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The guy is proving Mac is better than Windows.

Duh!

it's not all about raw speed.... -advanced functionality, ease of use, the beautiful graphics... OSX is worth the extra weight.

I do not get it. Why not compare XP to Windows 3.x.
Or the Mac OS 6 to OS X. Wouldn't you get the same results, especially boot times?

OS9 was VERY snappy. I miss that. I would like to see OS X try to regain that feel and keep all of its other benefits.

If I recall correctly, Ave Tevanian (sp?) was the genius from NeXT that could "think" in assembly language. Wish he were still writing the code for OS X.

Software does indeed need to catch back up to hardware!

OS 9 was great but it cannot fully function in today's world. We have a few legacy macs on our network and they choke on the number of files on the server. What OS X can display in miliseconds, OS 9 takes several seconds to display. (Remember the old "Too many items in folder" error?) If I had to use one of those machines for much of my work, I would go insane.

Apple, Microsoft, and others are abandoning support for older technologies, so if you have to have a mix of old and new you will suffer some compatability problems. Our OS X machines cannot see the ancient macs on the network.

After walking home from school barefoot in the snow uphill because cars weren't invented yet but we were happy, I'd fire up OS 6 from a floppy that also contained Norton, and fix my System 7 machine, because 7's bloat wouldn't allow both on one disk.

QuarkXpress 2.0 fit on two floppies and could publish the New York Times faster than the New York Times could.

Then came Scully and Word 6, and the world's been in a handbasket to hell ever since.

The article was not about "this old Mac is faster than this new PC", it's about "this Old computer is faster than this New computer". As a number of people have noted, the test would have been better if it had been PC vs PC or Mac vs Mac - or even a test with all four. No question, the older systems are in some ways better than newer ones - even if the newer ones offer better features and flexibility - mostly OS-based. It isn't the hardware, or even (really) the software, but the OS. And OSX has been getting better - both more/better features AND better speed - since 10.0!

DLMeyer - the Voice of G.L.Horton's Stage Page Pod Cast

I don't think the point of the article was to say that we should all buy old Mac Pluses on eBay. It was to show that computer OSes have bloated badly and that some thought to optimizing the OS would be nice.

Part of the problem, IMHO is an overabundance of resources. When the original Mac came out, they had 128K of RAM (and 64K ROM) to do _everything_ in, so of course the programmers were extremely careful about resource usage. As memory, processing speed, and disk space has increased, there is less and less impetus to program carefully and optimize fully, resulting in "good enough" performance on faster machines.

Of course recoding the much larger OSes into assembler now would be a pretty scary undertaking, so it's unlikely we can go back, but it would be fun to see just how fast OS X would run if it were hand coded back into assembler now!

This was the biggest waste of time to read. How much disk space is an OS-X install? Guess that means anything other than ancient hardware and software sucks. Yup! You heard it here first. Current generation macs are a waste.

And lets not get started with games... While I agree cannon battle was fun back in the day, I doubt World of Cannon Battle would get the user base World of Warcraft has.

Yeah, but which one runs World of Warcraft faster? =P

Well What we have here is... Failure to replicate..

Ok not really . I just wanted to warp that papaphrase.

What we have here is really just an academic exercise. I wonder how System 6 would compare to Tiger? (AKA System 10)

Heck I wonder how Win 95 compares to Vistawful in the same test?

Now that would seem to be a more realistic comaprison

Just my 2¢
Thanks,
John Boyarsky
Fairbanks, Alaska

I've said before and I'll say it again - my 7 year old Cube with a 450 MHz G4 processor whips the crap out of my HP PC at work with Winblows XP SP2 and a 2.6 GHz P4 chip.

Of course, I have Tiger on my Cube.

Wasted Time,
If you strip out all language support except English in OS X, but keep in support for all possible printers, scanners, etc., AND install a couple of developer tools with the OS, it is only a 4 GB install for OS X. This is the way I always do it (with a clean install, of course - my only real system maintenance I do on OS X).

It's true... My Peforma 550 does tasks faster than my PowerMac G5.

Licino undoubtedly overstates his case, but he has a point. For, say, word processing, the productivity gains of Mac OS X over System 6.0.8 are minimal.

The Mac Plus was a cool machine. I still have mine in a cupboard upstairs. It'll stay there; I'm not about to swap it for the Intel iMac in front of me. The clattering keyboard alone would drive me nuts.

I use a computer but not for work. I use a word processor and spreadsheet from time to time but not daily/routinely.

I find that almost all modern day computer software is WAY overly complex. More does not necessarily mean better. In fact, in the case of computer software, more usually means worse in my opinion. I doubt if I am the only person who thinks like this.

OS8 was better than OS9.
OS9 crashed, crashed, crashed.
(OS9 was the reason I actually bought a Windows computer.)

yup. OS 9 is indeed way quicker on the older of the two of my G3 iMacs than OS 10.3 ever was on the somewhat newer G3 iMac. That said, the iMac with OS 9 stays in a box in the closet. I use the slower OS X iMac full time.

How can you compare mac and PC are different?

That's funny.

So let's see. We take an IBM Correcting Selectric (c. 1985) and Mark Twain's Hammond typewriter, disable all the non-common features, and declare that the Hammond was ready to type more quickly because we didn't have to plug it in.

Duh.

All foam, no beer.

I wonder how System 6 would compare to Tiger? (AKA System 10)

Can't tell you that, but I can tell you that OS 9.2.2 blows away 10.4.9 on my dual-boot dual-processor 1-GHz G4. OS 9 runs at least twice as fast, and it and all its apps ignore one processor.

The reason that the old mac had to be used obvious. Who would have kept an old window computer over that many years? Macs have staying power

To the editors of this website:

Sometimes you need to be grateful for articles like this that show how far superior Mac OS is to Windows or any other operating system.

capisca?

