Performance in Tiger
The one thing that excited me more than anything else about getting and using Tiger was that everyone had lauded OS X for being the one OS that had improved in performance with every iteration. Being a Windows user, this was a complete reversal of my thinking - as each new iteration of Windows was an excuse for me to build a ridiculously powerful machine by my old standards, to feel even remotely at home under the latest version of Windows.But it would appear that I may have missed the boat, as performance in Tiger is a mixed bag. I'd say that overall performance in Tiger is an improvement over Panther, but there are some definite exceptions to the rule.
The biggest exception, from my perspective, is the fact that menu highlights always seem to just barely trail my mouse pointer in Tiger, whereas Panther kept up very well. At first, I thought that I was just imagining things, but then I set up a G5 test bed with two identical hard drives; the only difference being one drive had Panther while the other had Tiger. After booting them back to back, it's clear that my worries were founded. Tiger's menu highlight does seem to be slightly more laggy than Panther's.
Other areas of performance show definite improvements in Tiger, but what's interesting to me is that subjective performance impacts vary greatly (for me) depending on the type of system that I'm using. For this article, I used Tiger on four different modern day Macs: two Powermac G5 systems (dual 2.5GHz and dual 2.0GHz), one Mac mini and a 15" PowerBook G4.
Performance using Spotlight is pretty impressive on all three systems on which I've tried Tiger. On the mini and the PowerBook G4, it is definitely slower than the G5, thanks to their slower hard drives, but it is still fairly quick to search and bring up results. Spotlight on the G5 is lightning quick, although the results don't all pop up at the same time. Within a second, you have your entire list of search hits at the upper right hand corner of your screen. What's interesting here is that because Spotlight performance isn't something that I could quantify in Panther (since Spotlight obviously wasn't a feature of Panther), the PowerBook and mini feel slower in Tiger to me than they were in Panther. It's not because the OS is actually slower, but it's because my usage models have changed with Tiger - thus, putting more emphasis on fast hard disk performance. I'd also say that there's a pretty noticeable performance difference in Spotlight between the mini's 5400RPM 2.5" hard drive in comparison to my older PowerBook's 4200RPM 2.5" hard drive.
I/O performance appears to have improved by a noticeable amount in Tiger, especially on the G5. Disk accesses seem quicker, although I'm not certain if that's improvements to the disk side of I/O or if it is better at memory management, caching, or what. Regardless, those two areas of performance definitely improved.
There was a noticeable improvement in performance on the G5, with the biggest improvements being in UI performance. The UI seems a lot more responsive (especially at higher resolutions), scrolling is faster/smoother and the OS in general just feels a lot snappier. Scrolling performance throughout the OS has improved tremendously; it's not smooth enough to the point where I feel like I can enable the smooth scrolling option and get the same feel as I could on a PC, but performance is still definitely improved. My only complaint with UI performance continues to be the menu highlighting issue from earlier. It's not a show stopper, but it's definitely something noticeable.
Exposé performs basically identical to Panther under the new OS, regardless of what system I'm talking about. The Mac mini continues to have issues at higher resolutions, as Exposé stops being smooth and now even Dashboard is choppy on the mini. Again, the problem here is a sheer lack of video memory. I do hope that Apple updates the mini to include a better GPU as well as one with a larger local memory very soon, now that Tiger is out. So much of the beauty of the Dashboard is that you can access it so quickly and seamlessly, that when you get to use a choppy version of the feature, it does slightly ruin the effect of it.
Although Apple promises better battery life management on notebooks with Tiger, I didn't notice any major improvements during my multiple months with Tiger loaded on the PowerBook. Obviously, battery life improved over time, but I can't help but feel that even with the final version of Tiger, battery life is no better, and maybe even slightly worse (especially in sleep states) than Panther. I don't have any quantitative backing for these claims yet - it's just a feeling at this point.
The main thing to keep in mind is that all four of the systems I tried under Tiger performed, overall and at worst, no differently than under Panther. In many cases, there were some pretty hefty speedups that were definitely noticeable. I'd say the biggest performance gains that I noticed were on the G5 machines, despite spending more time with Tiger on the G4 based clients. If you have a G5 with enough video memory, Tiger and all of its new features should be smooth sailing for you.
I did perform some basic tests to see how Tiger stacked up to Panther in various performance categories. For these tests, I used a Powermac G5 dual 2.0GHz using a 250GB Maxtor MaXLine III SATA drive (each OS had their own drive with their own clean install of the OS).
