Mac Upgrades.

[Steve E]

Since some of you are switching from Tiger (Mac OS 10.4 now at 10.4.11) to Leopard (Mac OS 10.5), or already have, I thought it might be worth starting a thread that touched on related Storyist issues (other than bugs).

 

Apple has just released Mac OS X 10.5.1, just three weeks after releasing Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). I feel that this update doesn't come a moment too soon. And I suspect that the bugs won't reach an acceptable level until 10.5.2. The new release addresses issues with Airport, Disk utilities, iCal, Mail, Networking, Printing, Security and Firewall, System and Finder, and Time Machine. I suspect that Printing and Time Machine will be of the most interest to Storyist users but you never know.

 

Anyone switch to 10.5.1 yet? If so, how well does Storyist run in it?

[pjl]

I'm on 10.5.1, didn't realise 10.5.2 was available, and my update thingy-me-bob says I'm up to date too.

 

Here's some things I've noticed using Leopard so far, and not specifically with Storyist.

 

Increased beach balls. I've never had so many applications freeze out and the spinning beach ball appear. This seems to happen more if I use Spaces to share out the windows across 4 desktops. And also it maybe because I have a paltry 1gb Ram in the machine.

 

Time Machine annoys the hell out of me. It spins up every so often in what is supposed to be a 'background' action, but it interrupts and makes everything unresponsive for me. I switched Time Machine off and do my own backups now, much less hassle.

 

Firefox and Safair need to be shut down with a force-quit far more regularly than on Tiger. They hang most often on video sites like Youtube, the beachball appears and doesn't go away. I can't tell you how many times I've had to force quit both these applications.

 

Safari is also completely useless when composing posts in Wordpress. Mangles the formatting on every post.

 

Can't find any way to association theunarchiver so it will automatically open .zip/.rar files.. it keeps defaulting back to the godawful OS X default.

 

QuickLook and Coverflow are gimmicks and are hardly neccessary. Give me a big enough preview in the finder of the files and I'd be happy, especially with graphics.

 

Photoshop runs like a dog, its unbelievably slow compared to Tiger, and that was no speed demon. Again, the 1gb Ram might be to blame.

 

I haven't found anything specifically Storyist related that isn't covered above with all applications. The beach ball is almost making me wish I hadn't upgraded.

 

All in all I think Leopard, apart from a few neat integrated features (grammar, mail being faster) wasn't really worth the upgrade price.

 

On a tangent, Linux is getting better and better. Currently running the Ubuntu derivative Linux Mint on my laptop and it flies, they seem to be doing a lot of things right in the open source world at the moment.

 

PJ

[codemer]

Anyone switch to 10.5.2 yet? If so, how well does Storyist run in it?

 

Has 10.5.2 even been seeded to testers yet?

 

I've been running 10.5.1, and Storyist runs just fine. It seems that programs that are written specifically for Leopard do a lot better than older programs that targeted Tiger.

 

For fun, set your mac to use the new voice, Alex, and then go to Edit->Speech->Start Speaking to hear your novel read out loud. It's a hoot.

 

IF

[Steve E]

Anyone switch to 10.5.2 yet? If so, how well does Storyist run in it?

 

My apologies. This was a typo. Mac OS 10.5.2 is not yet available to the general public. I had intended to type "Mac OS 10.5.1". I will make the correction now to avoid further confusion.

 

Thank you for your correction and your thorough comments.

 

Regarding the beach balls; I believe you are right about the 1G of RAM slowing things down, especially if "Spaces" creates virtual machines, which seems to be the case. If so, a user would be running their Mac in ((RAM size)/(#VM)-(machine overhead)) bytes. Another factor is whether you are running on the Intel chip or the PPC. My understanding is that Leopard was written for the Intel chip so there is "translation" overhead when running on a PPC. Still, people should have been warned.

 

Best Regards,

-Thoth.

[pjl]

I'm on Intel, 2ghz Core 2 Duo. But as an experiment I turned off Spaces and I've been running now for the last half an hour or so with nary a beach ball in sight.

