however regarding the clean install option, I don't think I am gonna try that until I see a rational scientific explanation of why that should make things run faster. I just can't fathom why that would make a difference. Apple Support says nothing about that either. I mean, after all, this is no a pretty expensive thing to do in terms of time especially. And I thought the whole point of buying a Mac was not to have to reinstall the OS every so often. In any case I am not even sure I have that option on my Jaguar installation CD since they came with the machine (which had OS X 10.1 originally). I'll have to check. If Apple doesn't even provide the option to new some of their customers, I have a hard time believing that would make a difference. But that's just me: I don't like doing things without understanding them.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Rational scientific? Well, here's a small sample, self-selected, violating every rule of proper, sample design . . . yet, a good statistician would hesitate to reject the sample. Why? Because Mac-related web pages are replete with similar stories. At a certain point, the rational scientific folk would decide that either apocryphal stories are being recirculated, or maybe there's something there. Maybe there's a thesis lurking?
Now, here's the thing: either the original post was full of sh*t, a bit of flame, or the author simply was unaware of how scientific developments often occur when not expected; and how they are recognized by people who are not buying into a dominant paradigm/company line.
So, please do not take offense, but listen to the collected wisdom, and consider this: possibly Apple does not want to admit that archive and install sucks because it would be an embarrassment . . . possibly, Apple, like any corporation, especially a corporation developing something as buggy and complex as an OS, will not admit unless forced, that certain aspects of its latest product need repair.
Now, what would satisfy you? An double-blind bake-off? A CS-based explanation? And could you explain how any of these are more scientific?
Listen, either stop your trolling, or if your sincere (and if so, please take this post with a grain of salt), try everyone's advice: do a clean install. It works, and this thesis is validated, like Lorenzo's oil, by all us lay folk. Honest.
Not everybody is in a big hurry to wipe out their hard drive and re-install everything, and calling them a troll because they don't want to do that is just plain rude.
Anyway, here's the real explanation.
Mac OS 10.2 uses a much newer kernel than Mac OS 10.1. Not only is it based off of a newer version of BSD Unix, but Apple's engineers have also put in more of their own tweaks and modifications to make it (hopefully) better. Because of the large changes to the kernel, many system files are now in different locations, renamed, or structured differently. The update installs don't necessarily get rid of all of the old system files, it would just write over files with the same name that are in the same location, so any renamed or moved file would remain.
Why don't they get rid of all of the old files? Probably because they can't know for sure which version of OS X you are updating from as many of the different versions of OS X probably have some files named or located differently. Some drivers built into OS X.2 would have to be downloaded on your own in 10.1 and are included with 10.2, but may be named differently, or may not be there if you didn't download them.
Checking each and every thing would probably make the installer so big and complex that backing up your files and doing a clean install would be faster anyway.
Sadly, yes, you cannot do a clean install from the Upgrade CDs. If you know anybody who has 10.2, maybe you can borrow their CDs for a clean install if you want to try that.
However, it sounds like sluggish applications is a big part of your problem, and for that, using better applications is probably a good part of the cure.
I'll add my story to the pile of anecdotal evidence for doing a clean install. I bought my iBook 600 right after 10.2 came out, and since I was starting fresh anyway, I figured why not wipe the disk, partition into OS9 and OSX, and do a fresh 10.1 install and immediate 10.2 update. And it works great. Even with 128MB RAM (before the extra 256 arrived) it was snappy and quick, the GUI perfectly responsive - I couldn't understand why anyone seemed unhappy with the iBook. So give it a shot. I think there's sufficient preliminary evidence here for a controlled trial-of-one on your iBook.
