Tesugen

Slow Mac OS X

This Wired article about the slowness of browsers on Mac OS X was interesting. If I enter Apple Store (which is a heavy page) using Internet Explorer 5.1.4, this takes 11 seconds from the moment I hit enter to it being fully loaded. Trying the same thing in Chimera 0.2.1 (which is due for release 0.2.2 in a couple of hours) takes 7 seconds. And OmniWeb 4.1 beta 4 takes as long as 27 seconds. This on my PowerBook G4 500 MHz over an ADSL 2.5 Mbps line.

In the article, Apple spokesperson Natalie Welch says this is due to Apple supporting “a number of legacy technologies designed to ease their transition to the new operating system” (i.e. Carbon) and that they “are merely at the beginning of the performance opportunities in Mac OS X”. And the program manager for IE on Mac, Jimmy Grewal, says that the CPU is busy doing things that could be done by the graphics chip.

Basically, according to the article, Apple has prioritized the user experience over performance in getting Mac OS X to market as fast as possible. This sounds reasonable to me, but having used the early developer previews of Mac OS X, I for one am impressed of the optimization they have done so far.

The above was posted to my personal weblog on April 20, 2002. My name is Peter Lindberg and I am a thirtysomething software developer and dad living in Stockholm, Sweden. Here, you’ll find posts in English and Swedish about whatever happens to interest me for the moment.

Posted around the same time:

The seven most recent posts:

  1. Tesugen Replaced (October 7)
  2. My Year of MacBook Troubles (May 16)
  3. Tesugen Turns Five (March 21)
  4. Gustaf Nordenskiöld om keramik kontra kläddesign (December 10, 2006)
  5. Se till att ha två buffertar för oförutsedda utgifter (October 30, 2006)
  6. Bra tips för den som vill börja fondspara (October 7, 2006)
  7. Light-Hearted Parenting Tips (September 16, 2006)
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