 

PJ

[Steve E]

I'm on Intel, 2ghz Core 2 Duo. But as an experiment I turned off Spaces and I've been running now for the last half an hour or so with nary a beach ball in sight.

 

And Apple made such a big deal out of Spaces. Is there a warning in the new Help file about it? Is Time Machine still a problem now that it has more space to play in?

 

Honored to serve.

-Thoth.

[codemer]

Regarding the beach balls; I believe you are right about the 1G of RAM slowing things down, especially if "Spaces" creates virtual machines, which seems to be the case. If so, a user would be running their Mac in ((RAM size)/(#VM)-(machine overhead)) bytes. Another factor is whether you are running on the Intel chip or the PPC. My understanding is that Leopard was written for the Intel chip so there is "translation" overhead when running on a PPC. Still, people should have been warned.

 

Not to correct you, but... Well, yeah, to correct you.

 

Spaces implements multiple desktops, not virtual machines. I don't think my poor powerbook could handle running six virtual machines. This is old technology that has been available to Unix users of the X windowing system for *ever*. You can think of it like this. When you go to desktop 1, it restores the windows for desktop one, and hides the windows for the other desktops. Go to desktop 2, restore desktop 2 windows, hide all other windows. It's actually easy to implement. Well, maybe not so easy, since Apple seems to have botched it.

 

As far as translation, I believe you are referring to Rosetta. This technology allows the x86 macs to run code compiled for the PPC macs, not the other way around. Apple actually wouldn't want the other way around because then what impetus would anyone have to buy new hardware? Well, sure the new hardware is gobs faster, can run virtually any other operating system with Boot Camp, and supports cool virtualization software, but aside from that, why would anyone want to upgrade?

 

IF

[Steve E]

Not to correct you, but... Well, yeah, to correct you.

Not to correct your correction, but... Well, yeah.

 

First: The swapping of display sets between display memory and core (i.e., the multiple desktops) is just the "public face" of Spaces. If I'm running, for example, Storyist, in four different Spaces, I am still loading four Storyist programs and four Story files, and all their associated parameters, into memory (along with copies of everything else I'm using in that Space). It is this memory usage that makes each Space a virtual machine, not simultaneous processing (which is an illusion in single processor hardware) or the multiple display of desktops. Perhaps you are objecting to the notion of a single user using multiple VMs? IBM's VM/CMS certainly beat it into everyone's mind that a puny little single user computer (like your laptop) can't support true VM. By their definition, perhaps.

 

Second: My understanding is that Leopard was written for the Intel chip so there is "translation" overhead -- for Leopard not Storyist -- when running on a PPC. I put "translation" in quotes because I was not talking about a literal translation (a la Rosetta, a technology based on Transitive Corporation's QuickTransit, 'nuff said) but the overhead (i.e., cost) inherent in operating an OS optimized/"translated" for a different chip. I apologize for the poor choice of word.

 

What we have here is a failure to communicate, I hope,

-Thoth.

[Steve]

Not to correct your correction, but... Well, yeah.

 

First: The swapping of display sets between display memory and core (i.e., the multiple desktops) is just the "public face" of Spaces. If I'm running, for example, Storyist, in four different Spaces, I am still loading four Storyist programs and four Story files, and all their associated parameters, into memory (along with copies of everything else I'm using in that Space). It is this memory usage that makes each Space a virtual machine, not simultaneous processing (which is an illusion in single processor hardware) or the multiple display of desktops. Perhaps you are objecting to the notion of a single user using multiple VMs? IBM's VM/CMS certainly beat it into everyone's mind that a puny little single user computer (like your laptop) can't support true VM. By their definition, perhaps.

 

Second: My understanding is that Leopard was written for the Intel chip so there is "translation" overhead -- for Leopard not Storyist -- when running on a PPC. I put "translation" in quotes because I was not talking about a literal translation (a la Rosetta, a technology based on Transitive Corporation's QuickTransit, 'nuff said) but the overhead (i.e., cost) inherent in operating an OS optimized/"translated" for a different chip. I apologize for the poor choice of word.

 

What we have here is a failure to communicate, I hope,

-Thoth.

