I am still a relatively new Mac user and this is the first thing I noticed about OS X performance. My 700MHz PIII Toshiba notebook (by no means a fast machine) running Windows XP is significantly faster than my iBook 1GHz when both are running Firefox. Comparing Safari to Firefox is not a fair comparison because Safari is so slow in the first place.
I've grown accustomed to the slowness of web surfing on Mac, and it's not useless but my slothy PC is WAY faster in this regard.
Hopefully this is something Apple will improve in Tiger.
To be truthful, this has been something I've noticed since way back in the OS9 days. In my office, for instance, all of the wimpy little PCs are simply "snappier" when it comes to the web. Pages load quicker.
In comparison, my Mac seems to take its sweet time loading webpages, no matter what browser I use. I wish I knew exactly why this was, but it's definitely there.
firefox especially on windows running for more than an hour is slow. memory hog. It leaks memory faster than... well faster than anything.
Never seen that and I have used Firefox on Windows everyday for over a year now. Currently consuming 26860K of memory and it's been running since yesterday morning.
Anyway, I have found that the ISP often affects the macs - don't know why. My mac has gone faster on BT than NTL which is faster than Freeserve, and freeserve claimes to have the fastest download rate.
Anyway, I have found that the ISP often affects the macs - don't know why. My mac has gone faster on BT than NTL which is faster than Freeserve, and freeserve claimes to have the fastest download rate.
I have BT (512k) at work and NTL (1.5mb) at home and I can't say that either are sluggish on the web. I have Safari, Camino, Firefox and IE on a G5 1.8MP (work) and G4 867MP (home) and whilst Firefox and Camino are slow apps to launch, I have no speed issues. Just lucky I guess.
I have come to the conclusion that large tables and Javascripts seem to be the Gremlin in the engine. To test this theory I used a script genrated HTML page which used a large amount of tables. Rendering times was in access of 50 seconds in Safari, after replacing the tables for a CSS solution render time went down to 6 seconds. It also has something to do with the way pages are cached on the Mac, doesn't like to be stressed.
WARNING PORN LINK
As a test and only a test, this website displays images from other websites (hotlinking). When displaying 60 or more images Safari will slow to a halt. I've notice this in a lot of sites ( even non-porn ).
Surfing on most sites like www.cnn.com or www.apple.com are fine it's just the ones that display a lot of content.
I just find the whole web surfing experience to be slow on OS X. Render speed, UI response, etc. is just plain slower than a PC. It is very noticeable when moving between a PC and a Mac like a do daily.
This is on the same internet connection, both wired into the 100Mbit network, etc.
That's weird that some of you have noticed PCs to be faster. The only macs I've used that are slower than PCs using the same network connection are the ones at my university. And no, it wasn't just because it was peak time. I went on at various times and besides it never had that problem using OS 9.
Other macs I've known have been faster than the equivelent PCs. At high school we had 333mhz iMacs and Gateway 500mhz pcs and the iMacs were lightning fast at the internet in comparison to the sluggish PCs. As far as my own iMac goes, it doesn't seem any slower than either of the PCs in the house.
At work, we have a small business DSL connection. I do much of the web design myself. I use a 3.2 GHZ PC with 1GB RAM. I must say the the web browsing is pretty fast. That said, a colleague of min who brings his 1GHZ Powerbook with 1.25 GB RAM to work(can't think of it myself-no steal, no damge,etc.- ah well, maybe when it is old)seems to enjoy at least as decent of speed. Most of the time, it is faster than mine. I believe this has something to do with how the web site is designed. CSS pages seem to load better in Safari, while pages with poor/ bloated/ non-standard code, seem to chug on both browsers, though IE(on both Mac and PC-but IE is slower on the Mac, just like all MS products are-you don't really expect MS to deliver a top notch product on a rival OS do you?) tends to render non standard pages better. Safari is much faster overall, although the rendering of jpegs seems to work the CPU a little more than on a PC. The only sites where I have seen IE beat it are the aforementioned "home designer" sites. One mans experience.
I've always noticed that browsing on a PC, and just the windows GUI itself, is generally way more "SNAPPY" than on a Mac.
I have a newer 800Mhz G4 iBook and find myself going to browse the internet on my old 600Mhz PC - just cuz it's "SNAPPIER".
WTF! Why do we have to put up with this crap, Apple? Also, the PC just has way more features built into the GUI. For example, I can always count on being able to right click in a save or open dialog and being able to view/sort, open the properties of the parent directory, make a new folder, etc.
I am hoping that the graphics subsystem in Tiger has been substantially upgraded so that overall GUI response is improved. It is really subpar right now, especially when a much slower (overall) PC is way faster at web browsing.
What's the point of that? No-one Mac-wise would use Firefox. Therefore, Safari should be used as the Mac browser in all tests.
I use Firefox as my main browser. Safari is just a dog, so I've given up on it. Compare Safari to Firefox on Windows and Firefox is still that much faster.
There is nothing about the core of OS X that is responsible for any internet lag. OS X's networking layer is based on BSDs, one of the best in the industry.
Safari, on the other hand, has several deficiencies. It is poorly threaded, both in its rendering engine and the application itself. This is responsible for the slow rendering of image intensive pages and UI issues (like clicking Stop is delayed until the page is rendered, thus hitting the refresh button instead). As well, it has a built in rendering delay to prevent unstyled content flashes. This is better implemented in Safari 1.3 and Tiger's Safari, so this problem should go away. Safari is also RAM intensive, which is especially bad for people with low memory systems.