Cygsid, like your self I find myself in the same dilemma. About 5 years ago I was a hardcore Apple guy, however like a lot of people I got really tired with the unstable atmosphere that OS8 - 9 was giving me. Plus the lack of multitasking was down right shameful for such a mature operating system. People who said Windows 98 was crash prone should of tried OS9. Anyway, here comes OSX, new and improved. It was beautiful to look at, stable, based off of BSD and compatible with legacy code. Despite that Apple was a generation behind in hardware, I decided this OS was the cure all and a must have. So I bought a Powermac, the 733mhz model. I invested a lot of money in software and was ready to start my life new again. Free from Windows, not sure why I wanted to be free from windows, just thought I should. So there I was, staring at a wonderful designed machine and a gorgeous OS. Oh my God, I thought to myself, I have never seen anything slower then this. I felt I was using a Sparc 10 emulating windows, for those of you who have played with this combo you know what I mean. I immediately went to the boards to see what other people were saying. Behold I found myself staring at the same kind of people I left 5 years ago. ?Yeah, it?s a problem but it?s going to get better with 10.1, 10 is only for early adopters?, you know beta. 10.1 comes out, ?Yeah, don?t worry it will get better wait for 10.1.5 to come out?, and so on and so on. My favorite, ? If Apple doesn?t come out with the G5 this year that?s it?. I find this funny because it?s the same people in these boards wishing, wanting, for something that never comes but yet they stay. It happened again, I got sucked in myself, something that took a lot to get a way from in the first place. I think of Apple almost like a drug, can?t explain it, once you start using it, you can?t help but get sucked into the community. I was on the boards at work, chatting and emailing and posting. Our conversations were never about what we were doing with our Macs but when is Apple going to come out with something better and faster. If you think a computer isn?t fast enough you get another one, but within the Apple community if it?s slow tough s__tt keep it to your self. Once you start posting a complaint about the performance, you get, which I believe to be a secret Apple task force, telling you they run OSX 10 on a mac II that can render a 450mb file in 40 nanoseconds. Then we think to our self that were we must be doing something, shut up, continue using our second rate hardware. I call it second rate, because the stuff really is, hardware is off the shelf crap that sells for a fraction in the real world. Ooops this is getting long, so to make a long story short, I still have a Mac because I have software that I don?t want to replace yet. Once I master Linux, I?ll change back to a PC world. I like when a computer has zero wait time, the PC world can give me that performance. Besides my compulsive behavior can?t take the Mac community any longer, going to rehab.
Thoughts:
OSX is slow on current hardware
APPLE will never upgrade their hardware to the customers satisfactory, this is how they make money.
PEOLE will still be here when the Mac is 2 ghz and the PC world is at 100 ghz, saying mhz doesn?t matter. If someone said a bullet to the head is good for you would you believe them and by a gun.
THE world needs competition, Apple is a Monopoly, always will be. They are not the light at the end of the tunnel, they are if not just as evil as Microsoft.
LINUX, with enough people we can make it work, I know the learning curve is high but we must stop company?s like Microsoft and Apple from continuing like they are.
I will be around today then I?m off, going back to reality. I wish you all great life.
Ok, OS X is not linux yet....but it's still the os nearest to it!
Aqua is terribly slow, I agree.....but X has the incredible value of being a Unix-like and, as I have to use it intensively, it's great that I don't have to install two os on my ibook.
OSX is Linux like, yes, my argument is about using products from Apple in general. If I were going to introduce my next generation operating system I would defiantly wait until my hardware could handle it. The ibook, the reason for this thread, is far from being called OSX savvy. In fact I?ve had the pleaser of owning one of these things, I bought it right after they introduced the 700. The ibook just screams of cheapness, they paint the plastic part around the keyboard (why, heard of solid color plastics?), surface will scratch if you blow on it, dead pixels plague it like the embola and the performance is out of something from the 90?s. All that for $1500.00 hundred dollars. Oh yeah, no video spanning, and external resolution of 1024 x 768, even though the card has 16mb on it. I replaced with the IBM x23 800mhz, installed Red Hat on it. Wow what a notebook, indestructible, fast, light and actually feels like it?s worth something.
Cygsid: I've not many problems with my configuration (450 G4 Cube, 448 megs of Ram, Rage 128), but I guess I shouldn't underestimate the difference that a G4 makes. I can say that in my experience, iCal, Acrobat Reader, and LimeWire really are just terribly slow applications. This also goes for iPhoto, which is probably the slowest piece of software that I have ever used, on any computer, on any platform, ever. At least for the time being, I've decided to grin and bear it, and assume that they will get better with updates (or in the case of LimeWire, abandoning it altogether by using Acquisition).
A note about P2P: As you can see in your connections list, just because you're using Acquisition or LimeWire, you're not relegated to a Mac-only community. Morpheus and all other Gnutella users of all platforms interoperate with those pieces of software. The difference, again, lies in that the Mac software is simply just not as sophisticated at this time. However, I've found that I can almost always get what I need from LimeWire.
It's not perfect, but despite those shortfalls I still just generally appreciate the way Jaguar feels, although I know that's not really something that can be definitively measured!