 

Isaac is correct: Spaces gives you virtual desktops, not virtual machines. You can put a different Storyist document in each "space", but you'll only have one copy of Storyist running. To see that this is true, open Storyist, create four new documents, put one in each of four spaces, then run

 

ps -ad | grep Storyist

 

from the terminal. You'll see there is only Storyist.app running.

 

On PPC vs. Intel: Leopard is no different than Tiger, there are binaries for both architectures.

 

Many libraries (called Frameworks in OS X land) were added or rewritten for Leopard. It may be that the RAM footprint is larger in Leopard, so the amount of memory you have may be an issue.

 

I'm running Leopard on a 1.5 GHz PPC PowerBook with 512 MB, and it runs fine for "normal" user tasks (including Storyist), but performs worse for tasks that have a large data set (like compiling).

 

Storyist runs fine on 10.5.1, by the way. The Storyist issues mentioned elsewhere are still present (the issue causing the disappearing edit frames in the outline view is probably the most annoying), but you should definitely upgrade to 10.5.1 if you are running Leopard.

 

Hope this helps,

 

-Steve

[codemer]

Not to correct your correction, but... Well, yeah.

 

Sorry, Thoth. You forgot that Monday is gang up on Thoth day. Gang up on Isaac day isn't until Wednesday.

 

I'll let what Steve said about spaces and memory use stand.

 

You could, in theory, implement virtualization on virtually (hah) any platform. That was VMWare's claim to fame when everyone else said, "It can't be done." (Run ring 0 code in ring 1.) When I talk about virtualization on the PPC, though, I say bleh because 1) What else are you going to run on a PPC besides Apple software? It's not much good for Linux or BSD because those run better with more support on cheaper hardware. 2) What most people refer to as virtualization on the PPC is actually emulation of an x86 processor, which is dog slow, and it's almost cheaper to buy a used PC than to buy the software to emulate one at a fraction of the performance.

 

If you're not comfortable running top from the terminal, you can instead run "Activity Monitory.app". It has a lot more options, anyway. (So it uses gobs more memory than top. No one's perfect.)

 

IF

[Steve]

Sorry, Thoth. You forgot that Monday is gang up on Thoth day. Gang up on Isaac day isn't until Wednesday.

 

I wasn't trying to gang up on Thoth.

 

I've seen that particular misconception about how spaces works in several places and I didn't want to perpetuate it here. I'll go out on a limb and speculate that people believe that spaces is something new because there is no way that Apple would take a twenty year old technology and promote it like a stunning innovation

 

-Steve

[Steve E]

I wasn't trying to gang up on Thoth.

 

I've seen that particular misconception about how spaces works in several places and I didn't want to perpetuate it here. I'll go out on a limb and speculate that people believe that spaces is something new because there is no way that Apple would take a twenty year old technology and promote it like a stunning innovation

 

-Steve

 

Duped, sad and brooding,

-Thoth.

[codemer]

Duped, sad and brooding,

-Thoth.

 

Don't feel bad. Tomorrow is my turn.

 

IF

[Steve E]

Don't feel bad. Tomorrow is my turn.

I am reminded of the fable of the Little Bird.

 

Once upon a time there was a little bird who neglected to fly south for the winter. Thrown from her little branch to the snowy ground by an icy gust of winter wind, she had broken her wing. Trapped in the cruel winter climate she found herself slowly freezing and starving to death.

 

Just as the little bird thought life couldn't possibly get any worse for her, a cow strolled by and took a massive dump on the little bird. But then a strange thing happened. Warmed by the poo and able to feed on undigested grass and seeds, as well as the bugs attracted to the massive dump, the little bird began to feel better. Even her wing was beginning to heal.

 

Soon she was happily chirping away, singing her little bird song. A hungry cat hears the song and tracks down the little bird, scoops her out of the poo and eats her.

 

The moral: Not everyone who dumps on you is your enemy; Not everyone who pulls you out of the poo is your friend; And if you ever find yourself warm and happy in a great pile of poo, keep your little beak shut.

 

The End.

-Thoth.

 

(What does any of this have to do with Mac upgrades?)