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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pecosbill - Monday, May 16, 2005 - link
As for your comments on the bugs in the initial release, I couldnt' agree with you more. Apple seems to have taken a page from Microsoft whereby only critical bugs are fixed for a .0 release. The other thing to consider is Apple relelased new hardware around the same time. My new 2.3DP G5 came with Tiger pre-installed. Apple used to have a strict tie between hardware and OS so any delay in Tiger would delay the hardware. I'm rather sure that has decreased now, but they may rather not support the older version of the OS on newer hardware as that raises costs due to compatibility testing requirements.pecosbill - Monday, May 16, 2005 - link
msva124 - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link
>NeXT and NeXT step succeeded in the markets where it succeeded.In other news, among stocks that went up yesterday, stocks were up.
JAS - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link
OS 10.4 has already exceeded my expectations.I was a little hesitant to install the new OS on my two Macs until the first update (10.4.1) is released. But today, I installed Tiger on a secondary drive in my dual processor G4 desktop Mac. I was pleased with the boost in overall system performance and did not encounter any software incompatibilities. So, I installed 10.4 on my G4 iBook, too. No problems there.
The first improvements I noticed are with Safari and Finder operations. Dashboard, Spotlight and the new iChat AV are very cool. I just played a high-definition QuickTime movie trailer for the first time. The image quality is spectacular on my Cinema Display.
I've upgraded QuickTime 7 to "Pro." I like how you can now record audio directly within QuickTime.
Although there's room for improvement in certain areas, I think Apple has done a fabulous job with Tiger. I'm looking forward to seeing what the incremental 10.4 updates will bring over time.
CindyRodriguez - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
Ah, I almost forgot:"The "foundation" for OS X was kind of forced into play, you know...;) And, it was years late and initially very lacking in promised features (many of which it still lacks.) "
You really have no idea what you are talking about do you?
How was it forced into play? Because Apple chose it over BeOS? Because Apple recompiled OpenStep for PowerPC? Because Apple came up with Carbon libraries to seamlessly run classic Mac OS Software in OS X natively with almost zero changes to code? Man did they force that sucker in.
What I really wanted to ask you was, what features are still missing? What was promised at the purchase of NeXT but hasn't been delived yet?
Finally, how was it years late? You are specifically talking about the NeXT/OpenStep core as far as I can tell. Are you talking about the first OS X Server release which was way more NeXT than the current OS X distribution (which has a FreeBSD core)? Or are you just talking out your butt again and confusing Copeland with NeXT and FreeBSD?
Considering that Apple bought an OS that didn't even have SMP support because a MAJOR library in the development environment wasn't threadsafe and they almost completely reworked it into the basis of today's OS X in a couple years.. I think that's pretty damn timely, don't you?
CindyRodriguez - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
WaltC:Do you believe all the crap you write?
How many times to people have to point out to you that MICROSOFT was the one who started all the Tiger/Longhorn comparisons? Blame freaking Jim Alchin for comparing his vaporware to Apple's soon to ship OS. (BTW, last time I heard, WinFS was scrapped)
Also, NeXT didn't "fail". it was bought by Apple. It certainly wasn't the company it was intended to be when Apple bought it but it wasn't out of business.
"Oh yes--I suppose that's why the board fired him in '85...;) "
That was an internal power struggle that Jobs lost. I'm not even sure what your point was? Perhaps you wanted to point out how well Apple did after Jobs left?
"Both NeXt and NeXTstep failed commercially as I recall. The "foundation" for OS X was kind of forced into play, you know...;) And, it was years late and initially very lacking in promised features (many of which it still lacks.) "
Um, no. NeXT and NeXT step succeeded in the markets where it succeeded. I bet that's hard for you to grasp but let me break it down. NeXT and OpenStep specifically provided a great development environment and it took of in industries that had a lot of internal custom code. From what I had heard, NeXT, NeXTstep and OpenStep were still very pervasive in the Chicago Stock Exchange well well after the heyday of NeXT pretty much up until Apple's buyout. (OS2 actually had a similar but smaller phenomenon)
"Ah, yes, the RDF again...;) The truth of course is that *nobody knows* what Longhorn will be since Longhorn is a long way out. I see nothing wrong with a Tiger-x64 comparison because MS is *shipping* x64. Pretty simple, really. "
Hmn, good point. I KID. It really was a dumb point.
Microsoft just held a week long conference called WinHEC that focused on guess what? Come on walt, Guess. Do It.
YES!! The focused heavily on Longhorn. In fact, I've hearn no real news out of it other than Longhorn. Gee, I wonder how people (like Jim Alchin) can even compare Longhorn to Tiger considering how tight lipped Microsoft is being about Longhorn features. I mean, aside from the regular info, the early build to developers, and the week long Longhorn love fest a couple weeks ago, we know absolutely nothing about it.
On the other hand, there is the Windows64 comparison argument. Of course, that's pretty dumb too since I don't know of a single feature difference between XP64 and XP-SP2 aside from 64bit libraries. There's also that problem where MS won't even release XP64 for retail sales because driver support is still so crappy.
Other than those few point and all the other ones covered by a dozen other people, I found your comments very enlightening.
