performance
Latest
Apple issues support doc for wonky AirPort performance on Intel Macs
Sketchy AirPort performance has been bugging me for weeks, probably over a month now, and I've been going through all forms of troubleshooting with my AirPort Express trying to squash the issue, but to no avail. My MacBook and iMac drop their Wi-Fi connection seemingly at random, sometimes right in the middle of Unreal online, and never regain it unless I manually re-select the network. I've been following the typical methods of changing channels on the APE, reducing range and using Interference Robustness - but it's all been for naught.Now, Apple has released a support document that might provide a solution for those like me who are experiencing less-than-stellar AirPort reliability and connectivity with their Intel Macs. The document specifies that these issues are related to the use of WPA2 and upgrading to 10.4.8, and I can't offer any feedback just yet as to whether my problem has been solved, but this doc is at least a step in a troubleshooting direction other than 'pull out more hair.' Feel free to share your experiences and any solutions in the comments.[via HardMac]
The be-all, end-all battery life shootout
We all know that manufacturers' listed talk times have limited basis in reality, but since the margin of fantasy varies from make to make and from model to model, there's really no way of accurately judging relative performance as you're cross-shopping phones. Norwegian site Amobil has undertaken the admirable (but daunting) task of performing 45 talk time tests in real-world conditions, spending countless hours and kroner in the process. To keep the talk times honest, Amobil simply placed a call in the same spot of their office for every handset, letting music continually play on both ends to roughly simulate a conversation until the test phone died. Surprisingly, Sony Ericsson dominated the GSM tests, rocking three models that stayed in the game for 7 hours or longer; less surprisingly, UMTS performance was eclipsed by GSM across the board with the Nokia E60 besting the 3G pack at 5:47. Frankly, if this report doesn't get you fired up for alternative power sources, we don't know what will.[Thanks, Are S.]
Mac Pro benchmark roundup
Other sites are already getting their hands on Mac Pros and putting them through the benchmark ringer, and since we aren't done checking the couch for change yet, I figured a benchmark roundup would be the best way to let you sink your teeth into some cold, hard numbers. If you've been waiting to see how well these things perform in real world tests, your wait just might be over: Macworld pits a 2.66 Quad Core Ghz Mac Pro against 2.5 Quad and Dual 2.7 G5 Power Macs - G5s run crying to mama in everything but Adobe Photoshop tests (hint: that will be a benchmark theme across the board) MacInTouch posts some initial impressions as well as a wide variety of benchmarks, including some real low-level geek stuff like "multi-threaded scalar." Until now, I thought a 'scalar' was just a monster in Unreal Bare Feats posts their own set of tests, including the only After Effects test I've found so far (AE still isn't a UB either; I guess Adobe misunderstood the phrase 'fashionably late to the party') Geek Patrol, as you might glean from the name, also posts some extensive low-level tests in categories such as memory performance, floating point, integer and more Apple's product page also seem to think pretty highly of their own new Mac Pros That's it for now. Just don't blame us for the credit card interest if this pushes you over the edge to buy one.
New Parallels Desktop beta enables better USB, performance, integration
Parallels must have been missing their beta days, as they have already announced a new beta version of their Desktop software at WWDC today that brings quite a few much-requests updates. Parallels Desktop, in case you haven't been following the Mac web the last few months, is virtualization software which enables users to run Windows and other OSes inside of Mac OS X on Intel Macs.At the top of the list of updates is much-improved USB performance and broader device support, including Windows Mobile 5 devices. Fleshing out the list is "substantially" improved Mac OS X performance while running a virtual machine (which is a different OS, like Windows. We've explained virtual machines before in our Parallels Desktop How To), improved graphic performance, complete keyboard support including the Eject key and shift key mapping for non-English layouts, Unicode path support, improved shared folder performance and, of course, minor bug fixes.This is, or will be, a free update for paid users once it goes official. For now, users can download the beta the Parallels Desktop update page.
