“We’ve been waiting over five years already for the successor to Windows XP, so we might as well wait a few more months for Microsoft to ship a secure, reliable operating system. The problem isn’t trying to meet the January 2007 release date. The problem is that after such a long delay, Microsoft must absolutely make sure Vista works. There’s nothing worse than taking five years, only to release a buggy operating system that just offers marginal improvements over Windows XP,” Wallace Wang writes for CNET.
“Rather than try to yank out more features to insure Vista ships on time, Microsoft should work on optimizing Vista. Every new release of Mac OS X from version 10.1 to 10.2 to 10.3 to 10.4 actually added new features while making my ancient G3 iBook faster at the same time. With Mac OS X, it’s a no-brainer to upgrade the operating system since you speed up an old computer while getting new features at the same time,” Wang writes.
“With Windows, the opposite is true. Each succeeding version of Windows needs more hardware and still runs sluggishly. Don’t even think about running Vista on a machine originally designed for Windows 98 or even one designed for Windows XP. Ultimately, no matter how long Microsoft takes to ship Vista, the fact that it won’t run on existing machines already means Vista is a failure,” Wang writes.
Wallace Wang is a freelance computer journalist and author whose books include “Microsoft Office for Dummies” and “Steal This Computer Book.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Macintosh. The truth shall set you free.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Ballmer analyzes Microsoft’s One Big Mistake, Vista… er, ‘One Big’ Vista Mistake – August 02, 2006
a href=”http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/leopard_attack_on_vista_apple_taunts_microsoft/”>Leopard attack on Vista: Apple taunts Microsoft with much faster operating system launches – July 05, 2006
What Microsoft has chopped from Windows Vista, and when – June 27, 2006
What’s wrong with this picture from a strategy standpoint? Since Apple sells hardware, and Microsoft makes more money on an upgrade than on a system bundled with a new piece of hardware, you’d expect Apple to degrade existing systems, and Microsoft to speed them up so they can sell upgrades.
Doesn’t anybody study marketing strategy anymore?
Oy.
OS X was so damn slow in it’s first versions that speed bumps were not that big a deal. 10.3 was the first version that wasn’t slower than 9.x.
Dude,
The speed gain from 10.3 to 10.4 was pretty drastic, too. In contrast, MSFT has had years to “refine” their dog shit OS and all that happens is it gets more bloated and incomprehensible with each iteration. They want to keep the hardware box assemblers pimping Windows. The way to do this is to force new hardware on everybody.
The ultimate truth: No one person at Microsoft knows what’s in Windows. In fact, no MSFT group does, either. That’s why they can’t get a coherent OS together.
Though it is true, I was really sad that the latest version of iPhoto doesn’t run on a G3 iMac anymore……..oh well.
I wouldn’t be too upset if the “older hardware gets a speed bump” feature isn’t present in 10.5. Seriously, how much more optimization can Apple squeeze out of OS X?
Personally, my first experience with X was on my (currently) defunct 15″ TiBook (screen hinge, before you ask).
With 768MB of RAM, there was no speed decrease when moving to X, which I first did with 10.1. Each version thereafter improved that system until my somewhat clumsy colleague juggled it to death during its Panther incarnation.
However, Wallace Wang is correct and I made this very point in another thread several days ago. The response from the visiting Windows trolls was “what was the obsession with running on slow, outdated hardware”. There are two observations here: a) if we can get Panther running on an underspec Bondi Rev. A iMac, then – by implication – that hardware is not outdated and b) why are Windows users obsessed with running on insecure, outdated operating systems.
Preach it, Brother Wang!!!
My Cube is going strong because of this very thing. I’m not even thinking of buying a new desktop yet (unless it goes kaput).
I plan on upgrading when my Cube is 8 years old – summer 2008.
I question the notion of OS X making the older Apple hardware faster.
I have 2 Powerbook G3 (500Mhz and 400Mhz) notebooks. Each version of OS X that I install on them only makes them slower. Boot times gets worse. Applications take their sweet time starting up.
I’ve done the permission repair procedure at least twice a day. I’ve also used many cache cleaners for OS X but they are still slow.
I have upgraded the ram to the max (1GB) and installed a faster hard drive on both. I know there is a processor upgrade available for the Pismos but I’ll just wait for a new MacBook Pro.
I maybe the only one having the problem. They are still usable so I’m happy.
More Truth,
You are 100% correct. But, Tiger is definitely faster than Pather on my machine, and I’m sure Leopard will be even faster. Let’s see how Vista runs on a 3 year old machine, let alone a 6 year old machine.
@Sum. It’s not a question of marketing. It’s a question of competence. MS is obviously building crap up crap upon crap. No wonder it gets more sluggish with every new version.
I foresee speed gains for PPC Macs leveling out now as Apple focuses on the x86 optimization of OS X.
macman,
On what facts do you base your ass-umptin?