A lot, the pages are created dynamically from PHP and MySQL. Poor scripting is usually the main cause for slow performance. I also think it?s the graphics sub-system. I still get those spinny wheels of death on a regular bases when displaying heavy graphics and I still haven?t seen a Mac albeit the new dual G5?s that can resize a Safari window or iTunes without jerking.
The window jerking is because OSX dynamically adjusts the content in the window whilst resizing, where as windows doesn't adjust the size until you release the mouse button. This creates the impression of jerkiness, that is not down to processor speeds.
Comments
I've grown accustomed to the slowness of web surfing on Mac, and it's not useless but my slothy PC is WAY faster in this regard.
Hopefully this is something Apple will improve in Tiger.
In comparison, my Mac seems to take its sweet time loading webpages, no matter what browser I use. I wish I knew exactly why this was, but it's definitely there.
At least that has been my experience. YMMV.
Originally posted by webmail
firefox especially on windows running for more than an hour is slow. memory hog. It leaks memory faster than... well faster than anything.
Never seen that and I have used Firefox on Windows everyday for over a year now. Currently consuming 26860K of memory and it's been running since yesterday morning.
Anyway, I have found that the ISP often affects the macs - don't know why. My mac has gone faster on BT than NTL which is faster than Freeserve, and freeserve claimes to have the fastest download rate.
Originally posted by Portable Al
Slow surfing - common cause slow clicking.
Anyway, I have found that the ISP often affects the macs - don't know why. My mac has gone faster on BT than NTL which is faster than Freeserve, and freeserve claimes to have the fastest download rate.
I have BT (512k) at work and NTL (1.5mb) at home and I can't say that either are sluggish on the web. I have Safari, Camino, Firefox and IE on a G5 1.8MP (work) and G4 867MP (home) and whilst Firefox and Camino are slow apps to launch, I have no speed issues. Just lucky I guess.
WARNING PORN LINK
As a test and only a test, this website displays images from other websites (hotlinking). When displaying 60 or more images Safari will slow to a halt. I've notice this in a lot of sites ( even non-porn
Surfing on most sites like www.cnn.com or www.apple.com are fine it's just the ones that display a lot of content.
This is on the same internet connection, both wired into the 100Mbit network, etc.
Other macs I've known have been faster than the equivelent PCs. At high school we had 333mhz iMacs and Gateway 500mhz pcs and the iMacs were lightning fast at the internet in comparison to the sluggish PCs. As far as my own iMac goes, it doesn't seem any slower than either of the PCs in the house.
At work, we have a small business DSL connection. I do much of the web design myself. I use a 3.2 GHZ PC with 1GB RAM. I must say the the web browsing is pretty fast. That said, a colleague of min who brings his 1GHZ Powerbook with 1.25 GB RAM to work(can't think of it myself-no steal, no damge,etc.- ah well, maybe when it is old)seems to enjoy at least as decent of speed. Most of the time, it is faster than mine. I believe this has something to do with how the web site is designed. CSS pages seem to load better in Safari, while pages with poor/ bloated/ non-standard code, seem to chug on both browsers, though IE(on both Mac and PC-but IE is slower on the Mac, just like all MS products are-you don't really expect MS to deliver a top notch product on a rival OS do you?) tends to render non standard pages better. Safari is much faster overall, although the rendering of jpegs seems to work the CPU a little more than on a PC. The only sites where I have seen IE beat it are the aforementioned "home designer" sites. One mans experience.
I've always noticed that browsing on a PC, and just the windows GUI itself, is generally way more "SNAPPY" than on a Mac.
I have a newer 800Mhz G4 iBook and find myself going to browse the internet on my old 600Mhz PC - just cuz it's "SNAPPIER".
WTF! Why do we have to put up with this crap, Apple? Also, the PC just has way more features built into the GUI. For example, I can always count on being able to right click in a save or open dialog and being able to view/sort, open the properties of the parent directory, make a new folder, etc.
This kinda crap pisses me off. Ah! Whatever!
Originally posted by mikef
My non-scientific tests were done with Firefox on both platforms.
What's the point of that? No-one Mac-wise would use Firefox. Therefore, Safari should be used as the Mac browser in all tests.
Originally posted by krispie
What's the point of that? No-one Mac-wise would use Firefox. Therefore, Safari should be used as the Mac browser in all tests.
I use Firefox as my main browser. Safari is just a dog, so I've given up on it. Compare Safari to Firefox on Windows and Firefox is still that much faster.
Safari, on the other hand, has several deficiencies. It is poorly threaded, both in its rendering engine and the application itself. This is responsible for the slow rendering of image intensive pages and UI issues (like clicking Stop is delayed until the page is rendered, thus hitting the refresh button instead). As well, it has a built in rendering delay to prevent unstyled content flashes. This is better implemented in Safari 1.3 and Tiger's Safari, so this problem should go away. Safari is also RAM intensive, which is especially bad for people with low memory systems.
Originally posted by Relic
A lot, the pages are created dynamically from PHP and MySQL. Poor scripting is usually the main cause for slow performance. I also think it?s the graphics sub-system. I still get those spinny wheels of death on a regular bases when displaying heavy graphics and I still haven?t seen a Mac albeit the new dual G5?s that can resize a Safari window or iTunes without jerking.
The window jerking is because OSX dynamically adjusts the content in the window whilst resizing, where as windows doesn't adjust the size until you release the mouse button. This creates the impression of jerkiness, that is not down to processor speeds.