Cindy.
rsfinn - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
From page 2: "With Macs, since there's no exposed boot menu, you have to hold down the "c" key while starting your machine to tell it to boot from whatever is in the CD/DVD drive."This works, but most users will never do this -- they'll insert the DVD and double-click the icon labeled "Install Mac OS X". This will set the computer to boot off the DVD and put up a dialog with a "Restart" button. After the installation is finished, the computer will be reset to boot off the partition on which Tiger was installed. No muss, no fuss.
rsfinn - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
From page 3: "I definitely didn't see a single build that was released to developers that was 100% bug free ... with no public beta, and if the bugs aren't getting fixed in the developer release, then who's there to tell Apple when stuff isn't working right in Tiger?"Well, you, Anand, for one. "Beta" is supposed to mean "early access so developers can test the OS against their applications and report problems". Did you report any of the problems you saw in those prerelease builds? Or did you join the developer program just to get early access to the next cool thing?
I'm picking on Anand here to point out this wider misconception about beta software -- even public betas; as a software developer myself it's annoying to me that most people think "public beta" means "I get to play with it for free". If people don't report problems, how can they get fixed?
WaltC - Tuesday, May 3, 2005 - link
#39 "Most of what you said is ridiculous."That's only because you don't really understand what I said at all...;)
#39 "First of all, Apple's market share is growing. Of course other platforms sales aren't Apples sales. But most other sales aren't either Apple/Sun, etc."
Apple's current market share--growing or not--is still ~80% below what it was a decade ago, in terms of percentage. One significant sign of this is the fact there are very few if any Mac-only development houses left in the world today. As I pointed out, the market as a whole is still growing and the fact is that *everybody's* unit numbers are rising because of it. Increased unit sales only counts for increases in market share when they exceed the growth of the market as a whole.
#39" This is mostly an Apple/Wintel market. Sun is only servers and Apple doesn't compete much in their space yet. Apple's server sales are increasing, but are only now ramping up. Except in the scientific Unix space, Apples server sales would be against Windows servers. They don't yet have the breath to compete in the higher areas yet."
Yes, in the Apple/Wintel market it's Wintel ~97%, Apple ~3%.
#39 "Otherwise, it's Apple vs. MS."
Impossible, since the vast bulk of Apple's earnings come from its hardware sales, and MS doesn't sell personal computers of any type (unless you want to count xBox, which would be silly, imo.)
#39 Sure, other pc companies, or rather company (Dell) are growing, but that takes sales away from each other. Apple's increase in marketshare takes away from the Windows market itself. If Dell takes sale from Gateway, it's still a sale for MS. That's the point."
First you say it's an Apple/Wintel market, then you say that every Apple sale is a bite out of Wintel, and then you say that people buying Wintel instead of Apple doesn't even affect Apple sales--which seems to me very much an RDF sentiment if I've ever heard one. If you think a great number of people do not consider and then reject Apple in favor of going Wintel, you are definitely an RDF sufferer...;)
#39 "I suppose that Apple is taking away a few Linux sale as well, but it's almost all MS's."
Have you ever stopped to consider how many Linux sales take bites out of the Apple? For you folks it's always a one-way street where Apple gains but never loses...;)
#39 "All AMD did was to finally come out with better processors that they could actually make, rather than just announce, and then NOT make."
'All AMD did...'--as if it was trivial...;) All AMD did was face a juggernaut with little more than a slingshot for a long time--and manage to win, over and over again. Heh...;) You're funny. The only company you don't trivialize is, of course, Apple...;)
#39 "Apple does directly compete with MS on the OS front. Apple has always had different hardware. When Apple went to the 68000 rather than the 8088 way back when, there were few arguments that the 68000 was not a better chip. Apple simply went on through from there."
You do not understand that an Apple OS *requires* and Apple-branded box *exclusively*. A MS OS will run on boxes manufactured by hundreds of companies around the world--and none of those boxes are made and sold by MS. It's very simple. That's precisely why its a ~97% to 3% market share split, if you haven't figured it out.
39 "If Apple were to change to an x86, then every program would have to be redone. That would be almost impossible for the many Mac developers out there . It's just like the Itanium. Little software development has been done for it. Why should Apple be caught in that trap?"
Itanium is a cpu. OS X is software. FYI, the foundation for OS X, NeXTStep, has *already* been done for x86--years before OS X shipped. "The many Mac developers out there" (heh) could still develop for the Mac since presumably Apple would still sell Macs while releasing an x86 version of its OS *at the same time* which might well attract *many more developers* than Apple presently has.
Last, as noted, the split is *already* ~3% Apple versus 97% x86--so the current situation is not *much different* from the poor Itanium allegory you tried to use, is it?
msva124 - Monday, May 2, 2005 - link
Sorry, it was a dumb mistake. I don't think you are a troll anymore.>If Apple isn't taking away from the Windows market, then which market is it taking away from?
Every sale made by apple doesn't necessarily take away someone else's. There are many users who are more or less satisfied with their current setup of 1 PC, yet decide to go ahead and buy a Mac to complement it. Had Apple not existed, they wouldn't have bought another PC, they would have just stuck with their current setup. So in this case, Apple gains one sale, but PC makers do not lose any. Obviously this is not the case all of the time. The situation is more complex than saying "for every sale made by apple, pc makers lose a sale" or vice versa.