ProTools with OSX-- Are we going backwards??

[Mt.Everest]

As Ive been reading along with the many paths this thread has taken, I have been thinking about my original post and what I was trying to get at.

What I miss specifically is the ability for a well educated computer user like myself, who doesnt know how to write code however, to be able to streamline OSX the way we used to be able to do it with OS9. Remember when we could DECIDE which extensions to run, how much memory a program uses, and so forth?

Has anyone looked at how many tasks are being run in OSX that we can do nothing about? (aside from learning how to write UNIX, uhg) Look at the processor viewer. its madness. Programs like Cocktail, are really just basic apps that dont actually do too much at all.

Isnt it silly that OSX is based on Virtual Memory? remember how much Virtual Memory would slow down our computers? Why cant we turn that off?

In general, my gripe is that there is SO MUCH that loads by default with OSX, is installed with OSX, and SO MUCH that we cant strip away as to not allow users like my mom to mess anything up, but hinders its performance. This OS should be SCREAMING on my Dual 2.5Ghz. Its not. Its no different, actually SLOWER, than my old 9600 with OS9. This is a fact.

What I miss is the customization ability we had with OS9. We have SOME in OSX, but only for the REALLY silly things like Genie Effect. I used to love to see how many extensions I could take away in OS9 and still have a stable system. It was great being able to really slim that OS down for a snappy feel. Cant really do that now, without some extensive UNIX know-how, which most of us dont have the time or desire for.

MT

[jeremyroberts]

>> Has anyone looked at how many tasks are being run in OSX that we can do nothing about?

And you think OS9 had less background/init processes?

OSX lets you see them with an off-the-shelf utility. OS9 hid them from you.

I can safely say that very few posting on the DUC really understand the inner workings of unix and as much as we consider ourselves experts, we know NOTHING compared to the big boys. We don't know if/how/why an under the hood process matters. We trust the programmers to make this seamless for us.

I had to do a session last month on an OS9 machine... damn, how can you guys keep using it once you've lived with OSX for a few years? I can't go back.

If your biggest gripe is folder bounceback - then you need to learn a little of how OSX works and SIMPLY drag your current project folder/drive(s) to the finder sidebar. Takes a few seconds and you will never bitch about it again. Also, learn a little about finder navigation using the browser. You can key command it, etc...

As for show/hide tracks - I agree, it's not as as fast as before... that's not the OS's fault, but sounds like an application engineer could make it better... has anyone submitted a bug report? I haven't. I figure they know this is an issue and it's on the list.

Don't we all have work to do?

[Tone]

I haven't read this whole topic so forgive me if I'm going over trodden ground here.

I have some knowledge of programming and have been involved in writing some basic commercial music software in the distant past. Unix is actually ancient technology and IMO Apple have done an amazing job of making what is a pretty nice engine and GUI on top of it. The problem is that in the end, it's a bit bloated and really not as economic and low level as would be ideal for running complex real time stuff like Pro Tools or Logic. I always wondered what would have happened if the pre-Jobs Mr Amelio had bought BeOS instead of Unix which nearly happened at one point. BeOS was very good for real time stuff but not as 'road worthy' as Unix. In the end there was more for Apple to consider than just pure effificent code which is why they went Unix.

My experience has been that I have actually found OSX (10.3.7 & PT 6.7 & HD2 Accel) to be more stable than OS9, still the odd funnyness but not as often.

[rockridge]

I have some knowledge of programming and have been involved in writing some basic commercial music software in the distant past. Unix is actually ancient technology and IMO Apple have done an amazing job of making what is a pretty nice engine and GUI on top of it.

But can you tell me if Apple wouldn't have been better off updating OS9? They could have added everything the OSX offers... right down to that annoying dock.

I suspect Job's is making more money selling OSX that he could with OS9, so that a big incentive.

If OSX is so superior, why did feel the need to kill OS9... let them both run and may the best OS win...
what's Apple afraid of?

Wouldn't Apple sell more computer's if there were both choices?

