On Sep 2, 2006, at 11:26 PM, Maurits van de Kamp wrote: >> That is not my recollection of what happened in OS9 when there was >> not enough memory. Usually you were just told you were out of memory >> and reallocating your memory (if you had the memory to allocate to) >> did the trick. > > That depends on the program running out of memory; if the programmer > has built safeguards around every memory allocation, it will work > nicely. If not, the program will just crash if it tries to allocate > memory when it can't. > >> Also there was a distinct drop in the number of tracks you could >> playback in Logic from a given machine that happened when logic went >> OSX. Do you think it is possible that all the tricky stuff that you >> mention OSX doing instead of the more rudimentary OS9 approach could >> have been the reason. > > Probably not, but certainly OSX places a heavier load on your CPU > than OS9. > >> I know some OSX advocates who are always screaming about how >> wonderful it is because it is a generic general purpose OS. I have >> the feeling that is exactly the problem. > > Ah but IS it a problem? Are you asking if a drop i performance is a problem? Well, yeah, don't you consider that a problem. > If it is, stick to dedicated harddisk recorders or an accelerated > Atari Falcon (the ultimate example of what you're trying to say; No the ultimate example of what I am trying to say is what I did say. i.e. I think the OSX mentality screwed things up and OS9 was better if I wanted to say I wanted to use a dedicated HD recorder I would have said that. But the fact is there is no such thing as a dedicated HD recorder with the options that a DAW gives you so I didn't say that. >> Music production demands a >> lot out of a CPU and the more you can configure the system to meet >> the demands the application is going to put on it the better off you >> will be. > > That depends on what you mean by "better"; the system will be more > powerful yes, but also more difficult to maintain, more difficult > to support, less stable, and software will be more expensive > (because the developers have to continue developing their own sound > systems for example, for lack of generic OS support - it's more > software- efficient yes, but not more money-efficient). I would like to be able to identify and strip out the crap that I don't need and create a system that does not interfere with the applications that are doing the specialized task that interests me. OS9 was better at that. OSX sucks at it. >> Whereas OS9 allowed you to do things like allocate memory yourself >> to the applications you wanted and needed to use as many CPU >> cycles as you could get it to OSX says "no no no let us determine >> what your priorities are". > > No, this is definitely not true. The amount of memory allocation is > no longer a case of priority since every application can allocate > what it needs (rather than what a user who has no knowledge of the > internals wants it to get), meaning that memory will actually be > devided more efficiently (!!) down to the last available byte, and > the CPU cycles are devided based on the priorities _needed_ by the > applications. Logic can tell the OS "hey I need to get the next > sample out before this 1/44100th second passes" and the OS will give > the appropriate thread the highest priority, which is a lot more > efficient than a user arbitrarily giving priorities to entire > applications and the OS not giving a damn. That is exactly what I said that I do not believe is a superior way of doing things. OSX is heavier and more complex and I have no idea and no way of knowing what it thinks is more urgent. I repeat: the experience is that Logic performs better, has better track counts lower latency quicker screen redraws etc. on a given machine running OS9 than one running OSX The differences were not subtle. The sad fact is we can't compare what modern Logic and modern machines would do because they don't run OS9 anymore. But to ask "does that difference in matter?" is silly. I max my machine out all the time. Hell yes it matters. > >> I liked the OS 9 attitude better. > > I'm glad my car doesn't ask me for fuel injection parameters every > time I start it. The system knows best and will do it more > efficiently than you. What kind of a analog is that supposed to be? You set OS9 up once and it did what it did until you changed them. There was no "having to set the parameters every time you started it". And if you want to do a car comparison people want to do different things with their cars and the fact is for a lot of people it would be quite nice for a lot of people to be able to adjust the performance on the basis of whether they wanted fuel efficiency or power or emissions control or engine longevity or what proportions of the above... > I agree with you that OSX contains a lot of stuff that makes it > bigger and in some aspects slower than OS9. But I don't agree that > memory- and priority-management are the cause of that; they _improve_ > the performance. So then why did the performance start sucking so bad when OSX came in. System overhead alone would not go anywhere near explaining the differences that people saw.