A friend of mine who is a developer, is still using Mac OS 8.6, which he loves. He says he absolutely hates Mac OS X; he calls it OS "ex". He says if he didn't have to relearn so much he'd develop for Windows. But as it is he will continue with the Mac and develop for OS X.

Pity.

Yes, Vista needs 15,000 times the hard disk space as System 6.0.8
What's more stunning is that Vista needs 10 times the space of XP.

I think the main point also here is that most office employees that are just imputting bookkeeping or basic information don't know enough about computers to use most of the crap that MS has added to Windows or the great things Apple has added to Mac OS X. I can attest that most people have no clue (and don't want to know about) what a great tool they have in front of them.

Macsweep - your friend is obviously brain dead.

I'm far more productive on OS 9 than I could ever be on OS X, and not just because it's faster. The interface is STILL far more consistent and elegant, and it does everything I need it to - I edit videos, make DVDs, publish in InDesign 2, design and manage my web sites, surf the internet etc. Indeed, there are a few aps I really depend on that don't have satisfactory equivalents in OS X (for example, QuickNailer is indespensible for generating the galleries for my web sites - it has features I depend on that no equivalent software for OS X has). It is frustrating when I come across a Flash file that requires version 8 or later - or a QuickTime 7 file - but I can live with that (and IE 5.1 stil works better with some sites than any OS X browser). So why the hell would I want to go to the trouble and expense of installing and learning OS X? Besides, I just can't accept an OS that depends on file name extensions - that was the single biggest reason I went Mac in the first place! Unbelievably, we've now been downgraded to Windows-level functionality.

I've said it for years and YEARS and _Y_E_A_R_S...

Old tech that works, is GOOD tech.

Just because something is old, doesn't mean you throw it away.

If all you're doing is word processing, spreadsheets, email (using Eudora for example), and that sort of thing, the Mac Plus... In fact just about any 68k Mac may well suit all of your needs.

When you start needing to work in color, surf websites, retouch color images, then you've outgrown the limited utility.

Still, many people would be well suited by a forced weekend or week using 10 or 15 year old technology just so they can re-learn their "working with limited resources" chops.

The good news for people who groan at the thought of doing something like that... Is that Mini's are still on sale for a tick under $600 and cast away (tube mostly) displays which will work with said Mini are plentiful as people upgrade to LCD displays. Only the profoundly destitute, people looking to recover ancient data, or gamers looking for a vintage game fix would ever need to consider a vintage Mac as a working machine.

But old machines can be useful. In fact I know a fellow who runs his web presence on an old Apple ][. How's that for squeezing the last little bit of juice out of the core?

Hano

Interesting but ultimately pointless article. To listen to this guy, you'd think that the sum total of home computer tasks revolve around Word and Excel. That's absurd. For his next project, he should compare a car and a bicycle to see which one starts faster.

"Tests" like these make Mac folks look like a bunch of too-much-time-on-their-hands idiots.

What's the point? There is an obvious bias enough to fudge an results to make an outdated machine beat a modern one.

Any TI scientific calculator fans out there? I bet they could make one of those beat a Mac.

Running the Basilisk II emulator with system 8 on my win laptop and Word 5.1 boots in seconds.

I've still got a Mac Plus on the shelf, but I have to say, I never want to see that System Error message with the bomb icon, and the Restart or Resume button again. OS X Rocks!!

I'm sorry, but I REALLY have issues with this guys credibility. His 63 sec. Windoze boot time just doesn't add up. After reading his article, I decided to check it myself. I took a typical AMD desktop PC (X2 3800, 512mb PC3200 x2, 80gb hdd, 2 DVD drives, LCD monitor, Onboard graphics and sound) and installed a clean hard drive and loaded my retail copy of Windoze XP Pro (non-OEM) and then loaded all drivers. Now, with a digital stopwatch, my time from pushing the power button to full desktop (all items on task bar completely loaded) was 34 sec. What the heck is taking his system 29 sec longer!!

And BTW, I'm a bit irritated that all the headlines referring to this article keep stating, "Ancient Apple MAC beats Dual Core AMD System". This is a bunch of crap!! What we got is the older MAC OS beating Windoze, not necessarily AMD. The results could have easily been the same for a Core 2 Duo system. However, all the public is seeing is what is being stated in these articles and I'm sure there are some consumers that will NOT buy an AMD machine because of it. In my opinion, this is completely irresponsible journalism and if AMD's share price is effected negatively, someone should have to answer for it.

For the record, I don't promote MAC OS, Windoze OS, or even Linux. But I DO resent BS when it's printed.

I agree that some of those old systems (well, mainly the Macs) were spectacularly well-designed and efficient - perhaps more than today's.

However, I don't think it follows that computers haven't progressed. Try running a web browser on System 6.0.8, or downloading photos from your digital camera, or playing MP3s. It won't be a good experience, if you even make it happen at all.

Software bloat is a problem, yes, but the other major problem is that media and component interconnect speeds (SATA, frontside bus, optical media, etc.) have not kept pace with the growing data capacity of RAM, hard disks, DVDs, and so on.

For example, a 1996 Performa had a 1.2 GB HD. Current entry-level iMacs come with a 160 GB drive, so that's a 133x increase in just over 10 years. 1996-vintage basic consumer SCSI could do about 5 MB/sec. The iMac's drive connection bus, which I'll assume is a SATA/150 interface, is capable of 150 MB/sec, which is only a 30x increase. And that's not even getting into whether the drive can really saturate all that bandwidth.

This accounts for why, even though computers have much more storage and processing power, it still takes much longer to do things like booting or installing a larger OS. There are bottlenecks.