The article is absolute correct. Even an ancient first gen blue iMac at 233-MHz and 512 MB RAM can run Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and be very useable. It can even run (though officially unsupported) 10.4 (Tiger), if you use another newer Mac to install 10.4 on its harddrive. Each successive “0.1” incremental Mac OS X release was better optimized until 10.3. 10.4 seemed to be a “more features” release, and I did not notice any better performance on the older barely supported hardware. I expect 10.5 (Leopard) to be a release to optimize for Intel, so I do not expect the older PPC hardware to see significant performance improvements.
Actually, I would be surprised if Leopard even runs on PPC Macs. This will likely be the dividing line.
RE: Cheeky Git
I saw increases in performance with every release on my iBook G3 – though I must confess that I stopped using it before tiger came out (I installed it and lent it to a friend who still uses it). I am not sure why you would have seen a slowdown. I did notice that the system ran slow initially till spotlight had built it’s initial indexes but then the speed came back.
With windows EVERY new release slows down the computer. My old 33 MHz Win 3.11 system felt more responsive than any of my current XP systems. The Vista beta makes my AMD 3500+ system crawl (though I am sure it will improve some before final release, I expect the same kind of decrease in performance I saw from Win3.11 to Win95).
As for the marketing angle. MS built it’s empire on OEM contracts so they probably driving a new hardware cycle does more for them than do the upgrades, even though they do make 5 times as much on each upgrade. As they deal with a shrinking market share for the first time ever, they may rethink things before Vista’s successor comes out (sometime in the latter half of this century).
Let’s Just hope that apple’s resurgence eventually eliminates the relevance of Microsoft and stops this insanity.
Well, 10.4.7 slowed my intel iMac down in a major way and i know i am not alone…
I have been keeping detailed performance records of each Mac OS X update and this is what I found out.
Overall Mac OS X has been slowing down, but the biggest slowdown occured in the last few updates of 10.3, which made early installs of 10.4 seem faster in the user interface department.
There was a slight CPU performance increase in G5 based Mac’s with 10.4 because it’s a 64 bit processor. As you know Intel Mac’s are currently 32 bit, a step backward.
Mac OS X performance “feel” is very very dependant upon the amount of RAM and the I/O speed of the boot drive. If your not getting over 100 MB per second 4K writes under X-Bench, your crawling.
I run a RAID O pair of 10,000 RPM Raptors as a boot drive, I have edited my /etc/hosts file with huge list of blocked/banned ad servers, click registers and the like, plus using Safari Enhancer and other tricks (like a 6MB download cable) to have web pages appear almost instantly.
I never see a SBBOD.
I had an 800Mhz iBook G3 years ago, and it ran 10.2 very well. 10.3 was snappier still.
Before 10.2, it wouldn’t have had Quartz extreme, so it would have had a far less snappy interface.
Mac OS 10.0 was a shaky beta release, 10.1 was a bug fix that made it suck less, and 10.2 was a pretty nice and usable operating system – even on G3 hardware. Mac 10.3 was faster still. Mac OS 10.4 added features that slow it down on older hardware (the background tasks that always run for Spotlight, mds and mdimport, the dashboard widgets eating up RAM in the background), but the convenience of them makes for a more productive computer as long as it isn’t really old and underpowered.
Mac OS 10.3 was probably the best version of Mac OS X for older hardware.
Actually, I would be surprised if Leopard even runs on PPC Macs.
Then you’ll be very surprised.
WOW…
Someone to speaks their mind and tells the truth – could it be that the M$ community is at long last getting feed up the the whole Windows thing and see it for what it is – A POOR COPY OF OS X (EARILY VERSION) AT BEST AND A LOT OF CRAP AT WORST!
I liked the line -“Don’t even think about running Vista on a machine originally designed for Windows 98 or even one designed for Windows XP”.
Dell is going to love that that one!
@CheekyGit re: Permission Repair. Worth a read. You may decide to ease up on, or cease, that activity.
http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/repair_permissions
Of course Leopard will run on a PPC. PowerMac G5s are still shipping today as there is no Intel replacement for them yet. Apple would NOT cut off it’s pro line to OS upgrades. When the last pro PPC Mac ships, rest assured that the following five years of OS upgrades will be available to those machines.
My Cube got a lot faster when I put Tiger on it, and the boot times are blazing. Under 10 secs for a full boot.
I have Tiger (10.4.7) on my ibook 800mhz with 640mb of ram and on my 1.8ghz MBP with 1.5gigs of ram. I swear sometimes (as does my gf who uses the ibook and mbp sometimes) that the ibook actually runs certain apps (safari, finder, ichat, iphoto, etc) faster than my new MBP!! That little ibook is about 4yrs old and been through hell and back and still rocks. I find myself looking for the ibook sometimes cause the MBP just seems to be running too slow. That one reason is what has kept me from selling that thing…..that plus it was my first mac. =)
i just got a iMac 450mhz DV and it runs Tiger like a champ and I don’t even have the RAM maxed out!