Sometimes I wonder what the incessant preoccupation with speed is. Macs are slower than pc's. This is not going to change anytime soon. I find it odd that someone would switch back to Apple from the PC world and then complain about speed issues. Surely this didn't come as a surprise. I have two Macs both running Jaguar, an iBook600 and 17" iMac. They are not the fastest machines available but I didn't get them for speed. I bought them because they were Macs. In my opinion they have a superior OS, are much easier to use, work flawlessly and are more appealing. I also have no problem whatsoever with the speed of the machines. If I did, I wouldn't have bought them. I know it's been said before but if you want raw speed, buy a PC. This is not a denial of Mac speed issues or a blind devotion to Apple. It's a request to refrain from complaining about the obvious. Try before you buy. If you feel its too slow go elsewhere.
[quote]This is not a denial of Mac speed issues or a blind devotion to Apple. It's a request to refrain from complaining about the obvious. Try before you buy. If you feel its too slow go elsewhere.<hr></blockquote>
That's a ridiculous thing to say, because in my case, the only thing I'm complaining about is the fact that my computer is remarkably slower than it used to be, just because of OS X. I'm not comparing it to PCs, I'm comparing it to itself with OS 9!
I've never found speed to be at a real disadvantage on a Mac. In OS X, the GUI and 2D graphics in general are noticeably slower, but that is understandable considering how much more work the OS X GUI does than Mac OS 9 or any version of Windows. The actual computations going on in the applications you are running happens rather quickly.
Some applications in OS X are horrible though. I think that's mostly because the OS is new, and people don't know how to code well for it yet. That will improve with time, as will the speed of the OS.
You need some more memory, too many pageout and pageins. At least 512 MB. Run disk utility on the Jag disk and repair permissions. Prebinding isnt needed anymore, automatic in Jag
I finally bit the bullet and got around to performing a clean install. Mad props to Rogue27 - the only one who actually answered the original question - for an explanation of the merits of a clean install that actually makes sense!
Unfortunately I rediscovered for myself that the Jaguar CD provided with my iBook were indeed only Update CD which do not have a Clean Install (or Erase and Install, whatever it is) option. Huge bummer. So here we have an installation method which, judging by the many posts on this thread and elsewhere, does wonders to your computer's performance and yet the foremost candidates for such installation (new buyers like me which have very little to lose from erasing their mostly virgin hard drive) are shut out of it. Nice going Apple: keep it up.. NO!
And of course what do some suggest I do? Find another Mac user from whom to pirate a copy their non-update Jaguar CD! Excellent.. NO!
Anyway I think I've made my point: this is just ridiculous, even more so if it actually works.
To tell the truth, I am actually now inclined to believe that indeed clean install probably works. Here is why: once I wiped out my HD (in the hope of a Jaguar clean install opportunity.. so much for that) - and lost my default OS 9 installation, that's ok though: didn't care too much for that, except for its dreamy performance, relative to OS X *sigh* - I had to reinstall OS X 10.1.4 first (a Puma clean install basically). Well performance was phenomenal compared to my previous Jaguar installation. Things were flying, literally! It almost felt like OS 9. So much so that if it wasn't for Internet access which for some reason was broken (cable connection shared on my PC with the iBook through Windows's NAT/ICS feature), I would have stayed with OS 10.1.
Now I am back to a Jaguar update on top of OS 10.1.4. And I gotta say it's actually not too bad.
So in conclusion it looks like performance can be improved as much by getting rid of the accumulated crust (cleaning user's Library/Preferences folder?) as by doing a clean install. I also wouldn't be suprised if the 10.2.1 update had done something nasty to my system, as it lowered my uptime to 2 days or less. I had to restart time and again because I'd start getting the never-ending wheels of death throughout the system, making the dock and the Apple menu near impossible to access and even option-cmd-esc mostly ineffective. Man it's almost starting to sound like Windows... 9x. Sure OS X very rarely kernel panics (once or twice) but it seems to be able to deploy an infinite array of ways to become unusable and give you no choice but to restart it.
I wouldn't fear the 10.2.1 update. Maybe it did do something funny before, but hopefully it was a one-time thing. I haven't had any negative side effects from 10.2.1 on any of the systems I've run it on. In fact, you are less likely to have trouble with an update like that the sooner you do it, because there will be less old system files to get in the way. Of course, if you are worried, you can always wait until 10.2.2 comes out which is already being seeded to developers in beta form.
As for the Jaguar upgrade CDs you have, I think that was only a temporary measure and that the upgrade CDs were only thrown into the boxes of machines that already had 10.1 installed. I'd assume that iBooks coming out of the factory now have 10.2 or 10.2.1 installed on them right out of the box and include full Jaguar CDs.
10.2.1 does make noticeable improvments on viewing some web pages that would previously take forever to load. I think 10.2.1 is worth it for that alone. Many people also report that the gui response is noticeably better in 10.2.1 than in 10.2.