Both Tiger and Panther took basically the same amount of time to start up, with Panther getting from pressing the power button to the desktop in about a second quicker than Tiger.
| Panther | Tiger | |
| System Startup in Seconds (Lower is Better) | 49.1 | 50.1 |
The Let1KWindowsBloom test times how long it takes to open 1000 windows:
| Panther | Tiger | |
| Window Creation Time in Seconds (Lower is Better) | 44 | 8 |
It's not the best test in the world, but it is interesting that there is an order of magnitude of performance improvement of Tiger over Panther. I'm not totally convinced that this isn't a bug with the test yet, however, so I wouldn't put too much faith in it just yet.
I wanted to see if Tiger improved the absolutely dismal Doom 3 performance of OS X:
| Panther | Tiger | |
| Doom 3 Frame Rate (Higher is Better) | 35.9 | 39.5 |
And although a 10% performance increase is nothing to scoff at, there's no getting around the fact that Doom 3 performance on the Mac is absolutely unacceptable. The average frame rates that I'm reporting here don't even begin to tell the full story. There's just far too much stuttering during the actual game for it to even be remotely playable. It looks like Tiger does improve gaming performance though.
For my final test, I ran a quick decompress test of a 140MB archive to see if I/O performance really improved in Tiger.
| Panther | Tiger | |
| Archive Extraction in Seconds (Lower is Better) | 22.93 | 21.5 |
Tiger boasted a 6% lower time, but what's interesting is that Tiger's time was much more reliable than Panther's. There were many occasions when Panther actually took significantly longer than Tiger, but the reverse was never true.
Benchmarking under OS X continues to be a pain, but there's an early try at quantifying the performance differences between Tiger and Panther. I can say, in confidence, that if you're a G5 user, you won't be disappointed. For G4 users, I can't say that the performance improvement was as drastic, but it definitely wasn't negative.
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melgross - Sunday, May 1, 2005 - link
#21 With all that you said, you didn't really say very much.Yes, it's true that Apple is mostly a hardware company. They will sell "only" a billion dollars of software this year.
But what you forget is that every Mac that sells takes away a sale of a copy of Windows from MS. Apple will sell more that a million more computers this year than they sold last year. That's over a million fewer copies of Windows sold. As well as less copies of windows software by MS and others. It also means more copies of MS Office for the Mac sold.
It's just dumb talking about "balls". This is a business. Maybe you like to play chicken, but companies that like to stay in business don't.
Perhaps if Apple licensed the Mac OS to MS both times when MS came knocking on their door life would have been different. :)
michael2k - Saturday, April 30, 2005 - link
#21: If anyone compares Longhorn to Tiger, it's because Microsoft has decided it's a valid comparison:http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020463,391...
Allchin has made public comments regarding Tiger, when talking about Longhorn.
On a technical level, Longhorn is implementing many of the features that Tiger, Panther, and Jaguar have, so comparison is unavoidable:
Avalon vs Quartz
Metro vs PDF
DB/WinFS vs Spotlight/HFS+
etc
Eug - Saturday, April 30, 2005 - link
#20: "So while Apple keeps braying to the moon about "Longhorn" I, on the other hand, am content to wait until Longhorn actually ships before making any sort of comparisons as I would prefer any comparisons that might be made to have some *meaning*...;)"Uh... I should point out that the Apple Mac OS X pages don't have a single reference to Longhorn anywhere, AFAIK.
Ocaid - Saturday, April 30, 2005 - link
The fact, "Jack", is that this is marketing and Apple does make nice hardware and a great OS for some people. And I do agree with some of your salient points. But for a company that "is not a direct competitor to MS", some of you guys sure seem to worry a lot about them.WaltC - Saturday, April 30, 2005 - link
I completely fail to understand this comparison with Longhorn...;) I mean, at one level I do understand it all too well--Apple PR, while completely ignoring Windows x64 as if it does not exist, enjoys boasting that it has "beaten" Longhorn out of the starting gate as a "64-bit" OS--but really this is just so very lame and completely transparent. Apple has always had an exquisite case of tunnel vision when it comes to picking and choosing what it will compare its products to...:DSo this whole "Longhorn-Tiger" comparison is so predictible and infantile (as Tiger is shipping and Longhorn isn't--so nobody has a clue as to what Longhorn will be when it actually does ship a year or two from now) and right on par for Apple PR. So typical of Apple to compare its products with products that aren't shipping--wow, how much "safer" can you can get than that? So while Apple keeps braying to the moon about "Longhorn" I, on the other hand, am content to wait until Longhorn actually ships before making any sort of comparisons as I would prefer any comparisons that might be made to have some *meaning*...;)
In this vein, I also wish that people would wake up and realize that Apple and Microsoft are not now direct competitors and never have been...;) Microsoft is software company--Apple is distinctly a hardware company--and the old saw in the industry is that the highest and best purpose for *any* Mac OS is that it serves as a dongle to protect and promote Apple's hardware sales.
