I miss the future OS X never had

Recently I have written about how Apple once was the center of our world and the decision I made to not purchase a new Mac.

With my new Leonvo desktop and the reduced workload on my Mac Mini I am pretty happy with my technology plan for 2015.  Everything thing seems to be working well.

If you have read many of my posts here, you might know that one of my favorite computers of all time is a 2004, dual G5 running OS 10.5.8.  It has 1.5GBs of ram and still runs after over ten years of heavy use.

I have mentioned a number of things about today's Apple that indicate a company much more interested in piling up cash than in delivering the computers that many of us once expected from Apple.

I dislike the incompatible versions of the iWork apps and the continual notices that my Mavericks powered MacMini is incompatible with iCloud. I have written about why I do not like Apple Mail and iPhoto programs.  All of that has to do with the product that OSX has recently become.

OSX for several years after it was introduced was one of the easiest to sell operating systems that I have ever sold.  It was a product that improved with every release and impressed almost everyone who took the time to try it.

One of my favorite sayings is that those who are ignorant of history often have no idea whether they are going forwards or backwards. Sometime new technology is better and sometimes it is not the answer.

In the spirit of that, I used to take the new college graduates who wanted to sell Macs at our Apple dealership in 1984 and make them spend a few days learning the Apple IIe before they got their hands on a Mac.  A few memos written using AppleWriter made MacWrite seem even more special.

I share some examples about Apple's refusal to even consider its own history in my book about my Apple sales career, The Pomme Company. The Apple I know so well  is a company whose stubborn refusal to pay attention to its own history has doomed it to repeat many mistakes.  Perhaps taking its operating system for granted might be high on the list as I well remember the days of System 7.

I recently booted up my dual G5 to look for a handful of old pictures that I needed to write this family history for the folks who bought our family home and now run it as a bed & breakfast.

Finding the pictures was not much of a trouble (maybe "find" even works better on the old Macs), but the real treat was going back to the earlier version of OSX.  OSX felt snappy and I once again got the feeling that I was in an environment where my experience as a computer user trying to get work done was important.

This trip back in computer time prompted me to run a few timed tests.  I have heard people complain about how slow OSX Mavericks can be but I had not made the effort to time it. I was not very surprised about the results.

I did each one of the tests at least a couple of times and some had to be done more because I forgot to hit the start button on the timer.

I timed each computer to the point when it got to the log in window and then from the point I hit enter after typing my password to the point that I could launch a browser and it was ready for me to type in the URL.

Here are the results.

Dual 1.8Ghz G5 with two 1TB drives and 1.5GB of RAM took 46.5 seconds to the log in window and 15 seconds to Safari being ready for the URL.

MacMini running Mavericks with I5 processor 16GBs of RAM and two USB drives took 1 minute 25 seconds to log in and another 1 minute and 45 seconds before Safari was ready for the URL.

I5 iMac running Yosemite with 120 GB SSD and 8GBs of RAM and one firewire 800 drive took  31.7 seconds to log in window and 10 seconds for Safari to be ready for the URL

I7 Lenovo laptop 750GB drive and 8GBs of RAM running Windows 7 took 41 seconds to log in window and 24 seconds for Chrome to be ready for the URL.

I7 Lenovo Desktop with hybrid 2TB drive and 16GBs of RAM running Windows 8.1 took 18 seconds to  log in window and 14 seconds for Chrome to be ready for the URL.

I5 Lenovo Yoga Laptop with 64GB SSD and 4GBs of RAM with two 1TB USB drives running Windows 8.1 took 8.5 seconds to log in window and 13.9 seconds for Chrome to be ready for the URL.

I used Safari for the Macs because it is the only browser that works reasonably well on the dual G5.  I did not think it was fair to saddle the Windows machines with Safari.

What is a little ironic about all of this is that the iMac, my iLemon, was also once the victim of slow Snow Leopard.