Macworld delves into gaming on the MacBook
While the performance line between Apple's high and low end mid-range portable notebooks has lost some serious girth with the introduction of the MacBook, anyone hoping to snag a portable Mac for gaming has some tough decisions to make. The Pro machine packs a a high-end dedicated 3D card that can chomp through today's most demanding games without breaking a sweat, but the MacBook has an integrated Intel graphics chipset, borrowing RAM from your main system stash and dragging down performance. But how much of a drag is that Intel GMA 950 graphics chip, really? What games can it run, and where is the line actually drawn?If you've been searching for answers to questions like these, I think Rob Griffiths over at Macworld might have cut your googling short with MacBook gaming: A graphics concern? Rob investigated this whole 'integrated graphics card' issue and found that the MacBook can perform surprisingly well, as long as you max it out with as much RAM as you can afford. Testing an unofficial Universal version of Quake 3 (while old, it is fairly 3D-intensive), the MacBook cranked out 52 fps with 512 MB of RAM (which is already a great stat), but once he maxed the machine to 2 GB, Quake 3 offered up 98 fps.Rob explores gaming performance on the MacBook with a wide variety of other games, both in and out of Rosetta, and even lays out two separate 'what can/can't you play' sections to get down to specifics. Check out the full story if you're still biting your nails on deciding just how much you'll need to pony up to get your mobile Mac game on (also: stop biting your nails. It's a nasty habit).
Guitar Hero alongside bands at Download UK
There's something about playing Guitar Hero that appeals to the exhibitionist in all of us. This year, the UK's Download Festival will cater to that by allowing Guitar Hero players to take to the Third Stage in between acts -- although there will be limited walk-up opportunities, they'd like you to register in advance.This might not seem like quite such a good idea when fifteen consecutive rockers fail to finish Bark at the Moon on expert, as events like this often lead us to overstretch ourselves in an attempt to show off. However, it's a clever marketing move for RedOctane as well as a great chance to break some of gaming's stereotypes -- or at least the one about us all being self-conscious tone-deaf nerds.
Preview of new Guitar Hero II co-op mode
In case you missed it on Friday, IGN posted a pre-E3 hands-on preview of Guitar Hero II's new co-op mode. It's a departure from the first game's multiplayer mode in that the two players have to depend on each other a lot more to pass each song and thereby make beautiful music together.While the old multiplayer option will still be around in the sequel, the new mode mixes distinct lead guitar and bass or rhythm parts where each player affects the other in various ways, whether by failing if either performance slips (as in DDR), sharing the same Rock Meter (with mistakes from either player resetting the score multiplier), and needing to both go vertical at the same time to activate the shared Star Power. Thankfully, different difficulty levels can be assigned to each player.The Joystiq team out in L.A. will probably find something to do until they get their sweaty paws on a guitar controller or two on the E3 show floor (maybe one of those wacky press conferences will help pass the time), but we're sure the wait to try the latest build of this rockin' series will be worth it. The seven songs available at E3 are listed below.[Thanks, murph]
MacTech benchmarks Office 2004 on Rosetta
MacTech has published what I am fairly certain are the comprehensive Office 2004 on Rosetta test results for Intel Macs. Honestly, there is so much literature and testing in this article that I simply skimmed most of it and skipped ahead to the conclusion: "in general, Office 2004 under Rosetta works "well enough" to "very well," and in some cases, it's even faster than on the PowerPC baseline machine." Having recently acquired a MacBook Pro, I have to agree. However, I think Word has a slightly longer startup time than on my previous PowerBook, but I would attribute that to Rosetta having to work some magic in the background.Don't take my word though: check out MacTech's article for more than you'd ever want to know about how well Office 2004 will perform on Intel Macs.[via MacMinute]
Mail slowing you down? Rebuild its database
