comes in right about at the baseline for taking advantage of all of Jaguar's capabilities.

I believe iTunes on OS 9 resized the same way.

[quote]Anyways it resizes itunes, safari and at ical. I like the 'instat' feedback from iTunes... Even if the drawing is slow, at least you know where it is going to be.<hr></blockquote>

That's something that Apple can work on over time. I do hope that they work on it, though. If the actual window changed shape in real time and the contents shifted every so often, that would be ideal.

brunobruin · January 25, 2003 7:23PM

[quote]I believe iTunes on OS 9 resized the same way.<hr></blockquote>

Didn't EVERYTHING in 9 resize this way? (It has been so long since I used it I can't remember.

) It was one of the things people were screaming to go back to when live resizing in 10.0 was unresponsive.

bauman · January 26, 2003 2:43AM

I find iPhoto almost prohibitavely slow, and it seems to keep getting slower. I have a large collection of photos with about 1300 3 megapixel pictures, taking up 1.4 Gigs. It seems as if it has gotten much slower now that it has so many pictures, but I could just be getting much more demanding. Imagine if it tried to completely render all the thumbs at once, instead of the rough initial display, and then it further processes them... It would feel horrifically slow. And I really wonder how much they can speed things up. I mean, it's going through 1.4 Gigs of data, rendering and displaying it must use so much CPU time that it'd be hard to find a work around to speed things up.

As far as all the other iApps go, they tend to wait on me, instead of being the other way around, but I don't use iMovie or iDVD much. iTunes seems no slower than the day it only had the 10 promo songs on it, and now it has over 7000.

Matt

[I truely hate that in Safari, it doesn't save text when you go back a page and then return to this one by using the forward button.

]

overhope · January 26, 2003 6:46AM

I've been using iMovie since OS 9 days, and I can honestly say the move to X didn't hit me with any noticeable difference in speed.

iPhoto I don't use that much other than importing and keeping everything neat: my pictures tend to get banged out to Photoshop or GraphicConverter.

iCal 1 was a complete joke: absolutely unusable on my G4 Cube 450 with Quartz Extreme enabled graphics but 1.0.2 is marvellous. It actually lives in my Dock now.

spooky · January 26, 2003 7:28AM

given that X and iapps have been out for so long now how come this optimising hasn't been completed yet? Is this the future for mac users under the X era? Forever muttering "I'm sure apple will optimise it and sort out the speed issues eventually".

isn't there anyone out there fed up with the fact that a couple of years down the X road we have performance levels that still don't match 9 - never mind exceed it?

WHEN exactly is X going to fly? Or is it that there are enough blinkered people out there prepared to put up with it for apple not to worry?

cowerd · January 26, 2003 1:08PM

OS optimization != app optimization, though it does help. OSX has to address feature parity with OS9 in the UI as well as adding enough new goodies to entice upgraders and new users, which means speed optimization must be balanced against new features.

For a lot of system level stuff, speed is up to par or far surpassing OS9, however the Finder is seriously in need of a tweaking, and this colors most people's perceptions of OSX "speed."

App level optimization is also seriously fscked up. Many large apps in the platform will underperform (by a large factor) OS9 equivalents. See Adobe as on of the crap port poster children. Given that the latest round of iApps are 1.0 versions, speed will arrive, sooner or later.

paul · January 26, 2003 1:57PM

[quote]Originally posted by nosey:

<a href="http://members.shaw.ca/nosemonger/iapps.mov"; target="_blank">http://members.shaw.ca/nosemonger/iapps.mov</a><hr></blockquote>;

are you sure you arnt running iTunes in Classic?

bunge · January 26, 2003 2:03PM

iPhoto is slow when you have a lot of pictures. I recommend <a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=13532&db=mac"; target="_blank">iPhoto Library Manager</a>. It allows you to split your photos into multiple libraries so the program is no longer butt ugly slow when you have 1000+ pictures.

It's free too.

nosey · January 26, 2003 5:58PM

[quote]Originally posted by Paul:



are you sure you arnt running iTunes in Classic?<hr></blockquote>

Classic? Whats that? <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

Did iTunes have the brushed metal in Classic? I can't remember.

I use Classic to only run Greg's Browser.

Gently now: Why are some iApps so slow?

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