It is a little sad that the iMac with a SSD is only a few seconds faster that a ten year old computer running regular hard drives.

All of this confirms what I can say with confidence as someone who uses Mac OS , Linux and Windows on a daily basis.  You can get more done on one of today's Window's machines than you can with one of today's Macs.

It was nice to go back to the G5 where the operating system easily remembered the last file folder that I accessed. I also appreciated the reappearance of the escape key as a way to navigate back from a picture to the library in iPhoto.

I might still be a gungho Mac user if Apple had seriously worked to improve OSX instead of turning it into a poor nephew of iOS.  If Apple were cash strapped, I might understand the need to focus its efforts on only where the money is but Apple has all the money it needs to do whatever it wants.  Unfortunately a truly better OSX is not it.

I did not get to run a Linux test since I have yet to have time to bring up my next dedicated Linux box, but I will find time eventually. I think Linux still might be my future OS, but I doubt it will be via the VMware product I am using now when I run Xubuntu. Also I have not written off Windows 10 either. Microsoft probably has more to lose if they do not perform on the desktop than Apple does.

Working to bring fiber to those towns missed by Google is going well and keeping me too busy to play as much as I would like with my Linux project.  Also I could have easily run a test with my wife's Chromebook but it would have smoked all the competition and I did not want her to know that she has the fastest computer to the races in the house.

That it is today from the Crystal Coast of North Carolina where I have proclaimed that winter is done for 2015 as March rolls into town.

 

 

 

Comments

[Art Vandelay]

Apple stopped giving a shit about computers once the iPhone became its primary source of cash. I switched to Windows 8 in the summer of 2012 and haven't looked back at the Mac since. Apple used to care about computers. Now it just wants to squeeze the iSheep for $700 every year on the annual iPhone upgrade cycle. You want innovative technology and a bold operating system? Look to Microsoft.

[BC]

This article put into words what I have been thinking for years. OS X is being dumbed down to be more like iOS. As a user, I had hoped over time mobile devices would gain more features, to be like a desktop machine.

[Matt]

In my testing it took 20 seconds to a login window in yosemite on an 8GB RAM / 2.4Ghz i5 Late 2013 model and only 14 seconds to get to Safari browser. It might be subjective. Personally, I think they are moving forward with Yosemite.

[James Katt]

Good luck with the malware Lenovo placed on your computer. That is how much they think about you - a piece of meat.

Apple certainly cares about computers. The Mac is still the best desktop/laptop available. The primarily limiting factor is that Intel has reached a ceiling in how fast they can make processors.

Anyone who thinks OS X is dumbed down simply doesn't know how to use it with any sophistication. OS X is a TRUE UNIX operating system. Writing Macros that integrate multiple apps on a Mac is SO MUCH EASIER and POWERFUL compared to what can be done on Windows.

And only on a Mac - which I do every day - can you run Mac OS X 10.10, Mac OS X 10.8.5, Windows 7, and Windows 8.1 SIMULTANEOUSLY - each running an app that requires that OS for optimal function. You cannot do that on any other PC.

And if you complain about price, the realize that when you do head to head comparison with similar hardware, the Mac is cheaper and better.

If the matter is because you cannot afford a Mac, then that argument is a non-starter. You probably can't afford a Mercedes Benz or BMW either.

So good luck to you as you forage away from the Mac and Apple.

[ocracokewaves]

Well you and I disagree on almost everything and trying to settle it on the web is never much fun, but here are my responses.

The limiting factor isn’t Intel, it is Apple and its focus on iOS. Microsoft Mail 8.1 makes OSX mail look like a dinosaur. http://readwrite.com/2014/05/07/windows-8-1-review-microsoft-mail

And as to using the operating system with sophistication, I just want to get my work done and none of that “requires writing macros that integrate various apps.” Stability would be nice (Chrome crashed on my Mac last night and I have seen kernel panics) and booting quickly would be appreciated. Microsoft seems to have figured out how to boot very quickly. As to being able to run Windows and various versions of OSX on a Mac and not on Windows, I guess you realize that the only reason you cannot do OSX on Windows with VMware is that Apple will not let you. Actually they make it impossible to run OSX natively and legally on any hardware but their own. If Microsoft did the same thing, everyone would be screaming bloody murder.