Apple's flagship email client had me banging my head against a wall again when I finally dug up this tip on rebuilding Mail.app's 'Envelope Index' SQLite database at Hawk Wings (If you're wondering what that file is all about, check out Hawk Wing's "What's in your Mail folder?" post). Forcing Mail.app to rebuild this file is as simple as quitting the app, browsing to your ~/Library/Mail/ folder and dragging out the file called 'Envelope Index' to your desktop (I'd recommend making a backup of your Mail support folder before attempting this. Don't say we didn't warn you). Start Mail.app back up and it will give you a message about re-importing or re-indexing all of your messages (sorry, I forgot to screencap the message), and depending on how many you have it could take a couple minutes. I have over 13,000 emails and it didn't take my G4 PowerBook long at all. My Envelope Index was over 300 MB before I started this, and after it was all said and done that file weighed in at less than 4 MB. Putting Mail.app on this kind of a weight loss program can seriously speed it up and generally improve its performance; no more clicking on a new message 10 minutes after Mail.app notified me about it only to be greeted by "this message has not been downloaded yet..." silliness.It is also worth mentioning that this tip is probably more of a troubleshooting technique than something you should work into your regular maintenance tasks. A commenter on this tip at Hawk Wings pointed out that this rebuilding operation nullifies a couple of mailbox settings. If you have set any specific IMAP mailboxes to be used for trash or junk, Mail.app will forget those settings after this rebuild. Still, I think the performance gain and all-around less-schizophrenic behavior of Mail.app was worth having to reset a couple of preferences.[UPDATE: Some commenters have pointed out that Mail also has a Rebuild option under the Mailbox menu (at least in Tiger). I tinkered with this on one of my 4 IMAP accounts and it seems to do the same trick with far less fuss. Thanks for the tip!]
NetNewsWire 2.1 public beta offers Newsgator syncing, more enhancements
It's been a long time coming boys and girls, but Ranchero has unveiled a public beta version of their much-anticipated 2.1 update to the most popular RSS reader out there: NetNewsWire. As Scott's preview earlier this month mentioned, the most buzz-worthy new feature by far is headline syncing with Newsgator (the app's new overlords). However, the change notes for the update list a whole new set of features that I find more interesting like posting to del.icio.us, emailing headlines and an interesting new ability to sort subscriptions by "attention." This means NetNewsWire can sort headlines according to statistics like how often they are opened, posted to del.icio.us and more. The overall performance and responsiveness of NetNewsWire has dramatically increased from a number of enhancements, one of the most notable being that it is now a Universal Binary.The NetNewsWire beta is at 2.1b17 as of this writing, and it is a free upgrade for registered users. As far as I know, the free Newsgator account compatible with syncing is not available yet. One final word of caution if you decide to make the jump: back up your NetNewsWire support folder just in case something goes wrong. After all, it is a beta.I played around with the beta on my PowerBook and must say: NetNewsWire has gotten a lot zippier. Things like marking large amounts of headlines (600-1000 or more) as read are much faster, and the UI has received some welcomed polish. Even with these updates, however, my newsreading still belongs to endo. At the end of the day though, it's great to see newsreading apps as a whole pushing the medium and offering useful features that get everyone's RSS feeds flowing.
Reviewing the Reviewers: iMac Core Duo
I did a review for Cinematical once, where I reviewed other people's reviews of a particular movie, comparing and contrasting with my own impressions; since the folks over at MacInTouch did some great groundwork on testing and reviewing the new iMac Core Duo, I thought I'd review their review, providing you with a slightly less polished, real world set of impressions on the different bits they cover without rehashing too much of what I've said before. So consider this post a companion post to theirs, a Mac-Internet group hug with the new iMac Core Duo in the middle, if you will. You'll find all the nitty gritty bits after the jump...
