Dock bar improvement in Tiger

zenatek · March 27, 2005 2:15PM

Hey all,

On my mac mini I notice even if I do not have much the Dock magnification is some what laggy. It bothers me.

Do you think in Tiger with them switching some of the load to the GPU this will improve?

On my iMac it doesnt do it as much, I have to have a lot open. That is with the processor set to high though. If I set it to auto the dock lags even when nothing is open. I mean it works, its just delayed...you can tell.

Anyone able to comment on this improvement?

ibook911 · March 27, 2005 8:34PM

On the Mac Mini, have you considered turning the magnification off? It is the first thing I do on my Macs. I don't find it useful, and I actually find it annoying.

However, if you like it, I also hope it speeds up in Tiger.

zenatek · March 27, 2005 9:10PM

yes I like it, maybe its still part of the wow factor since I recently switched but I know my wife likes it because her sight isn't great and she is the one on the mini.

g3pro · March 27, 2005 9:53PM

I know exactly what you mean. I'm still trying to find my "comeback" to the mac, and I've been eyeing the Mini to replace my yosemite g3 350mhz. I was shocked at the lag in dock magnification when I went to the apple store. I was also shocked that there was a lag in the powerbooks! This is not the kind of performance that I was expecting. I get less lag on my yosemite for crying out loud.

Maybe it was just their demo machines doing something strange, since I don't notice it on my friends' powerbooks. The iMacs did noticeably better. Could it be video cards?

ichiban_jay · March 27, 2005 10:00PM

wait, what lag?

I gotz me heres a 1 ghz powerbook and it no lags on me onces bits. (on purpose)

Well, I hope everything speeds up in tiger. It seems that Mac os is the only os that actually is faster with each revision, unlike certain other OSes

dave marsh · March 28, 2005 12:22AM

Make sure you have at least 512MB of RAM. Even on my old 600MHz G3 iBook, the dock was fluid, but I had 640MB of RAM for OS X to use.

eekles77 · March 28, 2005 8:13AM

I have a 1GHZ iBook G4 with 768MB RAM and I have never noticed any lag whatsoever. I never noticed lag even when I had 256MB RAM too.

g3pro · March 28, 2005 9:04AM

I should have mentioned that the lag was noticed on the 12" powerbook g4 (not the new revision). The 12" uses a different video card than the 15" and 17", right? I did not note how much memory was in the powerbook I tested, but the Mac mini definitely had only 256mb.

not unlike myself · March 28, 2005 9:30AM

The old timer says: It's the Ram, baby.

Yosemite 400 G3 w/ 256. Lag City. Upgraded to 512. Butter.

Quicksilver G4 w/512. Minor Lag during 'busy times'. Upgraded to 1 gig. Butter.

zenatek · March 28, 2005 9:59AM

Well in my mini I have 512 and on my iMac I have 1GB...I still notice it on both so its not the ram. Again I only notice it on the iMac when its running on automatic due to it running at about 800Mhz.

But for you people that say you dont notice it...well your just not as picky or something.

agnuke1707 · March 28, 2005 11:14AM

Quote:

Originally posted by zenatek

Well in my mini I have 512 and on my iMac I have 1GB...I still notice it on both so its not the ram. Again I only notice it on the iMac when its running on automatic due to it running at about 800Mhz.

But for you people that say you dont notice it...well your just not as picky or something.

I have a 1GHz, iMac G4, 1GB RAM, and there's no lag whatsoever. My brother has a Rev. D iMac G3, 333 Mhz, 256MB RAM and I do notice the magnification lag on that computer, but like others have said, I just attribute it to a slow processor and low RAM.

Things are never automatic on a computer. There is always some delay. If you really wanna check things out ... open the Activity Monitor and go to the 2nd tab from them left ... I think it's Mem Usage or something like that and have it show all user processes ... you'll see just where all that RAM is going, and for what. Sit and watch it for a few minutes and se how much the RAM for your dock varies, then mouse over it to magnify and look at it. It should change a few MB. And if you have other sutff open, well there you go ... there's your lag.

Let me know how it works for you!

g3pro · March 28, 2005 11:14AM

Does the PB14" use the 5200?

pb · March 28, 2005 11:31AM

Quote:

Originally posted by g3pro

Does the PB14" use the 5200?

It is already years now from the last 14" Powerbook (Pismo). Do you mean 12"? Yes, the 12" Powerbook has a NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200.

zenatek · March 28, 2005 3:14PM

Well if everyone is having no lag whatsoever what is wrong with my to macs, which are both pretty much new?

zenatek · March 28, 2005 3:49PM

Also... I asked my wife as I hadnt before whether she noticed the dock lags and she said "Yes and its annoying" And she is the one with bad eye sight...so I don't know how you guys cant see it.

kickaha · March 28, 2005 4:49PM

Define 'lag'. No, really, we all may be using different definitions, adding to the confusion.

I keep magnification off, just because I find it annoying but turning it on, with a *huge* number of apps open with multiple documents each, VM essentially swamped, and the CPU up around a constant 90% use, I see... no lag. The cursor goes over the Dock, it zooms right up. I move the cursor, it tracks flawlessly. Describe exactly at what point you see lag, if you could.

PowerBook 1.25GHz G4, 512MB RAM.

gon · March 28, 2005 7:33PM

1.2GHz iBook, 768MB, Dock lags. Not much, but it's there. Not bothered by it but I imagine I would be if I turned up the magnification effect.

My magnification is only at about 10%, and the icons are quite small in the first place.. maybe 30x30 pixels. I like magnification on so I have that little twitch of the icons as feedback, but I keep the effect small so the click targets do not move which would be *very* annoying.

zenatek · March 28, 2005 8:54PM

You notice the "lag" when you first put your mouse over the dock. By lag I mean its not consistant with the speed of the magnification after a few seconds.

If you quickly put your mouse over the dock and drag it around the speed of the zoom effect is more "laggy" then after a few seconds.

keda · March 28, 2005 9:03PM

I'm sitting here on a Beige w/a G4 500, 768MB, & Radeon PCI. The computer is not the fastest thing you've ever seen, but I can't gat the Dock to lag at all.

I wonder if this doesn't have something to do w/RAM.

zenatek · March 28, 2005 10:18PM

I dont know how this is possible, how can you not see it "jump" to magnify rather then zoom?

kickaha · March 28, 2005 10:35PM

This is a long shot, but have you tried changing the default Dock size? I can potentially see an issue where it needs to grab the next optimal size from disk, if you're just below a certain threshold.

Yes, I'm speaking out of my colon here, but hey, no one else has an answer.

Dock bar improvement in Tiger

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