As for price you are completely misinformed and using the “old head to head with the same features” the Mac is cheaper argument that is no longer true. I’ll make you a deal. If you can come up with a new I7 Mac from Apple that is under $1,000 and has 32GBs of RAM and a 2TB hard drive with keyboard, DVD drive, and mouse, I will happily write a check like I did to Lenovo before Christmas. Surely Apple can match those specifications?

Otherwise you can try your shaky facts and sophistication argument on someone who actually does not have all the computers on his desk and use them daily. By the way, none of my Lenovos came with the malware that you mention. Maybe you should read my article comparing Lenovo to Apple. I wrote that before Apple decided to pester us daily with the information that Mavericks isn’t compatible with the almost useless iCloud. It is bloatware marketing of the worst kind. However an incompatibility message should come as no surprise since Pages documents aren’t even compatible with themselves sometimes.

http://readwrite.com/2013/01/28/apple-lenovo-a-tale-of-two-companies

Lenovo actually thinks they can deliver quality, innovation and reasonable prices. I have had four of them along with all the Macs I have purchased. The Lenovo Yoga I5 that I bought in Nov. 2012 is the best laptop that I have ever owned. It cost me less than $1,000 and even has a SD slot. Try having over 40 tabs open in a couple of different browsers open on a Mac with only 4GBs of RAM and tell me how well your Mac works. My Yoga running Windows 8.1 handles it without a problem.

Here is a screen grab from the Yoga of one the two browsers when I was running the boot tests.

http://www.crystalcoastlife.com/images/41tabs.jpg

By the way I drive a ten year old Acura MDX and it manages to still get me from place to place. I bought it the spring after I bought the dual G5.

[Voodoo_u]

My new Macbook Pro 13 Retina cold boots to login in less than ten seconds, and I'm sure would be on Safari and ready for a URL not far after that. How much crap do you have running on your newer Macs to make them that slow? Damn. No wonder you think an old G5 is faster. Should've spent that money on a new Mac instead of a Lenovo.

[ocracokewaves]

I always enjoy when the blindly faithful comment. So your “new Macbook Pro 13 Retina cold boots in less than ten seconds?” And with that statement you think I should have spent my money on a Mac. If you read the article my 28 month old Yoga laptop cold boots in 8.5 seconds. I paid $999 for the Yoga. I am guessing you paid at least $1,299 for MacBook. Gosh I think I’ll keep my Lenovo. It boots faster for 30% less dollars.

Oh and one other point, I always know when I am dealing with a completely enthralled Mac user when I hear something like “How much crap do you have running on your newer Macs to make them that slow?” It is always the user’s fault not the Mac’s. How dare I put stuff on Mac that I might need to get my work done. Actually there is more stuff on the Lenovo Yoga than on the Mac. Spotify launches when it boots.

Try reading the article. I am surprised you didn’t tell me about your car too.

Do yourself a favor check out the Yoga 2 Pro prices they have gone down since I bought mine. This one is only $899.

4th Generation Intel Core i7-4510U Processor (2.00GHz 1600 MHz 4MB)

Display
13.3" QHD+ LED Glossy Multi-touch with integrated camera (3200x1800)
Intel® HD Graphics 4400
8.0GB PC3-12800 DDR3L SDRAM 1600 MHz
Hard Drive 256GB SSD

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/yoga-laptop-series/yoga-laptop-2-pro/

[ocracokewaves]

I guess I am not the only one unhappy with OSX. Maybe I did the right thing by putting my iMac with Yosemite back in the equipment closet.

http://www.tekrevue.com/yosemite-bugs-time-for-another-snow-leopard/