Diverse Solutions in Allion Apple Mac Test Lab. Apple Mac Test Lab has the most complete testing equipment and the latest macOS operating system, and is able to simulate real user scenarios, and find out the pain points through repeated testing, focusing on connectivity, functionality, and stability of software and hardware.
For the curious, OS X is like a birthday toy, promising hours of puzzle solving and fun. This beta is not fully optimized for performance, nor is it compatible with the full range of Macintosh peripherals. However, it does give us an indication of some of OS X’s potential. My goal was to find out how the public beta performed in terms of speed. Since there are very few Carbon or Cocoa applications currently available, I did most of my testing with OS 9 applications running in Classic.
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Classic itself runs in its own window, and behaves much like PC emulation packages such as Virtual PC or SoftWindows. However, PC emulators must translate Intel instructions to PowerPC instructions, a slow and laborious process. Since OS 9 applications start out as PowerPC instructions, the applications should be almost as fast in Classic as they are in regular old OS 9. This was true for some tasks, such as encrypting a file in OS 9, and unstuffing a file with the Classic version of StuffIt Expander.
On a multiprocessing system, Classic gets to run on its own processor. However, Classic is not multithreaded. Currently, Mac OS 9 applications written to take advantage of the second processor are limited to one processor in Classic. However, Classic is separate from Mac OS X, so background apps in Mac OS X shouldn’t slow down Classic apps. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to test this. My test machine, a Power Macintosh G4/500 dual processor, crashed repeatedly with iMovie and other Classic applications. Also, performance appeared to be slower than on a single processor Power Macintosh G4/500.
Macworld Lab’s standard testing suite, Speedmark 2.1, includes 2-D scrolling tests. I found 2-D scrolling performance was two to three times slower in Classic than in Mac OS 9. I checked scrolling in Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word, and Excel. Drawing windows in OS X was also noticeably slow. The problem may be that Mac OS X’s drivers for ATI graphics cards are incomplete. I also found that if the Dock is open, scrolling performance gets even worse — set the Dock to auto-hide to get the best results.
After the slow 2-D numbers, I was pleasantly surprised with the frame rates from the Quake III demo. 3-D operations are clearly being accelerated in Classic, although the frame rates are still not as fast as native OS 9.
Photoshop is an industry standard for performance testing. I wanted to install 1 GB of RAM and set Photoshop’s memory size to 900MB. However, I had problems setting Photoshop’s application size under OS X. I used the new version of Get Info, the Inspector, to change the application size. When I launched Photoshop in Classic, the setting appeared to be correct — but based on the performance numbers, the memory setting was still at its default. If I rebooted the computer into OS 9, changed the application size via Get Info, and then re-booted into OS X, Photoshop would quit before it even got to the splash screen.
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Classic applications can’t communicate directly with Mac hardware — they must go through Mac OS X. This beta has support for most standard Apple hardware, and some USB and FireWire peripherals. However, OS 9 applications that are looking for specific hardware may not run. A VST FireWire drive and a USB Zip 250 worked fine. Even ones that didn’t mount were recognized on the bus — for instance, a USB Canon scanner, a QPS FireWire CD-RW, and a USB Epson printer. The only thing that wasn’t recognized at all was a Western Digital FireWire hard drive.
There were a couple of bright points. Steve Jobs was absolutely right in his Seybold keynote, despite the fact that his demo failed that day. Under OS X, PowerBooks do wake up from sleep in just a few seconds. Also. I saw good performance with the Carbonized OS X preview version of Casady & Greene’s SoundJam MP.
Macworld Lab will continue to test Mac OS X and report on the details. It’s an operating system that shows great promise, but it will only be as good as we make it.
