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So, I finally got a g5, and his name is idio. It is, I must say, totally sweet. Because I find myself unable to gush as much as I would have a few years ago, I will instead quote myself from a few years ago: April 7, 2000 I've got all the things I need in an operating system, but those qualities are spread out across two different OS versions. Mac OS 9 is way fast, but also unstable (occasional crashes compared to NO crashes). OS X is way stable, but also quite sluggish, and there is a lack of key apps (like photoshop and quake3, for example). This is a recipe for frustration. Working with photoshop in OS X through classic is clunky. It will be a while before I'm anywhere near as efficient with photoshop in OS X as in OS 9 - even after photoshop is carbonized, that will not solve the GUI speed problems. Rebooting into OS 9 is also extremely frustrating, because now I'm used to my computer never crashing, at all (I have used the retail version of OS X since it came out, and have yet to crash it even once - and I've tried). I get way more pissed than I used to when OS 9 chokes. The worst part is that the short to mid term outlook does not look good. Certainly, things only get better from here as OS X becomes more fine-tuned and optimized, and as more applications become Mac OS X native. Again, though, I simply don't see my hardware *ever* running Mac OS X as fast as it runs OS 9. In fact, Mac OS X may never run as fast as OS 9 on *any* hardware... the question is how long will it be before the speed of OS X equals today's performance of OS 9 on today's hardware. Eventually, I will buy a new mac.... but it certainly won't be until I'm positive that OS X runs quickly on it. Even with all of that, though, I'm still quite happy with OS X. I am more than willing to take a GUI speed hit for all of the great things OS X brings us. People eagerly awaited the release of Mac OS X, and Apple probably knew they had to get it out the door to get people really developing for it. That was only the first step in the long journey to OS X nirvana - and it is coming :) Now the real wait begins. ... and now it ends! Mac OS X performs at an acceptable level on my dual 800, which I got a couple years ago or so while working for ja computer store. However, it was not blazingly fast in terms of UI responsiveness, as OS 9 was on hardware of the day. Since I wrote the above, I have learned that this is largely because the Mac OS X window manager does a hell of a lot more. Opaque window dragging doesn't even scratch the surface. Even then, Apple may have known that in time, most of the nifty things done by the OS X window manager could execute completely in the video card. In the early days, of course, this was not yet possible, and so everybody's CPU was busy drawing drop shadows, transparencies, and everything else. Quartz Extreme didn't show up until 10.2. 10.4 takes it a step further, with quite a bit more that is able to be done solely in the GPU. Of course this requires a fairly fancy video card, but hey... such is the price of progress ;) From the text of this page so far, it would seem as though I'm quite preoccupied with the UI niceties.

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