iMac Core Duo quirks
No, this isn't a pic of our rig of the day. It's my rig. I've had my iMac Core Duo for a few weeks now, so I thought I'd provide some more impressions for those of you still on the PowerPC side of the processor divide. Monitor spanning works nicely, especially with a nice screen like the 24-inch Dell (featuring the same a similar LCD as Apple's 23-inch Cinema display, but with an extra inch of visibility, better resolutioncontrast, and a slew of extra USB ports and a built in memory card reader). I'm still only running the default 512MBs of RAM, but I only really feel the lack of RAM when I launch one of the media-heavy iLife apps (especially iPhoto), when I have a lot of apps open, or when I run apps in Rosetta. For the most part, the new iMac is still blazingly fast.I have noticed a few oddities with Rosetta. I cannot always drag documents to Word in the Dock or pictures to Photoshop in the Dock to launch the program and open the document / picture, as I can with native apps. I can launch the program this way, but it will often not open the file after launch. If the app is already running, then this sporadic inability to open files doesn't seem to occur. Also, Rosetta apps have crashed on me from time to time. Native apps run fine.Another issue: where is X11? I cannot find it installed on the machine and cannot seem to find an installer that works online. I downloaded the Intel-savvy ports of OOo and the Gimp, but neither will run since there doesn't appear to be any installation of X11 on the iMac. If somebody knows where I can find X11 let me know. UPDATE: Found an "Install Optional Installs" app on the disk that came with the iMac and X11 would appear to be the only of the apps listed that wasn't installed by default. Odd.The processor is fast. I know I keep saying that, but yesterday I used the free Universal Binary version of iSquint to batch process about 10 movies into iPod format in just a few hours. Much faster than either my old G4 PowerBook or my old G5 PowerMac. Overall, I'm loving the new iMac, but I am noticing little spots of bugginess here and there, and I'm hoping that recent Core Duo problems in Windows land don't end up being issues with our Macs.
It isn't a fair contest, and it won't be anytime soon
I'm getting kind of annoyed at seeing more and more posts like this since Apple's Intel announcement, claiming that "we can finally settle this Mac OS X / Windows performance war, once and for all." Apparently there's a whole legion of people out there that think just because you might be able to hack and slash Windows to run on an Intel Mac, or you can do some tinkering and get Mac OS X to run on a PC box or notebook, that suddenly we'll have a side-by-side, no holds barred final showdown to prove which is the bigger, badder and faster OS. (Don't mind, for now, the conversation about how much a match like this really matters.)Ladies, gents, boys and girls: the showdown isn't going to happen. At least not anytime soon, and certainly not when, like in this Lifehacker post, OS X is having fairly significant performance issues running on hardware it was never intended to - which brings me to the crux of my rant: until Apple sits down with Dell (haha) and spends days/weeks/months to optimize OS X to run on their (crappy) hardware, or Microsoft drops by the Apple campus to bang out a version of Windows to run on a Macintel, we won't nearly begin to have an even playground for these two OSs to duke it out. You might as well race identical cars, pouring sand in one of their gas tanks.I'm not saying I don't have faith in the many enterprising hackers who will inevitably hack out a way for this fence-hopping to (somewhat) work. What I am saying is that this isn't a simple black and white boxing match that's going to be over after round 1 - and who knows: it might never be. Just make sure you don't spend too much time arguing over the inevitable digg.com post claiming there's a clear winner. After all, this is just the internets.
iTunes video playback lackluster, at best
Alright, I have to get this off my chest: iTunes 6.0.2 is absolutely terrible at playing video. Whether it's a tiny little 30 MB file I made of a TV show, or a 1 GB movie, iTunes is sluggish, choppy and it chokes as if it accidentally swallowed a wishbone. This happens whether I'm playing them in the main window, or a separate one. I don't do full screen, as I have too many other things I need to get done while enjoying (or trying to) my favorite shows and vidcasts.Granted, my 1.67 GHz 15" PowerBook hi-res with 1.5 GB RAM isn't one of the fastest machines on the planet, but it certainly isn't a Pentium 2 either. Opening these same videos in QuickTime results in smooth, wishbone-free playback, which leads me to wonder: What gives, Apple? Why is your flagship music and video player horribly failing at one of its main purposes in life? Even if you aren't Apple, feel free to share your thoughts.
My perspective on Unsanity's MacBook Pro "Lost in Transition" post
One of Unsanity's programmers by the name of Rosyna has posted a really interesting commentary on the new MacBook Pros titled Lost in Translation, focusing on some significant issues that need to be addressed. I recommend you check it out, as it raises questions on a number of issues that Steve Jobs seemed to have glazed over in his keynote.On the flip side though, I couldn't help posting this without offering a response to some of the issues. While I am neither a programmer nor an Apple Engineer, I think I can add a few interesting ideas to the discussion.