The classic mistake that I see so often is this misunderstanding that Microsoft and Apple somehow compete in the same markets--not true. Apple's competitors in reality are companies like Dell, etc., who--unlike Microsoft--make better than 90% of their net income from hardware sales. It's pretty simple, really, as >98% of Microsoft's net income is from the sale of software exclusive of hardware. The difference is so vast I am surprised it is so often overlooked. And yet it is...
For instance, if Apple would decide to undertake to write an OS for the same x86 hardware standards that Microsoft does (Intel/AMD promulgated standards, mainly) *then* we could call them competitors with a straight face since they'd be competing for share in the same hardware markets. But the simple fact is that Microsoft doesn't even *make* the computers which run its OS's (and so of course cannot and does not profit directly from such hardware sales); but an Apple OS, on the other hand, is totally useless in the absence of an Apple designed-and-sold computer to run it. The enormous differences ought to be clear as daylight to everyone.
Basically, the concept that an Apple OS is any sort of direct competition to a Microsoft OS is purely a wishful and irresponsible--not to mention inaccurate--fantasy. That's why talking about Apple's <3% share of the annual world-wide *desktop* computer market (which is far, far less in the exclusive server markets, or higher in the notebook markets, etc.)is somewhat of a bogus comparison in the first place. MS OS's serve "everybody else" apart from Microsoft (eg, Dell and the thousands of other companies manufacturing x86 PCs and components exclusive of Microsoft) while Apple's OS's serve only Apple-branded hardware exclusively. I am always surprised as to why this salient fact of the matter is so often ignored. But there it is...
I'd love to see Apple competing directly with Microsoft in the much larger hardware arena of x86 platforms and standards--I would welcome the competition. But I honestly don't think Apple can compete in that market--and I believe that's exactly why Apple doesn't even try. I'd love to see Apple offer its own Apple-branded x86 PCs along with an Apple x86 OS which would run on "everybody else's" x86 box just as Microsoft's OS's currently do--but I'll tell you right now that I'm not going to hold my breath waiting on that to happen as I don't believe it ever will. Frankly, I don't believe Apple has either the balls or the brains or the will to do it--and that's the fact, Jack...:D
michael2k - Saturday, April 30, 2005 - link
#11: Obviously the article is not meant for you then. Does it occur to you that there are other reasons to use computers than play games? Video games are not the end all and be all of the computing experience.HansZarkow - Saturday, April 30, 2005 - link
Repeatedly reading about how buggy Tiger is makes me wonder, why Apple pushed the release. Panther was doing alright and Apple is generally rather thorough when it comes to that.I think Tiger was originally to be released in 2H05 around the same time that Longhorn was scheduled. Then Microsoft pushed the release date back a year. Now Apple faced the situation that they couldn't release 10.5 only a year after 10.4.
So not only wouldn't they be able to react to some features that Longhorn might bring along, but they would also leave Microsoft an undistored PR-window where they would be mere spectators.
Hence, Apple rushed the Tiger-release to 1H05, approximately 18 months after Panther. That gives them another 18 months to fine-tune 10.4 and come up with an answer to every feature that Longhorn might pack.
It's the price of being Apple, the (self-proclaimed) technology-leader, they can't let Microsoft talk about the (possible) advantages of Longhorn for half a year.
This makes sense from a PR point-of-view, but it is definetly unfair to the people buying 10.4 because I doubt it will see its full potential before 10.4.3
vailr - Saturday, April 30, 2005 - link
#13: Not correct! My 3.2 GHz P4/WinXP machine can run PearPC/MacOSX 10.3.9, with "About this Mac" info indicating that it's a "Mac G3 running at 1.32 GHz".So, would be interested to see whether: WinXP64/PearPC/MacOSX 10.4, running on an "upper echelon" AMD64 chip could compete, speedwise, with OSX Tiger, running on native Mac hardware?
jasonsRX7 - Saturday, April 30, 2005 - link
I don't know if it's just because I'm more used to it, but I still like Quicksilver better than Spotlight. I find QS to be faster and more functional. Maybe Spotlight just needs to grow on me some more.DerekWilson - Saturday, April 30, 2005 - link
#15 ... is that a joke (and coincedence) or an attempt to bring up the legal suit being brought against Apple by Tiger Direct for the use of the Tiger name?Haven't kept up with that much myself -- though it did seem fishy that they waited until this week to bring up the issue.
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/28/...