If people want to use OSX that's fine by me, but don't they realize that i would jump on a G5 right now if it ran OS9 natively!

[danickstr]

bassmac...lol i will try to live up to your standards, but remember, you created me with original sin.

[yvan]

OS X Panther - 10 crashes a day
OS X Jaguar - 10 crashes a week
OS 9.2.2 - 10 crashes a year

'Nuff said.

OS X Tiger in june...BEWARE!!

[JSR]

Actually April 15....even more scary!!

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1776012,00.asp

[Erik Huber]

StadiumRocker:

Also, if you want a really slimmed down version of Panther that uses much less memory, runs far fewer background processes, disables much of the slowdown eye candy Quartz graphics, and has a Finder that is ten times more responsive than the stock setup, it's very easy to configure, and the results are amazing, but you'll have to learn a little UNIX and a little OS X trickery. Or pay me a consulting fee and I'll do it for you.

What kind of OS X trickery are you referring to, exactly?

Email me at [email protected] and I will definitely pony up that consulting fee. Seriously.

[StadiumRocker]

Mt. Everest, I'll start with the last part of your post first.

What I miss is the customization ability we had with OS9. We have SOME in OSX, but only for the REALLY silly things like Genie Effect. I used to love to see how many extensions I could take away in OS9 and still have a stable system. It was great being able to really slim that OS down for a snappy feel. Cant really do that now, without some extensive UNIX know-how, which most of us dont have the time or desire for.

It seems like what you're complaining about is that you're not equipped with the knowledge to modify OS X in the same way that you used to modify OS 9. It seems you've forgotten how much time and effort you spent (and I know you spent it, because I did too) learning what extensions did what, what prefs did what, what tweaks worked and what tweaks didn't, what shareware utlities were necessary to make life better, etc. We all spent years becoming OS 9 experts, we used it all the time, read books and online articles, etc. Now, you're complaining that you aren't a Unix expert and you don't want to be. Okay, well, I feel the same way. I also never wanted to be an OS 9 expert, or a SCSI expert, or a network expert, or a Retrospect expert either. I just wanted to be a musician and a producer and a recording engineer. Oh well. That's the way it is. I've spent a lot of time learning how to tweak OS X the same way that I was good at tweaking OS 9. Apparently you haven't. Stop complaining and start learning. And no, I'm not being a jerk and leaving it at that -- I'll help you out. But first, please get over the fact that you'll have to learn some new things about your operating system.

What I miss specifically is the ability for a well educated computer user like myself,

...actually, that's the problem -- you are well educated with OS 9, but not with OS X...but I digress...

who doesnt know how to write code however, to be able to streamline OSX the way we used to be able to do it with OS9. Remember when we could DECIDE which extensions to run, how much memory a program uses, and so forth?

You can do tons of streamlining in OS X, but it's all new and different, and you have to learn how. Try Alfred if you have a lot of 3rd party frameworks/fonts/prefpanes/libraries/screensavers that you need to manage. Learn how to use it. Go through your System Drive:Library: folder and learn what all that stuff in there does (just like you did in OS 7/8/9, when every new version of the OS added tons of junk to the System Folder.)

Has anyone looked at how many tasks are being run in OSX that we can do nothing about? (aside from learning how to write UNIX, uhg) Look at the processor viewer. its madness.

You don't have to learn Unix, but...you ought to anyway, cuz that's the world we live in. What do you think those 200 extensions crawling across the screen in OS 9 were? (If you used Conflict Catcher, you could see them all, and they would fill the screen during startup). They were OS 9 "processes", sucking up CPU time. You could use a program like "Peek A Boo" in OS 9 to see all the background crap that was running. In OS X, you use Activity Viewer as you are aware (there is also an OS X version of Peek-A-Boo), and you can in fact kill unnecessary processes, and more importantly, you can "renice" processes that need to keep running but aren't as important as Pro Tools performance. "Renice" is the Unix term for setting the priority of processes. The system distributes CPU time to all processes, and each process has a "renice" value, which indicates how much CPU time it would like to have. The renice value for a process doesn't guarantee all the CPU time the process wants, but it generally gets what it requests. The result is that low priority processes like the MacOS X Dock and Finder often get more CPU time (compared to processes you care about - Pro Tools/audio apps) than they ought to get. So, you change that. Use this program as a starting point:

http://www.northernsoftworks.com/renicer.html

Also, try this (more thorough implementation):

http://www.lachoseinteractive.net:81...processwizard/

Read the docs. Google the subject. Learn.