OS X vs. OS 9Best results in bold.Reference system in italics. Speedmark 2.1 scores are relative to an iMac 350MHz which is assigned a score of 100. Photoshop results are in seconds. Cinema 4D XL and SoundJam results are in minutes:seconds. Quake 3 results are in frames per second.
| Speedmark 2.1 | Photoshop 5.5 | Cinema 4D XL 6.1 | SoundJam 2.5.1 | Quake III | ||||||
| Gaussian Blur 10 | Unsharp Mask 2.3 | Resize 50% | RGB to CMYK | Arbitrary Rotate .3 | Lighting Effects | Model Render 640×480 | MP3 Encode | Normal | ||
| Power Macintosh G4 500 w/OS X | 106 | 37.8 | 39.2 | 20.7 | 84.8 | 80.6 | 41.9 | 13:53 | 1:47 | 31.8 |
| Power Macintosh G4 500 w/ OS 9 | 159 | 23.5 | 26.8 | 5.9 | 69.1 | 39.2 | 26.6 | 13:40 | 1:41 | 43.1 |
For Speedmark and Quake, longer bars are better. For Photoshop, Cinema 4D XL, and SoundJam, shorter bars are better.
Behind Our TestsWe used Mac OS 9.0.4, a default system disk cache, and Virtual Memory disabled for all OS 9 applications tests. Displays were set to 1024 x 768 @ 24 bit color. We tested Photoshop with 1GB of RAM and a 200 MB test file. We tried to set Photoshop’s memory partition to 900 MB and History to minumum in OS X, with unclear results. Cinema 4D XL, SoundJam, and Quake 3 testing used 256 MB of RAM. 80MB of memory was allocated to Cinema 4D XL. We rendered a model at 680 x 480 with oversampling set to 4 x 4. A 9:25 track from an audio CD was used for our MP3 encoding test. It was converted using default settings of 128Kbps in SoundJam 2.1.1. Quake 3 framerates were recorded at 640 x 480 “Normal” mode.
As has become tradition at WWDC, Apple has announced the next version of its Mac operating system: Sierra. Of course, the real change is that, after fifteen years, Apple has finally ditched the 'OS X' moniker. All things old are new again, and the new operating system will simply be called 'macOS.' We don't yet know if Sierra carries a '10.12' version number, but with developers getting their hands on the OS later today, we should soon have that question answered.
Apple's Craig Federighi ran through a whole bunch of new features to be included in the revised operating system. He started by mentioning Continuity and Auto-Unlock, which now combine to let you seamlessly unlock a desktop or laptop Mac merely by bringing your Apple Watch close, using what Federighi described as 'time-of-flight networking' to detect the watch's proximity. It was unclear from the presentation whether or not this feature is an Apple Watch exclusive; Federighi did not explicitly say that Auto-Unlock would work with iOS devices.
Another Continuity-based feature showing up in Sierra is Universal Clipboard, which answers a longstanding complaint of Mac and iOS users. Copying and pasting now works automatically between an iOS device and a desktop Mac device. This appears to be a bidirectional service; you can copy an item to your iOS clipboard and see it on the desktop, and vice versa.
iCloud now plays an expanded sync role, too, letting you move files and folders from Mac to Mac or from Mac to iOS. Another new feature called Optimized Storage can sweep through old files and push them to iCloud, clearing up local disk space for other uses. It also can automatically dump your trash, clear your Web history, and do other behind-the-scenes sweeps. Federighi noted that in one test situation, Apple used Optimized Storage to free up 130GB of local storage.
AdvertisementAfter making their appearance in the Finder with the last big OS X (ahem, macOS) revision, tabs are now coming to more applications. Federighi said that Apple wants tabs on all multi-window applications, and he added that getting them there can be done without developer modification. We're not sure exactly how this works, but we're eager to see it demonstrated.
Apple Pay will also come to the Mac, after some delay. The above picture was flashed up on the screen as a joke before Federighi explained that Apple Pay will be usable from desktop browsers, using TouchID or an Apple Watch to authenticate via Continuity.
Siri, of course
In probably the worst-kept secret of the show, Apple formally announced that Siri is coming to the desktop. After allowing Siri to introduce herself—shades of the original 1984 Mac demo!—Federighi showed off several Siri desktop features that should look familiar to iOS users. In addition to doing context-sensitive searches, calling up playlists, and creating tasks, Federighi used Siri to kick off Web searches and then used the Siri search results to complete a Keynote presentation.
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As anticipated, the feature looks and acts a lot like Cortana on Windows 10.
When?
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Sierra will be available to developers today and will have a public beta in July. The operating system is set for a fall 2016 general release.
This story is developing; details will be added as the event continues.