Comments
<strong>thanks for the suggestions, all.
however regarding the clean install option, I don't think I am gonna try that until I see a rational scientific explanation of why that should make things run faster. I just can't fathom why that would make a difference. Apple Support says nothing about that either. I mean, after all, this is no a pretty expensive thing to do in terms of time especially. And I thought the whole point of buying a Mac was not to have to reinstall the OS every so often. In any case I am not even sure I have that option on my Jaguar installation CD since they came with the machine (which had OS X 10.1 originally). I'll have to check. If Apple doesn't even provide the option to new some of their customers, I have a hard time believing that would make a difference. But that's just me: I don't like doing things without understanding them.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Rational scientific? Well, here's a small sample, self-selected, violating every rule of proper, sample design . . . yet, a good statistician would hesitate to reject the sample. Why? Because Mac-related web pages are replete with similar stories. At a certain point, the rational scientific folk would decide that either apocryphal stories are being recirculated, or maybe there's something there. Maybe there's a thesis lurking?
Now, here's the thing: either the original post was full of sh*t, a bit of flame, or the author simply was unaware of how scientific developments often occur when not expected; and how they are recognized by people who are not buying into a dominant paradigm/company line.
So, please do not take offense, but listen to the collected wisdom, and consider this: possibly Apple does not want to admit that archive and install sucks because it would be an embarrassment . . . possibly, Apple, like any corporation, especially a corporation developing something as buggy and complex as an OS, will not admit unless forced, that certain aspects of its latest product need repair.
Now, what would satisfy you? An double-blind bake-off? A CS-based explanation? And could you explain how any of these are more scientific?
Listen, either stop your trolling, or if your sincere (and if so, please take this post with a grain of salt), try everyone's advice: do a clean install. It works, and this thesis is validated, like Lorenzo's oil, by all us lay folk. Honest.
Anyway, here's the real explanation.
Mac OS 10.2 uses a much newer kernel than Mac OS 10.1. Not only is it based off of a newer version of BSD Unix, but Apple's engineers have also put in more of their own tweaks and modifications to make it (hopefully) better. Because of the large changes to the kernel, many system files are now in different locations, renamed, or structured differently. The update installs don't necessarily get rid of all of the old system files, it would just write over files with the same name that are in the same location, so any renamed or moved file would remain.
Why don't they get rid of all of the old files? Probably because they can't know for sure which version of OS X you are updating from as many of the different versions of OS X probably have some files named or located differently. Some drivers built into OS X.2 would have to be downloaded on your own in 10.1 and are included with 10.2, but may be named differently, or may not be there if you didn't download them.
Checking each and every thing would probably make the installer so big and complex that backing up your files and doing a clean install would be faster anyway.
Sadly, yes, you cannot do a clean install from the Upgrade CDs. If you know anybody who has 10.2, maybe you can borrow their CDs for a clean install if you want to try that.
However, it sounds like sluggish applications is a big part of your problem, and for that, using better applications is probably a good part of the cure.
Thoughts:
OSX is slow on current hardware
APPLE will never upgrade their hardware to the customers satisfactory, this is how they make money.
PEOLE will still be here when the Mac is 2 ghz and the PC world is at 100 ghz, saying mhz doesn?t matter. If someone said a bullet to the head is good for you would you believe them and by a gun.
THE world needs competition, Apple is a Monopoly, always will be. They are not the light at the end of the tunnel, they are if not just as evil as Microsoft.
LINUX, with enough people we can make it work, I know the learning curve is high but we must stop company?s like Microsoft and Apple from continuing like they are.
I will be around today then I?m off, going back to reality. I wish you all great life.
Relic
Aqua is terribly slow, I agree.....but X has the incredible value of being a Unix-like and, as I have to use it intensively, it's great that I don't have to install two os on my ibook.
Cygsid: I've not many problems with my configuration (450 G4 Cube, 448 megs of Ram, Rage 128), but I guess I shouldn't underestimate the difference that a G4 makes. I can say that in my experience, iCal, Acrobat Reader, and LimeWire really are just terribly slow applications. This also goes for iPhoto, which is probably the slowest piece of software that I have ever used, on any computer, on any platform, ever. At least for the time being, I've decided to grin and bear it, and assume that they will get better with updates (or in the case of LimeWire, abandoning it altogether by using Acquisition).
A note about P2P: As you can see in your connections list, just because you're using Acquisition or LimeWire, you're not relegated to a Mac-only community. Morpheus and all other Gnutella users of all platforms interoperate with those pieces of software. The difference, again, lies in that the Mac software is simply just not as sophisticated at this time. However, I've found that I can almost always get what I need from LimeWire.