Programs like Cocktail, are really just basic apps that dont actually do too much at all.

Not true. What Cocktail does is put a nice GUI on the Unix underpinnings of your OS that you have stated you don't want to learn. You don't want to learn Unix, and you don't want to pay for a shareware program that gives you a nice simple GUI for the Unix? You're hard to please, man...

Isnt it silly that OSX is based on Virtual Memory? remember how much Virtual Memory would slow down our computers? Why cant we turn that off?

No, it's great. It means unnecessary stuff can be paged out of memory so you can run more apps. It doesn't slow down the applications you care about if you have enough RAM. You can run a utility like VMometer to monitor virtual memory page swaps (if there aren't any page swaps, you aren't being affected by virtual memory). If you're running Pro Tools on a G5, I'm sure you have a lot of RAM. If you don't have a lot, buy more. Max your Mac out with high quality RAM that all runs at the same speed and is made by the same manufacturer. It's worth every penny.

In general, my gripe is that there is SO MUCH that loads by default with OSX, is installed with OSX, and SO MUCH that we cant strip away as to not allow users like my mom to mess anything up, but hinders its performance.

Generally, this is false. All the same junk that loads in OS X loaded up in OS 9. It just has different names. It's "processes" vs "extensions". Same thing to the end user basically. You can kill many processes (or renice them) and get upwards of 20-30% increase in overall system performance. You just have to learn the new terminology so you know which processes are important and which are not. Do a Google on "os x" and the name of every background process you see in activity monitor. Learn your new OS.

This OS should be SCREAMING on my Dual 2.5Ghz. Its not. Its no different, actually SLOWER, than my old 9600 with OS9. This is a fact.

No, it's a perception, and I disagree. I still have a 9600 with OS 9. It is most definitely not as fast as my G5. But whatever...let's just solve your problem.

Do these things:

1) Buy as much RAM as your computer can hold. It's worth the money.

2) Turn off Appletalk, File Sharing, Web Sharing, the firewall, font smoothing, Universal Access, fast user switching, Speech (all in System Prefs).

3) Turn off all unnecessary fonts using Font Book (leave Lucinda fonts on, plus traditional Mac fonts and web fonts like Arial, webding, etc)

4) Using above mentioned shareware apps, renice low priority processes (Dock, Finder, background fax/printer processes, etc) to a low priority value. Renice high priority processes (Pro Tools, Reason, etc) to a high priority value. Google "renice" and "unix" and "os x" to learn how to approach this problem overall.

5) Turn off Aqua shadows. http://tc.versiontracker.com/product...wkiller-12.sit (Double check that this is compatible with 10.3.x - I'm recommending GUI programs that handle the Unix for you, but I use the Terminal and Unix scripts to do all this, so double check compatibility).

6) Prebind your system (use Cocktail).

7) Repair disk permissions.

8) Make sure system performance is set to maximum in Energy Saver.

9) Download CHUD from Apple (or go here www.versiontracker.com and search for it - the ultimate Mac software resources). Use CHUD to make sure your L2 cache is enabled and to verify your CPU speed. (I just thought of this -- with you complaining your computer is so slow, I'm wondering if your L2 processor cache has been disabled somehow).

10) Try this app also for tweaking more OS X stuff - http://users.skynet.be/cefs/alex/vente/mox2/ (Read the docs!)

11) Post here if you need more help.

12) Don't say I never tried to help you out.

Best,

StadiumRocker

[bassmac]

You rock StadiumRocker!