From helmadik@midway.uchicago.edu Fri Nov 30 16:50:52 2001 Received: from mailscan3.cac.washington.edu (mailscan3.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.10) with SMTP id fB10ofn160530 for ; Fri, 30 Nov 2001 16:50:42 -0800 Received: FROM mxu4.u.washington.edu BY mailscan3.cac.washington.edu ; Fri Nov 30 16:50:40 2001 -0800 Received: from midway.uchicago.edu (midway.uchicago.edu [128.135.12.12]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.10) with ESMTP id fB10oe916779 for ; Fri, 30 Nov 2001 16:50:40 -0800 Received: from [128.135.57.40] (h-dik.uchicago.edu [128.135.57.40]) by midway.uchicago.edu (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id fB10odO01446 for ; Fri, 30 Nov 2001 18:50:39 -0600 (CST) Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: helmadik@nsit-popmail.uchicago.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200111302223.fAUMN3b14938@darwin.helios.nd.edu> References: <200111302223.fAUMN3b14938@darwin.helios.nd.edu> Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 18:50:38 -0600 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Helma Dik Subject: Re: Mac OS 10 improvements Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" With apologies to the Windows users for more Apple talk (but we get to put up with messages about viruses that don't concern us) AMK said >When comparing Macintosh operating systems, it is not fair (so far >as I know still *) to compare the speed of the original OS with that >of a later user-installed OS. The reason is that Macs, unlike PC's >(+), have toolbox functions and other high-use pieces of the OS in >ROM. When you install a new OS from disk, any modification of >functions originally in ROM introduces two kinds of delay: While this may all be true, what really seems to clog things up (and in my case it is 10.1 not 10) is the 'Unix based' graphics interface. I'm told by computing people here that it's faster than comparable stuff on Unix machines, but I suppose the original Apple OS just did a better job with it. But I'll look for the 10.1.1 upgrade - I'm heartened by that information, so far my mouse seemed to be moving in mud - and I know this was also true for people with brandnew machines with factory installed OSX. > (a) An initial start-up delay, as OS code is loaded from (usually) > disk into RAM (which is, or at least is treated as volatile). To > play it safe and for practical reasons, modified systems may bypass > large chunks of ROM OS, so even minor system upgrades may put > substantial code in RAM and noticeably degrade performance for this > reason and those described under (b)... Installing OS10 included installation of a newer version of OS9, however, and that seems to be working just fine. Perhaps because it's just a few patches and not an entire new system stored in the wrong place, Al? HD -- Helma Dik Dept. of Classics University of Chicago helmadik@midway.uchicago.edu http://humanities.uchicago.edu/classics/ .