It's not perfect, but despite those shortfalls I still just generally appreciate the way Jaguar feels, although I know that's not really something that can be definitively measured!
That's a ridiculous thing to say, because in my case, the only thing I'm complaining about is the fact that my computer is remarkably slower than it used to be, just because of OS X. I'm not comparing it to PCs, I'm comparing it to itself with OS 9!
I've never found speed to be at a real disadvantage on a Mac. In OS X, the GUI and 2D graphics in general are noticeably slower, but that is understandable considering how much more work the OS X GUI does than Mac OS 9 or any version of Windows. The actual computations going on in the applications you are running happens rather quickly.
Some applications in OS X are horrible though. I think that's mostly because the OS is new, and people don't know how to code well for it yet. That will improve with time, as will the speed of the OS.
<strong>
PhysMem: 67.0M wired, 371M active, 172M inactive, 610M used, 30.0M free
VM: 2.57G + 69.1M 18474(18474) pageins, 15985(15985) pageouts
PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
179 Window Man 0.0% 36:16.18 2 274 886 7.95M 39.8M 36.4M 118M
390 SystemUISe 0.0% 2:56.51 4 163 891 167M 5.38M 170M 234M
16982 Internet E 0.0% 23:22.30 7 89 325 31.0M 20.1M 24.1M 113M
19687 iCal 0.0% 2:51.88 1 65 438 74.1M 12.7M 82.8M 137M
21522 LimeWire 0.0% 15:05.13 36 332 511 51.9M 12.0M 45.5M 311M
</strong><hr></blockquote>
You need some more memory, too many pageout and pageins. At least 512 MB. Run disk utility on the Jag disk and repair permissions. Prebinding isnt needed anymore, automatic in Jag
Unfortunately I rediscovered for myself that the Jaguar CD provided with my iBook were indeed only Update CD which do not have a Clean Install (or Erase and Install, whatever it is) option. Huge bummer. So here we have an installation method which, judging by the many posts on this thread and elsewhere, does wonders to your computer's performance and yet the foremost candidates for such installation (new buyers like me which have very little to lose from erasing their mostly virgin hard drive) are shut out of it. Nice going Apple: keep it up.. NO!
And of course what do some suggest I do? Find another Mac user from whom to pirate a copy their non-update Jaguar CD! Excellent.. NO!
Anyway I think I've made my point: this is just ridiculous, even more so if it actually works.
To tell the truth, I am actually now inclined to believe that indeed clean install probably works. Here is why: once I wiped out my HD (in the hope of a Jaguar clean install opportunity.. so much for that) - and lost my default OS 9 installation, that's ok though: didn't care too much for that, except for its dreamy performance, relative to OS X *sigh* - I had to reinstall OS X 10.1.4 first (a Puma clean install basically). Well performance was phenomenal compared to my previous Jaguar installation. Things were flying, literally! It almost felt like OS 9. So much so that if it wasn't for Internet access which for some reason was broken (cable connection shared on my PC with the iBook through Windows's NAT/ICS feature), I would have stayed with OS 10.1.
Now I am back to a Jaguar update on top of OS 10.1.4. And I gotta say it's actually not too bad.
So in conclusion it looks like performance can be improved as much by getting rid of the accumulated crust (cleaning user's Library/Preferences folder?) as by doing a clean install. I also wouldn't be suprised if the 10.2.1 update had done something nasty to my system, as it lowered my uptime to 2 days or less. I had to restart time and again because I'd start getting the never-ending wheels of death throughout the system, making the dock and the Apple menu near impossible to access and even option-cmd-esc mostly ineffective. Man it's almost starting to sound like Windows... 9x. Sure OS X very rarely kernel panics (once or twice) but it seems to be able to deploy an infinite array of ways to become unusable and give you no choice but to restart it.
[ 10-06-2002: Message edited by: cygsid ]</p>
As for the Jaguar upgrade CDs you have, I think that was only a temporary measure and that the upgrade CDs were only thrown into the boxes of machines that already had 10.1 installed. I'd assume that iBooks coming out of the factory now have 10.2 or 10.2.1 installed on them right out of the box and include full Jaguar CDs.
10.2.1 does make noticeable improvments on viewing some web pages that would previously take forever to load. I think 10.2.1 is worth it for that alone. Many people also report that the gui response is noticeably better in 10.2.1 than in 10.2.
[ 10-06-2002: Message edited by: rogue27 ]</p>